A Formula 1 veteran is developing the sport’s first evenly split male-female team to potentially fill the spot of an 11th team.
Craig Pollock — founder and former CEO of British American Racing, as well as the former manager of world championship driver Jacques Villeneuve — announced he has submitted an application for the team, Formula Equal, to possibly debut in 2026.
“Our ambition is to deliver and build opportunities and pathways for women to get to the very top level inside motorsports,” Pollock told CNN Sports.“The concept and the idea was to try and build a Formula 1 team, 50% male, 50% female, which is extremely hard to do if you have an existing Formula 1 team; it’s a lot easier with a clean sheet of paper.”
The 50-50 split for men and women would apply to every job on the team, from drivers to engineers to executives.
A survey conducted by the FIA in 2016 found women accounted for just 6.5% of drivers, 16% of institutional employees, and 19% of volunteers among European motorsports.
In January, FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem announced that he had asked his team to begin the process of finding an 11th team to compete in Formula 1. The FIA formally opened the application process in February.
A joint bid from Andretti Global and Cadillac is one of the favorites to land the spot — and may have to pay an entry fee upward of $600 million to join the competition.
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