Photo: Jakob Ebrey Photography
Hitech GP has announced its driver line-up for the all-female Formula 4 series F1 Academy, which it is contesting for the first time this year.
The team will have two full-time drivers, and also run the wildcard driver at each of the seven rounds. Wei Shi has been confirmed as the wildcard for the Shanghai season opener.
Driving for Hitech more regularly will be 17-year-old Aiva Anagnostiadis and 19-year-old Nicole Havrda.
The latter, who is Czech-Canadian, made her open-wheel debut in Formula Regional Western back in 2022 and finished fifth and fourth in her two races at Sonoma. It put her seventh in the standings of the lightly contested series.
Following that, Havrda drove in the Indian Racing League. The series used open-top prototype sportscars, and with two top-five finishes she came 11th in the standings. Throughout 2022, Havrda also represented Mercedes-Benz Canada.
Since 2023 she has been racing in FRegional Americas, doing two rounds in her first season then coming sixth last year with four podiums. She will be stepping down the single-seater ladder to race in F1 Academy.
Formerly of Alpine’s female-focused ‘Rac(H)er’ programme, Anagnostiadis is the sister of Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior James and came 10th in Indian F4 last year as a single-seater rookie. The Australian’s best result was a fifth place. She has already spent three weekends racing F4 cars this year, for Cram Motorsport in Spain, but has finished no higher than 20th.
She is set to race in the main Spanish F4 championship with Cram later this year, but its round at Navarra clashes with F1 Academy’s trip to Miami.