By Mary Hazlitt
Gen Z female fans are helping to change Formula 1 fandom. Racing itself remains the main focus of the sport’s audience and the reason for engagement. However, with more young women watching the sport, its global fanbase is becoming more inclusive and less male-dominated.
There are many different points of entry into the world of motorsport, with some turning into long-lasting love for it. “Formula 1 has always been around in my family. My great-grandfather went to the first race at Silverstone. I started properly watching a few years ago, and since then I’ve never looked back.” (Female F1 fan from Google Survey)
In a Google Forms survey I conducted, most of the respondents were women aged 18 to 24. Many of them were introduced to F1 through the Netflix series Drive to Survive and expressed a strong connection with the drivers, their stories and rivalries.
Historically, F1 has been viewed as a male-dominated and highly technical sport. However, findings from the 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey by Formula One and Motorsport Network indicate a significant shift. It revealed that “female fans now account for three out of four new fans. Most of these new fans are younger, with nearly half of all Gen Z respondents being women”.
Drive to Survive has made the sport wildly more accessible as its storytelling format and focus on personalities has brought in new, younger viewers in a way that the sport hasn’t been able to do before.
In 2022, Nielsen analysed the connection between the audience for Drive to Survive and the increase in viewership of the sport’s content. It found that the show “inspires 2.3% more viewers to watch F1 content.”
Even though the number seems small, according to Nielsen, this means that hundreds of thousands of viewers who watched the series later went on to watch live F1 races, which shows that the series played a direct role in creating new fans.
Women now make up around 41% of F1’s fanbase, with 16–24-year-olds being the fastest growing age sector, according to Nielsen data, cited by Forbes. The respondents of the survey sit within this demographic, potentially reflecting the younger female generation. 96% of them say that they engage with F1 online through social media, which reinforces the idea that the fandom is growing beyond just the race weekends. This is important as fandoms thrive on community, in which platforms like TikTok and Instagram help to support and connect fans.
This modern shift doesn’t mean, however, that fans, and specifically women, aren’t interested in the technical or sporting elements of Formula One as some may suggest. This change is necessary to allow traditional gatekeeping barriers to be lowered and make fandom more welcoming, as this social element allows fans to engage, discuss, and learn more.
Unfortunately, this change hasn’t been welcomed by all fans as some women who participated in the Google Forms survey highlighted this issue, as two out of three agreed that they don’t always feel welcomed in F1 fan spaces online and offline.
I spoke to two F1 fans, Phoebe and Sabrina, to get their opinions on the sport’s inclusivity. 21-year-old Phoebe said that she doesn’t think “Formula 1 is genuinely inclusive toward women, despite how often it congratulates itself for being so.”
Sabrina, 24, had a similar view on what it’s like being a female sports fan; however, she felt that the sport wasn’t truly inclusive yet, stating that “‘women-friendly’ isn’t the same as inclusive to women”.
Sabrina also commented on the role of social media in shaping the new fandom. While she agreed with Phoebe that the sport has a strong community, she noted that women still feel the need to support one another “whenever misogynistic comments showed up”.
This highlights the difficulties female fans face due to some male reactions to their growing presence in F1 fandom. Both women also referenced being held to much higher standards than men. Phoebe illustrated this by saying, “Inclusivity, apparently, also comes with an informal entry exam,” adding that “men, conveniently, are never subjected to the same test”.
Similarly, Sabrina felt “Misogynistic fans still exist, like people who think women only like the sport because of ‘handsome drivers’, lifestyle, and nothing more, which is a whole other topic.”
Hopefully, in 2026, the young female demographic of F1’s fanbase will continue to grow. There are fears that this could be a temporary spike in engagement, as there are still some serious exclusivity issues with younger female fans.
F1 is definitely on the way to making itself more accessible, but it still has some issues it needs to acknowledge and improve on. As long as its keep working on making inclusivity a key part of the sport, it will avoid hitting a plateau in young female viewership, and these young women will continue to reshape what it means to be a modern sports fan.
