F1 Academy 2026 season preview: The most open title fight yet?

Photo: Red Bull

F1 Academy starts its fourth season this weekend in China with multiple potential title contenders

For the first three years of the all-female Formula 4 championship F1 Academy, there has been an obvious title favourite heading into the campaign. That’s not the case in 2026, with at least four drivers who look ready to fight for the crown.

The top three in the 2025 standings have all moved on from the paddock, and which leaves Rodin Motorsport’s Ella Lloyd as the highest placed returnee. She is a junior driver for the McLaren Formula 1 team, and took a win and four other podiums last year. The 20-year-old also has two years of British F4 experience, and has racked up five podiums in that championship.

Although not an F1 junior, Campos Racing’s Alisha Palmowski will race with the livery of the Red Bull Racing team for a second year in a row in F1 Academy and does so after coming fifth in the 2025 points table. She started the 2025 season with victory at Shanghai, which hosts the opening round of 2026 too this weekend, and claimed four further podiums.

Nina Gademan and Alba Hurup Larsen were sixth and seventh in F1 Academy last year, with Larsen consistent but podium-free and that being enough to leave her just four points behind Gademan. The Dutchwoman won on home soil at Zandvoort, made the podium twice in Montreal and finished second in the championship’s first ever race on Las Vegas’s Strip circuit.

The Alpine F1 team lended its livery to Gademan through 2025, and will do so again, while Larsen was signed to the Ferrari Driver Academy last August. Larsen is yet to prove herself against male competition in F4, but is on an upwards trajectory as she gains single-seater experience. Gademan meanwhile has finished on the podium twice in Saudi Arabian F4, where she came ninth in the standings last year as a part-timer.

There is one other F1 Academy race-winner on the 2026 grid: Emma Felbermayr. She won a thrilling race in Montreal decided in a final-lap showdown, but only scored five other times, and will race in Audi’s colours for her sophomore campaign.

Photo: F1 Academy

The 19-year-old will need to make big improvements to put herself into title contention as Lloyd’s team-mate, and Rodin’s line-up is completed by Ella Stevens who is the only single-seater rookie racing on F1’s support bill this year.

Stevens joined the McLaren Driver Development Programme in November 2025 after being runner-up in the British Kart Championship’s KZ2 shifter class. She had been in the top five in 2023 and ’24, and is a long-time protege of Alice Powell.

Due to her inexperience, Stevens is possibly the most exciting name on the grid but to be facing three high-speed street circuits (Jeddah, Montreal and Las Vegas) under the spotlight of the F1 fraternity with no prior car racing experience could prove costly. One big crash on such a circuit, which instantly punish drivers’ mistakes, can lead to seriously diminished confidence and performance levels, and of course injury.

Stevens won’t be going in completely blind to F4, having contested a single Formula Winter Series round with Rodin at Algarve last month. She failed to crack the top 20 in the three races she contested.

Palmowski and Mathilda Paatz have also been racing in FWinter Series this year and have had highs and lows. Fourth place in the opening race and pole for the second raised expectations for Palmowski, but she has only scored in one of her six races and racked up track limits penalties, while Paatz has not had front-running pace but did make the podium in the opening round at Estoril.

She will don the Aston Martin F1 team’s colours while racing on the support bill, having become a member of the ‘Aston Martin F1 Driver Academy’ launched last year. There are only two two members of that academy, which seperate to the team’s main driver development programme.

Photo: F1 Academy

Making up Prema’s line-up are Paatz, Payton Westcott, who has the Mercedes-AMG F1 team’s livery, and Natalia Granada. Her presence was announced only 28 hours before free practice begins tomorrow morning. The Spanish teenager did two sportscar races in 2024, and karted before.

On X30 Junior karts she came 10th in the IAME I-Games and 12th in the IAME Winter Cup in 2022, and in the X30 Senior class was 19th in the 2022 LeCont Trophy and 20th in the 2023 WSK Open Series. Off-season restructuring has impacted all of Prema’s squads.

Racing Bull’s livery will appear on the entry of Campos driver and Brazilian F4 race-winner Rafaela Ferreira, and Kaylee Countryman will run in Haas’s colours. Her ART Grand Prix team-mate Jade Jacquet was signed as a Williams junior three months ago after she came 24th in French F4 as a car racing rookie.

The only F1 team not providing a patronage to an F1 Academy racer is Cadillac, which arrived in the world championship at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix. It has already confirmed that it will brand an F1 Academy entry in 2027.

Each round features a wildcard driver who competes in Hitech GP’s third car, and Chinese racer Shi Wei has been selected to fill the seat in Shanghai for the second year in a row. Her team-mates are Ava Dobson and Rachel Robertson, who also made their F1 Academy debuts in 2025 cameos with Hitech.

Dobson has experience from higher up the single-seater ladder in GB4 and USF2000, and Robertson raced primarily in sportscars last year as a factory driver in Radical Cup UK. The pair also came 11th and 13th in Saudi Arabian F4 last season.

F1 Academy entry list