It’s been two months since F1 Academy last went racing at Zandvoort. Back then, it was Payton Westcott and Alisha Palmowski on the top step of the podium for the two races held across the weekend. The latter left the fourth round of the season with a healthy forty-eight point lead over Emma Felbermayr at the top of the Championship. With an expanded weekend thanks to an additional third race in Texas, there was a massive opportunity on the line for those hunting down Palmowski to catch her and for Palmowski to extend her lead even further and wrap up the Championship. But which would it be? Or would someone else entirely come into the fray for the weekend and blow the competition out of the water? In the end, it was a little of all three.
Here are The Paddock Chronicle’s Key Takeaways from Texas.
A New Champion is Crowned in Texas
Alisha Palmowski got her weekend off to the perfect start by qualifying in Pole Position for the opening race. In contrast to that, nearest rival Felbermayr was only able to get as high on the grid as ninth, thus making the weekend automatically more challenging for herself. Gademan meanwhile qualified in third to keep herself in the mix.
Palmowski’s plan for perfection continued through to the Opening Race. While she lost the lead off the line to Westcott, she soon took it back in a brilliant move around the outside of turn eight and going into turn nine. From there, she kept a manageable gap to Gademan behind her and won the race.
Palmowski extended her lead to sixty three points over Felbermayr who managed to recover from ninth to fifth. But it all came to a head in the Reverse Grid Race. Despite Felbermayr and Gademan both finishing in the top five, it wasn’t enough to prevent the inevitable. With her second place finish, Alisha Palmowski had done enough to secure the 2026 F1 Academy Title. The twenty year old became the fourth Champion in the history of the series with three races to spare, including the final race in Texas.
That was just as well because after contact with Larsen in the Feature Race, Palmowski was forced to retire. But given the events of the previous day, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to presume that Palmowski was able to take that loss pretty well.
Felbermayr Fights Back
Fighting back from her lacklustre performance in qualifying, Emma Felbermayr proceeded to put on three blistering drives over the weekend in Texas. In each race, she finished inside the top five. But sadly for the Austrian, her best simply wasn’t good enough to either keep the Championship alive or to keep Nina Gademan behind her in the standings. The Audi backed driver has now slipped back to third place overall with one round remaining. In what also looks set to be her final season in the series, Emma will be hoping to reclaim second place in Las Vegas so that she can springboard into another single seater series successfully in 2027.
The Dutch Lioness Roars Again
In what would also look to be Nina Gademan’s final year in F1 Academy, the Dutch Driver is leaving nothing on the table – and that was clear in Texas.
In the Opening Race, Gademan took advantage of Westcott’s trouble on the opening lap to take second place. Larsen got past her but the method in which she did it around the outside of the first turn was dubious and the Dane wisely handed the position back. Gademan thus finished in second with Larsen in third. The gap between Gademan and Felbermayr was now just nine points.
A fifth place finish in the Reverse Grid Race was a solid effort from Gademan but it was in the Feature Race that she shone. Having learnt from the previous two races, she now applied those teachings with monumental success. With Palmowksi, Westcott and Larsen all focused on one another as the race began, Gademan swept around the outside of all of them into the first turn and decisively took the lead of the race.
From there, she imitated Palmowski’s performance from the Opening Race and maintained control. This was especially true on the race restart prior to the final lap of the race. She caught Westcott napping and charged forwards into the distance to secure her second victory of the season. It was arguably her best ever drive in F1 Academy and couldn’t have come at a better time. An underrated driver, here’s hoping this catches the attention of many a team looking for drivers next year.
Larsen Looms Large in Texas
Having been on the podium three times already this season, including at the Opening Race this time out in Texas, a win for Alba Larsen was surely close at hand. That time came in the Reverse-Grid Race where she converted her fourth place starting position into her first race win. The Danish driver was understandably emotional on the podium.
But in the Feature Race, Larsen then collided with newly crowned Champion Palmowski and took them both out of the race. With Westcott’s second place finish in that race, the pair now sit level on points in the Championship with Larsen ahead on countback. Now that she’s won a race though, Larsen will be looking to replicate this immediately next time out in Las Vegas.
