Chloe Chambers will return to F1 Academy with Campos Racing this year and join the Red Bull Academy Programme after a year at Haas. Feeder Series spoke with Chambers to discuss how her 2024 season went, the growth of motorsport in the United States and the support she’s received from Haas.

By Kaylene Lau  

Chambers rounded out her first season in F1 Academy in sixth position overall with four podiums and 122 points. The Haas-backed driver also scored her first win in the series with a dominant drive in race two in Barcelona. 

In that race, Chambers became one of two drivers to have made an overtake for the lead of a race. 

“I’ve shown that my strong point is overtaking during the races,” Chambers said about her season. “I think, though, that comes from a lack of qualifying pace. “I’ve set myself up for most of the races this year in a lower position than what I would’ve liked. So I guess that helps a bit in making my overtaking good.” 

Feeder Series spoke to Chambers in the Qatar paddock after she qualified 12th and 16th for that weekend’s races, her lowest qualifying positions all season. The second race was ultimately cancelled.

“Take today for an example,” she said. “I’ve had the worst qualifying that I’ve had this season, so I guess now I just have the races to try to make it up as much as I can and put on some good overtakes for all the audience watching.” 

Overtaking was a struggle for the drivers all season. Chambers attributed this difficulty to the circuits on the calendar and to the fact F4 cars lack overtaking aids like a drag reduction system or push-to-pass. 

“Being on Formula 1 tracks and having them be so flowy, and I think also the new-school tracks with a lot of runoff, make it more difficult,” she said. “People have some more room to hold positions by going off track a bit, so I think that’s made the racing a little bit more difficult this year. 

“But I think like tracks like Singapore, which even Formula 1 struggle at with overtaking – I mean for us, of course, it’s even more difficult because we don’t have any assistance with overtaking.”

In 2021, Chambers raced in the United States in F4 competition. She returned stateside in sports cars in 2023 after spending the winter in FRegional Oceania in New Zealand, and last year she entered selected races of the IMSA Ford Mustang Challenge and the Porsche Sprint Challenge North America.

She said that those series’ old-school tracks helped her hone her racecraft and approach to racing on newer tracks. 

“It’s completely different, the circuits that we race on. I did F4 in the US of course, as well as Formula Regional in New Zealand, so those are also some pretty old-school tracks and I think those really helped me to get that precision that you need in racing,” she said. 

“I think it’s less important at a Formula 1 race weekend, especially, because F1 lays down such strong rubber and they don’t necessarily have the same width of car as we do, so you can venture out a little bit wider with us. But I think overall, just learning how to learn a circuit was the biggest thing I’ve learned from those race weekends.” 

The US now hosts three grands prix, with the additions of Miami and Las Vegas to the F1 calendar in 2022 and 2023 respectively. These accompany the sport’s exponential growth in popularity in the country, and the 20-year-old New York resident notes that she’s seen significant growth in knowledge about motorsport in the US. 

“When I started racing, I would tell people, ‘Yeah, my goal is Formula 1,’ and nobody would know what I was talking about,” she said. “Then suddenly I find myself in like my second or third year of high school, and I saw people my age who I was going to school with watching Drive To Survive in school on their phones, that kind of thing. So it just became a bit more of a mainstream sport.” 

Drive To Survive has introduced the sport to a newer audience. Since its first season was released in 2019, F1 viewership in the United States has more than doubled. In hopes of following the success of Drive To Survive, a docu-series on the 2024 F1 Academy season is set to launch globally on Netflix in 2025. 

“I think it’s nice to see how motorsport is progressing in the US,” she said. “The support that I’ve received on the F1 side has been really nice. I think overall, the US has been doing a great job of supporting their drivers.” 

Chambers is one of three Americans who raced in F1 Academy last year. She was backed by Haas, the only American team currently on the F1 grid, for the 2024 season. She was the only driver across junior single-seaters to be backed by the team.

“The biggest takeaway that I can find from it is when they brought me to Silverstone,” she said. “I got to experience a whole Formula 1 race weekend without the distraction of my own racing and see the inner workings of it that pretty much nobody gets to see outside of the F1 world. 

“I think it was really nice to be able to sit down in the debriefs and listen to what the drivers had to say, listen to how they give feedback and try to take that into my own feedback.” 

In October, Haas signed a deal for a technical partnership with Toyota, marking the Japanese car manufacturer’s return to F1 involvement for the first time since 2009. Chambers said the Toyota partnership in F1 was kept “pretty separate” from the F1 Academy programme.” 

“Other than the branding changing a little bit, I haven’t had much contact with any of the stuff on the F1 side,” Chambers said. Thanks to the new partnership, however, she has seen some familiar faces from when she raced Toyota-powered cars in Formula Regional Oceania, formerly the Toyota Racing Series. 

“It’s been nice to have those two worlds collide a bit. It’s been a little weird! But it’s nice to see more support coming over to Haas.”

On 2 October, Chambers became the first confirmed driver for the 2025 F1 Academy season when it was announced she would be backed by Red Bull Ford instead of Haas. It was announced in December that she would remain at Campos.

As she switches allegiances, her compatriot Courtney Crone will replace her as the Haas-backed driver. ART Grand Prix’s Crone competed as a wild card entry in 2024 in Miami. 

“The last time I saw Courtney was in Miami for the F1 Academy race, and she was a wild card for it, so I haven’t had the chance to speak with her about anything,” Chambers said. “But I think she’s more than ready for it. She’s already had a race weekend under her belt which is really nice going into the season. She’s had a race weekend away from her own racing as well in Vegas [where she was announced], so I think she’ll do really well.”  

This year, F1 Academy will be racing at seven circuits as part of the F1 support bill. Shanghai, Montreal and Las Vegas are the new tracks on the calendar, replacing last year’s rounds in Barcelona, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. 

Though she remained focused on ending her 2024 season strongly, Chambers had already begun preparing to move to Red Bull at the time of the interview and said her transition to Red Bull had been “pretty smooth” so far.

“The program for next year will be really nice, and I’ll be able to fight for the championship,” she said. 

Interview by Michael McClure

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency