This Sunday, April 7, it is 7 a.m. In Amiens, Sharon Kuzaj, 25, is already in front of her screen. The Japanese Grand Prix is about to start. Nothing unusual: two weeks earlier, on March 24, she had woken up at 5 a.m. for the Australian Grand Prix. “I prefer to see everything live. When I really can’t, I use replay. But the Grands Prix on Sunday are sacred,” she says.
As the young woman also watches Friday practice, Saturday qualifying, as well as the F2 and F3 competitions (the subcategories of Formula 1), and often also those of the F1 Academy (the women’s championship), his weekends are busy. For the Kuzajs, car racing is a family passion: “I watched when I was little with my grandparents, but we stopped when it became paid on Canal+. I started it again alone, in 2017, and since then, I’ve been really into it! »
Sharon Kuzaj supports the Alpine team, whose Normandy headquarters in Dieppe is only an hour and a half from her home, but is also impressed by the reigning world champion, the Dutchman Max Verstappen, from the Red Bull team. So, for eight years, at each Grand Prix whose times are not too early, the Amiens resident joins friends in a bar to watch the race. “There are a few more guys, but it has become quite mixed, she observes. I even convinced my best friend to take an interest in it. »
Only 8% in 2017
More and more young women are becoming passionate about Formula 1, the next Grand Prix of which takes place from Thursday May 23 to Sunday May 26, in Monaco. According to a study by Nielsen Sports, the discipline gained seventy-three million new spectators from 2020 to 2021, and 46% of them would be female spectators. This radical change follows the acquisition, in 2017, of Formula One Group, the franchise which manages the promotion and rights of F1, by Liberty Media.
This American group has implemented a strategy to rejuvenate its audience which involves social networks, e-sport and the series it has ordered from Netflix, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, broadcast since 2019. Result: in November 2022, the CEO of Formula 1, Stefano Domenicali, announced that 40% of F1 spectators were now women, compared to only 8% in 2017. At the end of 2023, British driver Lando Norris also remarked, declaring during an interview on NBC: “We see the fans when we sign autographs and in the stands, and sometimes it even seems like there are more women than men! »
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