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Alana Gurney is flying. In her roaring red go-kart with a hot-pink number plate, the 12-year-old hurtles through Oakleigh Go Kart Racing Club’s circuit at 100km/h.
It’s a dreary Tuesday afternoon and dark storm clouds with sporadic drops of rain threaten to dampen the track, but Gurney is not bothered. With screeching tyres, she roars down the straight – named after current Formula 1 championship leader Oscar Piastri – and prepares to clock a new lap time before her dad Ben waves her in.
Gurney obliges, turning into the garages and lifting her pink and neon yellow helmut – bedazzled with handmade triangular stickers.
“I was about to go faster dad,” she complains.
Aspiring F1 driver Alana Gurney is one of Australia’s top female karting talents.Credit: Paul Jeffers
Widely recognised as one of the nation’s leading female motorsport talents in the junior league, Alana’s karting resume is littered with dozens of accolades, including 2023 and 2024 Victorian Karter of the Year, Oakleigh Club Champion and the winner of the prestigious 2025 Ladies Trophy – awarded to the highest-scoring female driver of the season.
In her debut season, Gurney placed fourth out of 76 drivers in the Cadet 12 category of the Karting Australia championships.
The 12-year-old was poised for a podium finish, but slipped off the track in the final round of the championships in Coffs Harbour.
“We were aiming for a top-five finish in my first year so I’m still super happy we achieved that,” Alana says. “Next year we’ll be even better.”
One of the fastest-growing groups in motorsport, women and girls now represent more than 15 per cent of all motorsport licence holders in Australia.
Alana and other junior racers including Lana Flack, Charlotte Page and Oceane Colangelo represent a new wave of female drivers.
Alana’s father Ben, who doubles as her race mechanic, recalls his daughter being enamoured with dirt karts from an early age.
“I had a sim at home with an F1 game and every morning, she’d play it and look through the steering wheel and try her best to reach the pedals with her tiny feet,” he laughs.
“You ask her something about F1 and she’ll tell you who won back in 1982.”
Alana Gurney Credit: Paul Jeffers
The family saved up and bought Alana a go-kart in 2021. The then eight-year-old won her second race meet.
“She won that race meeting in a clean sweep, it was insane,” Ben said.
Since then, the Gurney family have become a 24/7 pit crew, spending 85 per cent of their year travelling to races across regional Australia in their caravan. Ben devotes hours to building engines in their backyard shed and reuses old tyres and chassis, while mum Leanne and older sister Ella are responsible for the race calendar and social media.
Their dedication has paid off. In her four-year racing career, Alana has amassed 98 trophies and has her sights set on a professional career in motorsport, ideally a prestigious Formula 1 seat.
“I just want to race the boys and win against the boys,” she says..
“I love racing the boys because when I beat them, they get really upset and stuff, because [there] ain’t no way a girl just beat me.”
The Aussies vying to end a 50-year F1 drought
As she waits for the red lights to extinguish at Marina Bay Street Circuit, Melbourne-born teenager Joanne Ciconte takes a deep breath.
Battling Singapore’s sweltering humidity, the 17-year-old driver sifts through the noise – the spectators, the other drivers and her engineer’s voice over the radio – before settling into a deep focus.
Melbourne-born F1 Academy driver Joanne Ciconte.Credit: Getty Images
“When I get into the car, every noise around me just blurs into silence and that’s just because I’m so focused,” she says. “We experience high G-forces, going over 240 kilometres [per hour] and especially at street circuits, the level of concentration is crucial.”
Joanne and Aivia Anagnostiadis are two Australians racing in the F1 Academy – an all-female series designed to provide a pathway into the single-seater pyramid to F3, F2 and finally F1.
Launched in 2023, the academy features drivers between the ages of 16 and 25 and was recently the subject of a Netflix docuseries F1: The Academy.
It’s the brainchild of managing director Susie Wolff – the last woman to participate in an F1 weekend. A development driver for Williams, Wolff drove in several F1 practice sessions in Barcelona and Silverstone in 2015, but never raced in a grand prix.
The last woman to start and race in a Formula 1 grand prix was Lella Lombardi at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix, nearly 50 years ago. Italian driver Giovanna Amati entered an F1 race in 1992, but failed to qualify.
