W Series race winner Marta García completes the grid of the 2023 F1 Academy championship: the Spaniard joins Prema Racing for the new all-female championship.
Top team Prema Racing has added the last piece of the puzzle for the entry list of the upcoming F1 Academy, the brand-new all-female championship promoted by F1 that is set to kick off in April at Red Bull Ring.
The Italian outfit - one of the benchmarks in junior feeder series - has in fact signed Spanish star Marta García, 22, who moves from W Series to the F4-based new championship.
García joins Bianca Bustamante and Chloe Chong in the team's line up, and will be the sixth driver moving from W Series to F1 Academy.
"I’m super happy to be racing for PREMA in F1 Academy", Marta stated. "I think this is a great opportunity for me to show what I am capable of and it’s great to do it with PREMA, which is one of the best operations in motorsport."
"I’m looking forward to working with them and putting their colours at the front in this new series.”
Marta García's career had a spectacular start in kart racing, where the Spaniard won numerous international titles, including the CIK FIA Karting Academy Trophy and was soon considered one of the brightest karting talents in the world, impressing in competitions such as FIA European and World championships, WSK and Trofeo Industrie, which she also won.
Often regarded as the next female big thing in motorsport, García was signed to the Renault F1 driver academy aged 16, but wasn't given the proper chance to develop and adapt following the switch to single seaters and was dropped only one year later. García briefly returned to karting, but was then picked up by W Series, who selected Marta for its inaugural year in 2019.
With relatively little experience of single seaters, García thrived in the Formula Regional machinery and claimed a podium finish in her first weekend in the series, followed by more solid results and a race win at the iconic Norisring street circuit. She would finish fourth in the championship.
While 2021 proved to be a more challenging season, she still climbed the podium at the rainy Spa Francorchamps round, with five more point-scoring finishes in a widely more positive 2022 campaign - concluded with a third place finish in Singapore and with sixth in the drivers' standings.
One of the protagonists of W Series, Valencian Marta García has therefore the potential to be one of the front runners in F1 Academy, as she returns to F4 machinery six years after her latest appearances in the Spanish F4 championship.
“We are looking forward to racing together with Garcia as she had some impressive showings in the past", Rene Rosin, Team Principal at Prema, commented.
"We think she can be a leading competitor in the F1 Academy field so to join forces was really natural. She also has a good amount of experience which is a bonus asset for the whole team.”
García will get back behind the wheel of a racecar in testing ahead of her F1 Academy debut, as she learns the new gen Tatuus T-421.
The new series is expected to host 15 collective test days and seven triple-header events, from April to October - where the all-female series will support the F1 US Grand Prix at COTA for its season finale.
