Photo: McLaren
McLaren has added Ella Stevens and Ella Hakkinen to its driver development programme and will support two drivers in F1 Academy in 2026.
Ella Lloyd also remains part of the programme and will spend a second season in F1 Academy with Rodin Motorsport next year. Lloyd is currently third in the 2025 standings ahead of this weekend’s final round in Las Vegas, having scored a win at Jeddah and four other podium finishes.
She also raced with Rodin in her sophomore British Formula 4 season this year, coming 14th in the standings after contesting seven of the 10 rounds and taking a podium at Zandvoort.
Stevens will be Lloyd’s 2026 F1 Academy team-mate, in what will be the 19-year-old’s first year racing single-seaters. In September she topped the timesheet in the championship’s inaugural rookie test held at Navarra.
This year she was runner-up in the British Kart Championship’s KZ2 shifter class after coming third in 2024 and fifth in 2023. A long-time protege of Alice Powell, she previously raced internationally in the OK category with Birel ART and the support of Richard Mille in 2022.
Hakkinen is the daughter of McLaren’s two time Formula 1 world champion Mika Hakkinen and the team stated that the 14-year-old will test single-seaters next year “in preparation for 2027”.
She has been racing in the Champions of the Future Academy Program on OK-N class karts where she currently sits fourth in the 2025 standings with two rounds remaining. She previously finished sixth in the same championship’s OK-N Junior class in 2024.