- F1 Academy MD Susie Wolff believes partnership will have “huge impact” for young girls watching the sport
- Lego wants to help establish F1 Academy as “something that doesn’t require a lot of explanation”
Lego has committed to sponsoring an entry in F1 Academy from next season, a move that the series’ managing director Susie Wolff says will help the championship “on the journey” to where it wants to be.
The multi-year partnership will see Esmee Kosterman drive the car from 2026, with a commemorative Lego set also planned.
“I’m so grateful because it’s the brands that are coming in that are helping us build F1 Academy,” Wolff told BlackBook Motorsport. “We’re not like F1, we haven’t been going for 75 years, we’re not established. But there’s definitely been a very collective support from those in the sport, which I think not all women’s sport has had.
“I think we can be very grateful that all ten teams [are involved], we get huge investment from Formula One, and we have brands like Lego coming in to say ‘we know you’re not where you want to be, but we’re going to come on the journey and help you to where you want to be’.”
Support from teams and brands is vital given the high costs of junior motorsport – barriers that are often even higher for young women who do not receive the same opportunities as their male counterparts.
Simply put, without Lego’s backing, Kosterman would not be driving in F1 Academy next season, something she told BlackBook Motorsport “is the most important thing” about her entry in 2026.
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Wolff added that these long-standing challenges in motorsport are precisely what make the partnership so important.
“There’s such an authenticity … because we’re facing, in a way, the same challenges and challenging perceptions and breaking down stereotypes,” said Wolff.
“I think by joining forces you can be more impactful by doing it together. The Lego brand, to have that coming in and not just having a product but also a Lego car on track, I think for little girls watching, for the parents of the next generation watching, it’s going to have a huge impact.”
For Lego, this builds on its existing partnership with Formula One, though it demands a very different strategic focus.
“When we came to F1 Academy, there’s a purposefulness here,” Julia Goldin, chief product and marketing officer of the Lego Group, told BlackBook Motorsport.
“[F1 Academy] is not something that’s established, it’s only been three years in the making, and it’s about breaking through and bringing credibility and making it a really authentic part of motorsport, an acceptable part of motorsport, something that doesn’t require a lot of explanation.
“That’s why we took this turn to say ‘let’s really put the power of our voice and brand to say women in motorsport should be treated the same as men’.”
With an existing product range covering all ten Formula One teams, Lego’s new F1 Academy partnership gives the brand an opportunity to broaden its offering to fans.
“We are bringing a very different dimension that we don’t have to do with F1,” Goldin continued. “F1 is already getting a lot of fame … but with F1 Academy we wanted to do it in a very authentic, very serious way to have a driver, to have a car, and to represent that in brick form.
“[We wanted] to make it a part of the lineup with other F1 cars, to say this is an established part of the sport, it should be treated the same, so that’s the difference in strategy.”
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