The dust kicked up in a small plume behind the Alpine F1 car as it zipped around Riyadh, the financial hub and capital of Saudi Arabia.
With help from the Saudi Tourism Authority, the E20 car toured the Kingdom and made history. It wasn’t the first time someone drove a Formula One car in Saudi Arabia. The drivers, though, made the 2022 demonstration a pivotal moment.
Abbi Pulling, a then-W Series driver, and Aseel Al Hamad, a board member of Saudi Arabia’s motorsport federation, became the first women to drive an F1 car in the Kingdom — just four years after the government lifted its ban against women driving. Pulling said it was her first time driving an F1 car, and the message behind that campaign “made it that extra bit special.”
“She’s an example of girls who have a passion or aim to become professional racers,” Al Hamad said in Alpine’s 2022 campaign video. “It’s so important to showcase examples like Abbi and other professional racers — female racers — for young generation, to show them, yes, you can. This can be you in the future.”
A year later, Pulling still represents that core message. Since childhood, she has set her sights on securing one of F1’s elusive seats.
Now, she’s the first woman to be part of the Alpine Academy and is competing in F1 Academy, the newest, all-women F1 support series.
But will fans see a woman competing in F1 in the next decade? Pulling’s story shows the barriers to entry even the fastest women face when competing in motorsport — and how F1 Academy is working to address them.
“I’m racing a really fun car. There’s so many people that would want to be in my position. I’ve got to make sure that I keep the perspective”
“I think what’s really important in this sport is to get the perspective of how lucky we all are to be in this because there’s so many people that come and struggle to progress from karting to cars, or even getting into karting in the first place.”
Pulling’s energy is infectious, a smile hardly leaving her face while recounting her journey.
“I eat, breathe, and sleep motorsport,” the 20-year-old told The Athletic. “It’s just my life.
Even just this morning, I was at Alpine training. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have it.”
Pulling grew up going to the track, watching as her father, Andy, competed in long-circuit endurance motorbikes. She couldn’t attend every race but remembers sitting on the bank as a kid, waving each time her father zoomed by. The idea of motorsport grew on Pulling over time – there never was a “eureka moment” like some racers experience. Her family didn’t push her in that direction either, Pulling said. But one day at eight years old, she decided she wanted to give it a go.
“I was very lucky, especially being female, to get the opportunity because I think, like a lot of kids, male or female, they don’t get exposed to it in that way. Although that is the most likely way to get into motorsport is having family involved in it,”
“I could have done whatever I wanted. I probably could have ended up on two wheels, but I ended up on four...
It was all my choice.”
Growing up, she didn’t realize she was among the few women competing in karting, the standard first step for would-be racers. Pulling and her father focused on making the experience fun.
“We took it seriously, but we tried not to take it too seriously, especially early on.”
“He didn’t want to push me away from it. He didn’t want to force it upon me and put a lot of pressure on me.”
As her times started becoming faster and Pulling began traveling around the UK to compete for championships and junior categories, having fun stayed at the forefront.
“He still would say to me, ‘Make sure you’re having fun,’ but it was more serious as we’re fighting for championships.”
In 2014, Pulling won two championships and became a name to watch. She was a frontrunner in the 2016 Junior TKM British Championship, ending the season as vice champion as a 12/13-year-old while competing against the 16-17 age range. In her early teens, Pulling realized she wanted to make a career out of motorsport and began wondering what the next step was.
“I didn’t have too much guidance in that sense,” she said. Female participation steadily drops off from karting to the senior level. According to F1, “Of the 2,275 cadets aged 8-12 in the TeamSport Race Academy, only 146 cadets are girls. The disparity further increases at senior level with only 5% of all Motorsport UK race licence holders being female.”
Alice Powell (the first woman to win a Formula Renault championship and eventual W Series driver) showed her the path forward. Powell coaches and assists with Pulling’s management, becoming a pivotal person in Pulling’s life.
“I knew to an extent what I needed to do, but the bigger picture-wise, she really helped me know what the next steps would be physically,” Pulling said, adding,
“She’s been in my situation in some things as well with running out of funding.”
Racing is expensive: A competitive F2 seat is around $2 million. F3 costs closer to a million dollars a year.
