The Red Bull Academy Programme is sponsoring an unprecedented three cars and drivers for the F1 Academy 2024 season, who are competing for MP Motorsports in the F1 Academy series, in the Team’s relentless pursuit of increasing female participation in motorsport. The Red Bull Academy Programme consists of: Red Bull Racing Pepe Jeans Academy Programme driver Hamda Al Qubaisi, Visa Cash App RB Academy Programme’s Amna Al Qubaisi, and Red Bull Ford Academy Programme driver Emely de Heus.
In January 2016, Sarah Harrington joined Oracle Red Bull Racing and is now Red Bull Academy Programme Manager - but how did her story start, and what does she do to support the next generation of racing drivers?
Growing up, Sarah always had a love of sport. And, after studying physiotherapy and completing a Masters degree in strength and conditioning, she went on to work across a multitude of sports.
After a few years in the industry, Sarah had two children and began thinking about the next step.
“I was looking for some courses and a friend of mine came across a job that was advertising for a company that worked in motorsport and had a corporate sector of their business,” she tells Females in Motorsport. “I applied to the company and afterwards asked if it would be okay to be put forward for Formula 1”.
And so, Sarah’s career at Red Bull began. Now into her eighth season with the team, she has had a number of roles which have set her up for her new one with the Red Bull Academy Programme.
“My initial role was with the race team, and I still work with them today,” she says. “This gives me a really good understanding of how a race team is run and all the things that are involved in that.
“Outside of this, I’ve worked with our young drivers and currently work on the Red Bull Young Driver Programme too.”
Sarah has a great amount of experience working with different drivers; she previously worked with W Series for two years, and currently works with a multitude of different junior drivers across all racing categories.
“Working across the categories is really important because there are some substantial differences,” she says. “It gives you a really grounded understanding of the sport and the demands for the drivers across the different categories.”
Looking ahead, Sarah has been supporting the Red Bull Academy Programme drivers and will continue to do so, but what exactly does she do?
“In the past, I’ve worked as a Performance Coach, which is essentially looking after the off-track development of the driver,” she says. “So anything from nutrition, the physical aspect of the conditioning for driving, liaising with psychologists and people.”
This year, Sarah will be attending every F1 Academy race and, in doing so, she will be utilising these skills, and outside of races, she’ll be managing the programme.
“I’ll be liaising with the lead of our Junior Progamme [who also runs the sims] and preparing the drivers for each race on the sim,” she says. “I’ll also be overseeing their off-track development.
“Things like, working with our marketing and our media team, ensuring the smooth running of the program, but also how we use that to develop females in the sport.”
Red Bull are very much supporting F1 Academy, prompting female drivers and creating role models within the industry.
“We very much align with their philosophy that will allow us to inspire lots of young girls to increase grassroots participation,” she says. “My primary goal is to oversee the development of the drivers, and long-term, it’s to see a lot of different representation across the board.”
Within her new role, Sarah has a lot to look forward to but with this, comes occasional challenges.
“In sport, you're going to have your highs and your lows, whoever you are, whether you're a world champion or not,” she says. “So when things don’t go well on track, that’s challenging.
“For me, especially from a responsibility of managing your programme, it’s a large team, you're not the only one managing expectations but the emotions of the driver too.”
But, Sarah’s role has many rewards.
“Throughout my career, it’s the small things that are the most rewarding sometimes,” she says. “It’s the text messages that you get out of the blue from a parent saying their child has taken accountability and is implementing everything you’ve advised them to do.
“Or, it might be a thank you for being there. It’s the small things that are either the most rewarding or the things that keep you going.”
With F1 Academy this year, and the Red Bull Academy Programme, more female representation is coming to the sport, and Sarah agrees that role models are pivotal in inspiring others to join.
“Much of the barriers that females face in this sport, is the perception of females in the sport,” she says. “To have these role models, not only provides inspiration to children looking to get into the sport, but it changes the perception amongst teams.”
As a team and organisation, Oracle Red Bull Racing has a number of initiatives to support females in motorsport, and this new Programme is one of those initiatives.
“We very much have the philosophy at Red Bull that development occurs both on and off-track,” Sarah says. “One of the goals [of this programme] is to develop the drivers in terms of their driving skills, and we want to see their progression in that, but to also support the athlete and human components of the driver.
“On the athlete's side, that would be supporting performance on track such as nutrition, sleeping and education on recovery strategies. On the human side, it can be communication and organisation skills.”
Off-track, Oracle Red Bull Racing is reaching women across the community. On World Engineering Day, Principal Strategy Engineer Hannah Schmitz ran workshops with attendees who visited the factory.
“We recognise that not only is there a small proportion of female drivers, but across the board, there’s a minority,” she says. “It’s about trying to educate what roles are out there, utilising female staff that are working in these roles to explain all the things you can do.”
With two F1 Academy rounds now done, the championship has five more rounds, and Sarah is excited to see the progress the drivers and the series make.
“What we’ve already seen in Jeddah is a successful start, so I’m excited to see where that journey takes us this year,” she tells us. “On a personal note, I’m looking forward to getting to know our drivers better.
“It will be nice in 12 months’ time to reflect and see what they’ve achieved and how they’ve changed as individuals.”
All imagery is provided by Oracle Red Bull Racing.