Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds has predicted that a woman will race in the championship ‘within the next two years,’ as the all-electric series continues its efforts to give female drivers the chance to get behind the wheel and show their talent at the highest level.
Two women featured in Formula E’s inaugural race at the 2014 Beijing E-Prix: Katherine Legge for Amlin Aguri and Michela Cerruti for Trulli GP. Legge competed in just one additional round, while Cerruti ran three more before leaving the series.
Simona de Silvestro followed, joining Andretti Autosport (as it was then known) towards the end of Season 1 for the London double-header, before contesting the full Season 2. She scored points in Long Beach and Berlin, becoming the first – and to date the only – woman to record points in the championship.
Formula E has been determined to show that men and women can compete on equal footing, taking concrete steps in recent years to turn that ambition into reality.
Following the first-ever all-women test session for an FIA World Championship at Madrid’s Circuito del Jarama in 2024, Formula E doubled down with a second women’s test at the end of October, this time at Valencia’s Ricardo Tormo circuit.
Fourteen female drivers took part, with Chloe Chambers of Mahindra Racing setting the fastest lap of the day at 1m22.767s – just four tenths off Joel Eriksson’s 1m22.318s, the slowest of the regular drivers in the pre-season testing earlier that week. Less than a second separated the top six drivers by the end of the day, highlighting the competitiveness of the field.
Dodds was visibly enthused by the results of the second all-women test, which doubled the track time compared with the previous year, totalling six hours across two sessions.
“So, a year on from the last test, we halved the timing gap between the championship male drivers and the female test drivers. My instinct is, if you ask me to bet, I would say within the next two years you’ll see a woman driving in the world championship. That’s my bet,” Dodds told Motorsport.com.
Formula E remains committed to giving female drivers the chance to prove themselves and convince teams that they are capable of competing at the very top.
“What we have to do is continually provide them opportunities to get in the car and test the car, to give them opportunities to showcase their potential to the teams who hire them - we don't hire them - and the teams only hire people they think can win them championships. So they have to showcase themselves to be potential, and we have to remove some of the barriers,” Dodds explained.
The series is also working with partners such as Google Cloud, using AI technology to accelerate learning for women who have had less time in the car than their male counterparts. “We’re fully committed to testing the hypothesis that men and women can compete equally in our sport,” he added.
As Formula E concludes the Gen3 Evo era and prepares to move into the significantly faster Gen4 cars in Season 13, the new machinery is expected to level the playing field for all drivers.
“It's been designed with power steering,” Dodds said. “It's the first time we've built in design credentials around being more inclusive as a racing car."
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