Sponsorships are critical in motorsports, both for financial and visibility purposes. Pulling has found and met with different potential partners ever since she was in school. She taught herself to use Adobe software and launched a graphic design business she still runs. During her business classes, she’d make sponsorship presentations. At 16, Pulling started pitching her story and career to high-level business personnel.
“(I) found it quite tough, really,” Pulling said. “When I was younger, it was hard to be taken seriously.”
Pulling may have been a racing name to watch, but it didn’t mean financial backing was a guarantee. She began competing in British F4 in 2020 and secured podium finishes, narrowly missing out on a victory. But in 2021, her second campaign fell apart because of funding.
She realized by the second or third round that her season was in trouble. The team made a wrong tire call in qualifying, which left her starting far back on the grid.
“It was a bit out of my hands,” Pulling said. “And it was like, we can’t afford to keep doing this because we’ve got people that are helping fund me.”
Pulling ended her season early due to the lack of budget and found herself without a seat midway through the season.
The W Series, the all-women series where Powell competed, presented a new opportunity for Pulling. It served as “a free-to-enter championship,” and Pulling became a reserve driver for a W Series team in 2021.
Though she wanted to continue fighting for the British F4 title, she recognized the power of the opportunity in front of her.
“If I was a guy, it would have been the end of the road, and I probably wouldn’t be here today.”
The W Series put Pulling back in the car, where she recognized how critical the series was for the bigger picture of the sport.
“What they started for females in sport was huge. And then the visibility that they gave us – the opportunity to be in front of the Formula One fans was great.”
In March 2022, Alpine announced Pulling would be part of its Academy as she embarked on her first full W Series campaign. That season was short-lived. The W Series cancelled the final few races of the season because of funding issues. (The series never resumed, and went into administration this month.) Pulling faced another uncertain future.
“When we got told that the season wouldn’t finish last year, I had no clue where it was gonna go, if it was gonna restart again,” Pulling said. “And if it wasn’t gonna restart, I had no clue (where) I was going to drive.”
Lella Lombardi was the last woman to compete in Formula One, back in 1976. The last woman who tried to qualify was Giovanna Amati in 1992. Susie Wolff, the managing director of F1 Academy, was the last woman to participate in an F1 grand prix weekend, in 2015.
The lack of representation extends beyond the grid, something Wolff says F1 Academy wants to address.
“Formula One Academy has to be much more than just a support series because, in the end, if we’re only providing a platform for 15 young female drivers, we will run out of drivers pretty quickly because there’s simply not enough participation in the sport,” Wolff said in Monaco at a Financial Times forum. “But we don’t want to just focus on finding the next Formula One driver or finding the next talented karting driver, (a) female … We want to also inspire other areas of the sport, and really make sure that as much off track as on track, we’re really inspiring the next generation, creating opportunities, increasing the talent pool so the most talented can rise to the top.”
Wolff pointed towards the lack of role models as a potential barrier to entry. “There’s just this perception in society that motorsport is for men, and we really need to change that.”
F1 announced the launch of the category a month after the W Series ended its season early. The all-women series features racers between 16 and 25 competing in 15 identical cars, for established teams in F1’s pyramid. Pulling is racing for Rodin Carlin this season.
Pulling says that F1 Academy is “a more realistic” opportunity for her to finish the season because it’s less expensive — the budget is €150,000 ($163,564). And she is one of two drivers with ties to an F1 team.
She credits Alpine with helping save her career.
“Single seaters was never actually realistic for me, and I never got my hopes up about it because I knew that we couldn’t really afford to do that,” Pulling said.
“It’s only been these past couple years where it’s been realistic because of all the things that are happening with females in motorsport and Alpine kind of seeing something in me and wanting to push me and make me the best I can be.”
Being part of F1 Academy, Pulling said it’s more realistic seeing herself move onto the next step, like F3. Accessibility is still a significant barrier to entry, and it ties directly into costs.
Millions of dollars are poured into junior careers, which is “just so unrealistic for the average household,” Pulling said.
She believes Alpine saved her career. “If it wasn’t for them, I could say I wouldn’t be racing this year.”
The statistics and Pulling’s lived experiences show the sport has a long way to go with increasing accessibility and creating opportunities on all motorsport levels.
Pulling recognizes this and notes change is rarely instantaneous. Series like F1 Academy and initiatives like Alpine’s Rac(h)er may help the next generation of women racers see that they, too, can chase this career dream.
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