Chiara Bättig recently garnered attention for her impressive performance as F1 Academy’s wild card entrant at Silverstone, claiming pole position and a second-place finish in her first outing in the series. The Swiss driver sat down with the Feeder Series Podcast to talk about the transition from karting to single-seaters and how the Red Bull Junior Team has supported her F4 journey.

By Emma Blighe

Bättig grew up with a naturally competitive spirit, taking interest in sports ranging from snowboarding to chess – but it was racing in karts that excited her the most.

‘’It’s actually quite a funny story,’’ Bättig explains about how she got her start in racing. ‘’I was on holiday with my parents in Thailand. I was four years old and they were letting me drive the two-seater karts, letting me steer, and I really liked that.… And then, I was telling my dad, ‘I really want to go-kart’, and then they said, ‘Okay, you have to choose one thing’, so I chose go-karting.’’

In her karting career, she won the Swiss Karting Championship in the OK-Junior class in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and finished second in the OK-N class of the Champions of the Future Academy Program in 2025. In her single-seater career, she has already shined by taking podiums in British F4, the Formula Winter Series and most recently F1 Academy. The transition between the two, however, was difficult in the beginning.

‘’Even though you have one-hour sessions, you don’t actually do so many laps,” she said. “In karting you can just go and do as many laps as you can. In an F4 car, you can’t really do that.’’

Bättig’s first opportunity to drive in single-seaters came with the Red Bull Junior Team’s driver search in Estoril in August last year. The event was a pivotal moment for Bättig, who was soon recruited to the development programme that she said had been a source of significant support in her career.

“It was a great experience,” she said. “Being the first time in an F4 car, I think that was already a really big plus. And also, it was the driver search, so it was a lot of pressure. But it went well, so I’m very happy I got picked. Honestly, I think being in the Red Bull Junior Team is one of the coolest things ever. Their support is mega.’’

She began her competitive single-seater career by racing in F4 Saudi Arabia and subsequently competed in FWS, with her highest placement in the latter being a second-place finish in Estoril just under six months after her Red Bull test at the circuit. That proved worthwhile preparation for Bättig’s campaign in British F4, in which she is currently 15th with 51 points to her name.

‘’To be honest we didn’t start so well, but since then we’ve always been improving. I think every weekend we finish in a better position,’’ Bättig said. 

Across the season so far, Bättig’s best result has been a third-place finish in race two at Silverstone, though perhaps her most impressive drive was from 30th to sixth in race three at Brands Hatch Indy in a wet-dry race.

“At the moment we show great speed in every practice, and then quali – we could be somewhere higher up,” she said. “That’s something I have to improve on, just getting the lap together because the pace is there. …It’s just maximising all the potential there and everything will become easier.”

Bättig absolutely made it look easy when she entered F1 Academy in Silverstone as a wild card, grabbing pole position by 0.177 seconds and earning second place in the feature race after staying close behind leader Alisha Palmowski for the duration of the 13-lap contest.

Having only turned 16 – the minimum age to drive for F1 Academy – in March, Bättig came in with limited experience and reserved expectations for the weekend. Simulator work with Red Bull and her previous experience at Silverstone in British F4 helped her adapt quickly to the car.

“I was told two or one and a half months before the race really happened,” Bättig said about how her F1 Academy opportunity came about. “Obviously the weekend started quite well, leading FP and then also getting pole. To be honest, that weekend I was just trying to maximise everything because I know we’re having a good pace.”

In the reverse-grid race, Bättig started and finished in eighth place, bringing home a point. After losing two places during the start, she soon battled past Alba Larsen and Megan Bruce to reclaim her original position. That fightback belied the difficulty she observed in finding passing opportunities at the 5.891-kilometre circuit.

“There was not a lot of overtaking in the F1 Academy car. It’s just you have limited camber, which makes it a bit harder to race in, so I think in all of the races there were really no overtakes happening or only in the start,” Bättig said. “In British F4, it’s all a bit more hectic, but it does feel a bit different driving it and I think that’s what I was adapting to well that weekend.”

Despite earning second place in the main race on debut, Bättig insisted that ‘as a racing driver, you’re never pleased to end up second’. A victory, then, will be her next target.  

Given her success at the F4 level, many now wonder where Bättig will go next – and how far. While her potential path to the upper echelons of junior single-seater racing is uncertain, she has been looking to the career trajectories of the most competitive F2 and F3 drivers to help her chart the course for her future.

“Just show that you’re competitive in the championship – that’s the most important thing,” she said. “It’s always easy to say, ‘Yes, I will see myself there’, but I think it’s always the little details which come along.’’

To learn more about Chiara Bättig’s journey in single-seaters, check out our latest episode on the Feeder Series Podcast, now available across all major platforms.

Header photo credit: Connor Botha