March 7 ------ Bianca Bustamante is seeking to redeem herself in the second season of the F1 Academy which kicks off this weekend in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The 19-year-old Filipina racing sensation became the first female driver in McLaren’s Driver Development Programme and will be with ART Grand Prix donning the papaya colors for her second stint in the all-female single-seater competition.
In the inaugural season, Bustamante made her impressive debut with Prema Racing where she claimed her maiden win in Spain to eventually finish seventh in the 15-grid lineup behind her teammate and eventual driver’s champion Marta García. With a new team to call home, the Filipina driver is eyeing to improve her overall performance and display where her growth has taken her this year.
Before the season started, though, Bustamante saw action in the 2024 Formula 4 Winter Series with the GRS team in Spain and took away decent results in the three-week tournament. “I’m very, very excited. A lot of energy coming into our first F1 Academy race weekend. It’s crazy to think that we’re actually this close,” Bustamante said during a virtual roundtable discussion on Tuesday, March 5. “Over the winter season, I felt like I’ve already reached my goal. My goal this year was to come off as a better driver than I was last year. I didn’t like how I reacted sometimes last year whenever I lost, whenever I wasn’t performing well,” she said. I can go from a race winning driver to barely qualifying within the top 10. I hated how I was so easily put down like that.” The Filipina driver moved to United Kingdom earlier this year to work closely with McLaren in its operations base in Woking. “The winter series campaign, I’ve learned quite a lot from it. There was a lot of personal growth. The fact that I’ll be bringing that over to Jeddah [makes me] really excited to show what I can do as a driver. I’m completely a different person on and off the track from last year. I’m really looking forward to it,” she added.
Bustamante then flew to Jeddah three weeks ago for the F1 Academy testing ahead of the actual season to familiarize herself with the 6.174 KM, high speed corners track. “I feel the type of energy driving in Jeddah. We walked away [with me being a better driver]. I wanted to work my way around that going into weekend. I’ve got a really, really good car. ART has been working amazingly just to make sure the car is suited to my driving style. They’re very passionate people and they want it as much as I do,” she said. “I’ll be racing with F1 this weekend, and I’ll have my family with me. McLaren [Racing], papaya family. They’re excited for me. I can’t wait to be racing in front of my team, our boss [CEO] Zak [Brown],” she added.
The all-women competition will be holding its season-opening race simultaneously this weekend with Formula 1, which is also in Jeddah for its second race of the year with Bustamante’s fellow McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri being around to see her on track action. F1 Academy is looking at seven races in total this season just like last year.
In May, Bustamante will head to Miami in the U.S. before flying to Barcelona in Spain the following month for the second and third races, respectively. For the second time in a row, F1 Academy is going back to race in Zandvoort in the Netherlands in June before Bustamante vies for a podium in the first and only Asian race in the calendar in Singapore in September. Finally, the Filipina will have a two-month break before F1 Academy returns in December to wrap up the season with a double-header in Qatar and United Arab Emirates.
Source: mb.com.ph
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