As the grid’s youngest driver, Joanne is forthright about her ambitions to be Australia’s first female F1 driver.
Despite a rocky start to her rookie year, the 17-year-old recently clinched eighth place at race 2 in Singapore.
F1 Academy driver Joanne Ciconte Credit: Joe Armao
Joanne grew up playing tennis, swimming and basketball and begged her dad to let her kart after watching her brother on track.
“I just kept nagging my dad about me getting into a go-kart but he assumed that I wouldn’t do it because there weren’t any females in motorsport in general, it was so male-dominated,” Joanne says.
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“But that didn’t really stop me, and I kept nagging him and eventually that opportunity came to me... I fell in love with it completely.”
The teenager won 2023 Australian Karting Championship Pink Plate before transitioning to Central European Zone F4 Championship, Spanish F4 and Formula Winter Series.
Alana Gurney met Joanne and Aiva at Victorian race meets, describing them both as “the coolest people who were always happy to chat.”
Being a role model is something Joanne and Aiva are passionate about.
“It’s amazing to see the evolution of females in motorsport, because back when I started, there was almost no visibility,” Joanne says.
Aiva – who races for Hitech Grand Prix team – said female role models could transform how young drivers see themselves.
Australian F1 Academy driver Aiva AnagnostiadisCredit: F1 Academy Limited Parc Ferme
“If one girl watches a race and thinks, “I want to do that,” then that’s a huge win for me,” she says. “I want to help open doors and show that there’s a real pathway to professional racing for women.”
Karting Australia chief operating officer Lee Hanatsche believes Australia is in the race to produce the next female Formula 1 driver within the decade.
“There is certainly a lot of potential within the current ranks,” he said. “Australia is punching above their weight in terms of the population compared to the number of drivers that are featuring on the world stage, both in Formula 1, in IndyCar, in GT racing around the world.
“It’s not out of the question that Australia can have a young female up there in F1.”
The price of a motorsport career
On August 23, Queensland teenager Annabel Kennedy crossed the chequered flag at Madras International Circuit in Chennai, etching her name in motorsport history books as the first female to stand on an Indian F4 podium.
Queenslander Annabel Kennedy made her debut in the F4 Indian ChampionshipCredit: Glenn Hunt
Three days later, she was back in her grade 11 Brisbane classroom studying maths and english.
“I didn’t really process it at first,” Kennedy admits. “I didn’t realise I was the first female until the announcer mentioned it when I walked up to the podium.”
The teenager won the prestigious Australian Pink Plate in the KA3 Senior Light class in January and is eyeing a seat in F1 academy next year.
Kennedy is candid about the financial barriers, estimating her family has spent more than $120,000 on racing overseas this year, excluding accommodation and travel costs.
Gurney’s family highlights a similar challenge; they spend hours on road trips to race meets across regional Victoria and save money by relying on old tyres.
The cost of a motorsport career is not unique to women. Piastri’s father Chris has estimated his family, along with sponsors and companies, invested between $5.5 million and $6.5 million into Piastri’s F1 dream.
But Ciconte says money is one of the main obstacles preventing women from purusing professional careers in motorsport.
Melbourne teenager Joanne Ciconte says money can be a barrier for women pursuing motorsportCredit: Joe Armao
“Sponsorships and financial backing almost always went to the boys, back then it was harder for a girl to secure the funding or backing to move up the ladder,” she explains.
Motorsport Australia development manager Charlie Bowen said attitudes were slowly changing.
British Beauty brand Charlotte Tilbury announced a partnership with the F1 Academy in 2024, to appeal to F1’s skyrocketing female fan base.
In 2024 Charlotte Tilbury announced its first-ever global sports sponsorship: becoming the first female-founded brand and the first beauty brand to sponsor F1 Academy. Credit: Getty Images
“They [Charlotte Tilbury] made a real investment in that sport because they know, not only are they female fans, it’s only a matter of time before we get a female driver,” Charlie says.
“Investors are seeing a golden opportunity for themselves to engage with females in motorsport.”
“I always say motorsport is actually genderless, because the car doesn’t know is pushing the pedals,” she laughs. “It’s a level-playing field.”
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