F1 Academy field guide
A quick in-person viewing guide for the women-focused F1 pathway series. It is less about pit strategy and more about starts, confidence, racecraft, and who looks comfortable learning a punishing circuit quickly.
WHAT YOU ARE WATCHING
F1 Academy is a one-make Formula 4-level championship: the drivers are in identical cars, so the gaps you see are more driver execution than car advantage. The 2026 Montreal round is unusually rich because F1 Academy adds a third race here: Opening Race, Reverse Grid Race, and Feature Race.
The cars are Tatuus T421-F1A chassis with modified front and rear wings, 13-inch Pirelli tyres, and 1.4-litre turbo Autotecnica engines making about 174 bhp. They are slower and less violent than F2/F1, which makes the racing easier to read from the grandstand: watch who brakes confidently, who can place the car without over-slowing, and who exits corners cleanly.
FROM THE GRANDSTAND
- Practice: look for who is using full track width early. The confident drivers will build speed without looking ragged.
- Qualifying: fastest laps matter, but second-fastest laps matter too because they set the Opening Race grid in Montreal.
- Opening Race: full-points race from second-fastest qualifying laps. This rewards drivers who produced two clean laps, not just one hero lap.
- Reverse Grid Race: top eight are flipped. This is the best race for overtaking judgment and defensive maturity.
- Feature Race: the purest read of pace across the weekend. If someone is quick here, it probably was not a fluke.
WHO TO NOTICE
Use a few anchors first: Alisha Palmowski, Ella Lloyd, Nina Gademan, Alba Larsen, and Emma Felbermayr are useful pace/reference names. For the North American lens, Payton Westcott and Kaylee Countryman are the Americans, while Autumn Fisher is the Canadian wild card for Montreal.
WHY IT MATTERS
The series exists to give young female drivers more high-quality single-seater mileage on F1 weekends. The lap times are not the point by themselves. The point is whether a driver looks repeatable, composed in traffic, and able to turn limited track time into clean execution.
Sources: F1 Academy 2026 beginner guide and official car notes.