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Who to watch out for from the 2025 F1 ACADEMY grid as the series returns in China
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Another unmissable F1 ACADEMY season is just around the corner, as the 2025 field prepare to do battle at the Shanghai International Circuit for the first of a seven-round campaign.
With six teams, 17 full-time drivers and one Wild Card entry at every round, the grid is stacked full of young female talent looking to stamp their mark on the season, but who can follow in 2024 Champion Abbi Pulling’s footsteps? We’ve picked out some of the fiercest contenders who could be in with a shot at being crowned the third F1 ACADEMY Champion.
READ MORE: A bigger grid and new locations – Why 2025 is going to be the best F1 ACADEMY season yet
Doriane Pin
It’s undeniable that Mercedes’ Doriane Pin is the benchmark every driver will want to beat this season. A race winner in the F4 South East Asia and UAE Championships, Pin was quickest out of the blocks in Jeddah last season, securing both pole positions and winning the first race of the year.
Unfortunately, the French racer ended up playing catch up to Pulling in the Drivers’ Standings and, despite adding wins in Zandvoort and Lusail alongside five further podiums to her tally, the 2024 Vice Champion ultimately came up short by 121 points.
Doriane Pin was Vice Champion from the 2024 season, and will be looking to have another crack at the F1 ACADEMY title
After contesting part of the Formula Regional Middle East Championship over the winter break, Pin’s racing skills should be razor sharp, whilst a return to the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine will help prepare her well with an eye to progressing up the road to F1.
Hungry for redemption and to help PREMA Racing defend their Teams’ title for a third year, the 21-year-old will have her work cut out in a highly-competitive field.
Maya Weug
If Maya Weug starts this season in the same manner she finished the last one, she won’t be waiting long to get back on to the top step.
A chequered first three rounds left the Ferrari driver struggling to tap into the pace she believed she had. However, once Weug found her groove on home soil in Zandvoort, the Dutch racer became a regular feature on the podiums, netting eight in total.
Maya Weug will hope she can mount her own challenge for the 2025 title
Her long-awaited maiden single-seater win continued to elude her though until the final race of the season. Weug was on track for the biggest winning margin in the series’ history at 11.5s until a late Safety Car eliminated her efforts, but her win was still never in doubt.
Finishing third overall, the gap between Weug and second-placed Pin could have been much closer without Weug’s early difficulties. Yet the experience of overcoming those obstacles and her resilience should stand the 20-year-old in good stead.
Consistently setting the pace across pre-season testing, this is positioning her nicely as a hotly-tipped title contender this time around with MP Motorsport.
Chloe Chambers
One of four drivers to bring home a win last year, Chloe Chambers is stepping into a leading role at Campos Racing as the only returning driver in their trio.
Three podium finishes in Rounds 2 and 3, including a win in Barcelona, put her on course for a top-four finish in the Standings. Yet the American driver couldn’t match that same momentum in the second half of the year, slipping down to sixth after four point-less finishes.
Chloe Chambers had plenty of bright moments in her first campaign
Now with the backing of Red Bull Ford, the 20-year-old has shown she has all the ingredients of a title contender — fighting for pole positions, being a formidable overtaker and delivering wins — but she’ll want to reassert her competitiveness from the outset in Shanghai.
Lia Block
Williams’ Lia Block tasted her fair share of success in rallying, but this year she’s hunting down some single-seater silverware. The youngest American Rally Champion, Block entered the 2024 campaign with something of a question mark over how she’d perform in her first year of open-wheel racing.
Progress was soon seen, even if there were a few bumps in the road and lessons to be learnt. Her first F1 ACADEMY points on home soil in Miami were soon followed by more in Barcelona and Zandvoort as her upwards trend pushed her on to the cusp of a podium.
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Lia Block learned plenty in her first F1 ACADEMY campaign, and will hope to continue her upward trajectory
Qualifying P4 for both races in Singapore demonstrated how far she’d come and her ability to bring those results home in the races showed that her pace wasn’t a fluke. Fighting for a podium on merit in Yas Marina Race 3 before two costly penalties, the 18-year-old finished eighth overall last year and now wants to get back to winning ways.
Alisha Palmowski
First impressions matter in a sport where you might not get a second chance and as the only rookie on this list, it speaks volumes to the eye-catching performance Alisha Palmowski put on last season.
As the Lusail Wild Card, she caught attention by topping the opening session of in-season testing. Delivering that on her first Grand Prix weekend would be a difficult ask for the 2024 GB4 Vice Champion, but the Briton showed no sign of feeling the pressure.
Alisha Palmowski showed huge promise in her Wild Card outing in 2024
Qualifying sixth and fourth, she secured a P5 finish in the only race of the weekend. Spotting her potential, the 18-year-old has been picked up as the Red Bull Racing-backed driver this season. Considering her pace and Campos’ upturn in form from 2023 to 2024, a rookie title charge from Palmowski can’t be ruled out.
Although previous experience in Jeddah and Miami could lend the returning drivers an early advantage, the reverse grid races could also allow drivers further down the order a chance to turn around difficult weekends and make up lost ground.
Who will reign supreme when the chequered flag is waved for the final time on the streets of Las Vegas is anyone’s guess…
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