McLaren broadens talent net as Ella Stevens and Ella Häkkinen join expanded junior roster
McLaren has doubled down on its driver pipeline for 2026, adding two more female racers to a growing junior line-up that already includes F1 Academy driver Ella Lloyd. The latest recruits are Ella Stevens — fresh off a vice-championship in the 2025 British KZ2 Karting series — and Ella Häkkinen, a multiple race winner in Champions of the Future and, yes, the daughter of two-time F1 world champion Mika Häkkinen.
The move follows a reshuffle of the Woking squad’s youth ranks, with three juniors departing and 18-year-old Matteo De Palo coming aboard. Now Stevens and Häkkinen slot in alongside Lloyd as McLaren widens its pathway for women in the sport — not as a box-ticking exercise, but as a deliberate push to put fast, hungry talent into the system and keep them there.
Stevens will join Lloyd on the F1 Academy grid next season, with McLaren confirming a second car to run its colours under the “F1 Academy McLaren Oxagon” banner. That entry will be operated by Rodin Motorsport and is set to appear in the all-female championship from 2026. It’s a neat escalation: one programme, two seats, a clearer route into higher formulas for drivers who can convert junior pace into racecraft under pressure.
Häkkinen, just 14, becomes the youngest member of McLaren’s junior cohort. Her path will be different by design. The plan is a structured testing schedule over the next two seasons, building the fundamentals with an eye on a single-seater debut from 2027. It also quietly extends the Häkkinen–McLaren story into a new generation, without leaning too hard on the surname.
“While I recognise that more remains to be done to increase female representation in motorsport, I’m immensely proud of the progress we’ve made in this space,” said McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown. “I hope this signals to all the amazingly talented female karters, drivers, engineers, mechanics, marketeers and accountants out there that our sport is open to all and deeply committed to keeping up the incredible momentum we have seen over the past few years.
“There are so many opportunities both at and away from track and I want to thank NEOM for partnering with us in this space to help us open more pathways for women. To now have three talented young female drivers in our Driver Development Programme is really exciting, and I cannot wait to see them hit the track.”
There’s another wrinkle here that matters: capacity. F1 Academy’s alignment with F1 teams has sharpened the focus, but seats are scarce and timelines tight. A second McLaren-liveried car run by an experienced outfit like Rodin gives Stevens and Lloyd a cleaner runway into a championship where consistency and technical feedback can be just as valuable as podiums. And for McLaren, it means more meaningful data, more often, from drivers they believe in.
On the Häkkinen side of the garage, there’s a conscious effort to keep things measured. Mika — who won his 1998 and ’99 world titles with McLaren — has been open about where he fits into his daughter’s journey, and where he doesn’t.
“When you are training a young human being, you have to be very careful. You cannot push the young people too hard, because it can influence so many different developments of your body,” he said in a Hintsa Performance video. “To be a father in the paddock and to be a driver coach, it doesn’t work. I’m too emotional a person to be there, and that’s why it’s great to have Hintsa Performance helping. It’s better to just be a dad.”
It’s a sensible stance in a paddock that often confuses speed with urgency. The goal for Ella Häkkinen is longevity and polish, not a viral lap time.
Pull the lens back and the strategy is clear. McLaren is stacking its development ladder with drivers who can grow into the professional demands of modern racing — media, technical depth, simulator mileage — while also widening access in a part of the sport that’s historically been thin on opportunity for women. It’s good optics, sure, but it’s also good business: two cars in F1 Academy, a deeper bench, and more chances to spot who’s got race-winning steel when the visor drops.
Next up: Lloyd and Stevens in McLaren colours when F1 Academy fires up in 2026, and a busy test calendar for Häkkinen as her programme ramps through 2025 and 2026. Different paths, same destination: a shot at the sharp end.