Alexia Danielsson – Wild Card in Texas
Having previously competed in Aquilia Formula 1000 and Nordic 4, Alexia also won on debut in the Porsche Sprint Challenge Scandinavia. Prior to F1 Academy, she’s also raced in the Formula 4 CEZ Championship in 2026.
Driving for F1 Academy’s Official Partner TeamViewer, the seventeen year old made her debut in the series last weekend following a successful appearance at the F1 Academy Rookie Test in Navarra earlier this year. The Swede topped the afternoon session and set the second-fastest time overall.
So how did the Swede do in Texas?
Danielsson qualified in sixteenth place on Thursday, ahead of full-time drivers Countryman and Kosterman. With drivers’ second best times used to set the grid for the Opening Race though, Danielsson would start that race from the back of the field. In that first race, she rose to fifteenth after avoiding chaos around and ahead of her on track. But in the Reverse Grid race, an incident ahead of her involving Jade Jacquet proved unavoidable and Danielsson collided with the stationary car, injuring her wrist in the process. She was subsequently declared unfit to race in Sunday’s Feature Race.
It won’t have been the weekend that the Swede will have wanted for herself. Time will tell if she gets another shot at competing in F1 Academy in 2027.
Best of the Rest in Texas
Vive La France
After becoming the first woman to win a race in French Formula 4 earlier this year, Jade Jacquet had her best qualifying result in F1 Academy so far as she qualified in seventh and sixth place. In the Opening Race, she slid down the order a little but still came away with her best result of the season up to that point – tenth – and claimed her first point in F1 Academy too. Saturday was then marred after a collision with Ferreira that took her out of the proceedings. But she bounced back brilliantly on Sunday to demolish her previously new set best result of tenth by finishing in fourth!
It wasn’t just Jacquet who made France proud over the weekend. After a superb qualifying performance, Lisa Billard was another driver to achieve her best result of the season so far in the Opening Race. Keeping her nose clean and choosing her battles wisely, she too finished in fourth place, putting her level in the Championship with Ferreira. Then she went one better in the Reverse Grid Race to claim her maiden podium in the series by crossing the line in third place. A sixth place finish in Sunday’s Feature Race meant Texas was her best weekend ever in F1 Academy to date.
Bad Luck Aplenty in Texas
Elsewhere, Rafaela Ferreira had her best qualifying result since Silverstone by lining up in eighth place on the grid for the opening race and thus claiming Reverse Pole Position for the Reverse Grid Race. But disaster befell the Brazilian in the Opening Race as Rachel Robertson collided with her on the opening lap. While able to continue, her car was damaged and she could only finish as high as fourteenth. She was unable to improve her weekend in the Reverse Grid Race where she slipped from the lead into the mid pack and then collided with Jade Jacquet, taking the French driver out of the race and being penalised as a result. Fifteenth place in the Feature Race thus meant that Ferreira hasn’t now scored points since Montreal back in May.
Meanwhile, Ava Dobson received a three place grid penalty for each of the weekend’s races for failing to obey yellow flags in qualifying. But in the Opening Race, she rose up through the order fairly quickly and looked set to equal, if not surpass, her best result of the season too. But this was not to be as McLaren backed Ella Lloyd collided with her coming out of turn nine and put her out of the race. Dobson then had a technical issue that prevented her from getting away as the lights went out at the start of the Reverse Grid Race. In the Feature Race, she did make it to the end, albeit outside of the points in thirteenth. It won’t have been the home race weekend the American will have wanted either.
Slivers of Hope in Texas
Esmee Kosterman continued her run of good form by scoring points in two of the three races in Austin. Megan Bruce and Ella Lloyd joined her in this feat while Rachel Robertson recovered from her Opening Race mishap to finish in seventh place in the Feature Race.
Ahead of them, Natalia Granada grabbed the opportunity for a podium by the horns in the Feature Race after Palmowski and Larsen’s coming together. She finished in third place to take her second podium of the season, one place away from matching her best result in the series.
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F1 Academy returns for its season finale in Las Vegas on November 19th.