The new equation in the F1 formula

From Tengku Elena Tengku MahamadLike many Formula 1 fans across the country, I was genuinely excited by the news that the sport will return to Sepang this October.It has been almost a decade since the last Malaysian Grand Prix, and for those of us who grew up spending race weekends glued to the television or making the pilgrimage to Sepang, it feels a little like welcoming back an old friend.As the excitement around F1’s return began to sink in, I found myself thinking about something else entirely. The F1 returning to Malaysia is not quite the same F1 that left in 2017.The cars are still breathtakingly fast, the engineering remains extraordinary and every race weekend continues to showcase the very best in motorsport.Yet beyond the racing itself, something has quietly shifted over the years. The culture surrounding F1 has become more open, more connected and, perhaps without many people even realising it, far more welcoming.Nowhere is that more evident than in the growing number of women who have become an integral part of the F1 conversation.There was a time when F1 conversations felt almost guarded.

If you entered online forums years ago or sat among groups discussing race weekends, the atmosphere could sometimes feel intensely technical and strangely exclusive.There was almost an unspoken expectation that to belong in the conversation, you needed to understand every tiny detail about tyre degradation, aerodynamics, constructors’ strategies, DRS zones and pit stop timing. F1 was admired but for many outsiders, it did not always feel accessible.For someone who has been watching F1 since 1999, the shift in the sport’s audience and culture today is impossible to ignore.Over the past few years especially, I have noticed more and more women openly discussing F1 online. Not casually, but passionately and intelligently.Women are debating race strategies on Threads, reacting emotionally to qualifying sessions on TikTok, analysing team decisions on X, creating F1 edits on Instagram and passionately defending their favourite drivers across social media platforms.And perhaps the most interesting part is this.

It no longer feels unusual.Recent reports now show that women make up around 42% of F1’s global fanbase, a figure that says far more about the evolution of the sport than many people realise.I do not believe women suddenly became interested in motorsport overn…