- F1 Women's Formula 1 is born to break a historical barrier
- F1 Imola Formula 1 Grand Prix suspended due to Cyclone Minerva
2009. Dénia. A father watches Formula 1 on television, Fernando Alonso still at Renault, Jenson Button chaining victories, and at the end he addresses his daughters.
- "Do you want us to go karting?".
- "To what?".
- "To karting".
- "Well."
"We liked it a lot, the following month we came back and it became routine, every weekend we went to the karting Las Palmeras, in Sueca, to go around. Then, in the summer, I went to see a race and when they started I said, 'I want to do this, I want to compete.' I was learning, I was second in the Spanish juvenile championship and so on". It seems easy.
Marta García (Dénia, 2000) is today the leader of the F1 Academy, the women's competition created by Formula 1 itself to train drivers. The idea, according to Stefano Domenicali, president and CEO of the World Championship, is that in two or three years there will be several women in Formula 3, that some reach Formula 2 and that sooner or later, perhaps, who knows, one reaches the sky of motorsport.
Although in recent seasons there have been up to seven test drivers -including María de Villota or Carmen Jordà-, only five women have competed in Formula 1 in its history and the last one who achieved it, Giovanna Amati, did so in 1992. That void, huge, exclusive to the engine, clashes with the advance of society and the organization of the championship, aware of it, has decided to invest. In fact, there is a possibility that it will end up creating a women's Formula 1, a contest only for women like the one that MotoGP prepares for 2024.
Would you rather be the only woman in today's Formula 1 or compete in an all-female Formula 1? Being the way I am I would love to be the only girl in Formula 1, although I know it is very difficult. I will need a lot of preparation, a lot of financial support and, in the end, a lot of talent. I don't know if I'll ever be that good. Each category jump costs and you have to be very fast. I wouldn't like a women's category either, really, but I've grown up watching Formula 1 and being there... wow!
After that discovery of speed with her father in the Las Palmeras de Sueca karting, Marta García swept international karting competitions: in 2015 she won the FIA Karting Academy Championship and tests such as the Trofeo delle Industrie, an emblematic race that Fernando Alonso, Lewis Hamilton or Sebastian Vettel once won. The horizon was clear.
"It was a lot of fun. Now it has changed a bit, there are more girls than before, but I started 10 years ago and I was almost always the only girl. Everyone was super aggressive with me, everyone wanted to overtake me back and, in the end, they hit me with a wafer from behind and sent me to fry asparagus. Over time I decided that if someone sent someone else to fry asparagus it would be me, "recalls García who later, with the jump to the single-seaters found himself before the abyss. From winning in international karting to suffering, and a lot, in the Spanish Formula 4 Championship. What was the way? "I was lost. It was a pretty hard blow because I started to think that I wasn't worth anything, that driving wasn't my thing. The problem was that nobody explained to me how a car works, what happens when you accelerate or when you brake, how to balance the weights. I trained, trained, trained and didn't understand anything," recalls Garcia, who, shortly after, almost quit.
A blank year
The years going around with his father and sister, the illusion of following in the footsteps of Alonso and Hamilton -his two idols-, the kart races won throughout Europe, the money invested in trips by the family ... all for nothing. Luckily, the W Series appeared. After a blank 2018, almost retired at age 18, Garcia received the invitation to participate in the then newly created women's competition, predecessor of the current F1 Academy. And that invitation saved his career. In his first test, podium. Then a victory. In the end, fourth in the championship.
"The W Series helped me because I didn't have a team and I had the opportunity to re-engage, to compete for three seasons, but nobody was teaching me either. I can say that it is now, that it is this year, when I begin to understand how to drive a car, "says Garcia, who this course accumulates three victories and three podiums in nine races and leads with 41 points to the second, the Emirati Hamda Al Qubaisi.
In the F1 Academy they also hope to make the drivers known to the public and that is why they are recording a documentary as a 'Drive to Survive', although the races are not yet broadcast live. They will be broadcast, it is assumed, next year, when the event is played at the same circuits, on the same days as Formula 1. "I hope that the whole F1 Academy project will become big and help to make visible that the engine is also for women. I don't know if we will ever reach Formula 1, but at least we will open the way," Garcia concludes many years after that question from his father.
- "Do you want us to go karting?".
- "To what?".
- "To karting".
- "Well."
- Articles Javier Sánchez
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