From F1 Academy firsts to unique roots, Chloe Chambers breaks the motorsports mold

This article is part of our Origin Stories series, an inside look at the backstories of the clubs, drivers, and people fueling the sport.

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As Chloe Chambers navigated the final lap of Race 2 in Barcelona on her way to her first win in F1 Academy, she took a different approach.

The American driver was laser-focused, making sure to keep the lap clean. But with the gap she built to the rest of the field, she could take the final corner around Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya slower than usual.

“I just drove that last lap and took the time to realize what had happened in the race because, of course, while you’re racing, you don’t really think about that,” Chambers said. “You just think about the next thing coming up the next corner. And so I was able to use that last lap to think about things, think about what I was going to say on the radio. That’s always important.”

Chambers is proof that a driver can thrive in motorsports without making the full-time Europe jump. Haas supports the 20-year-old in F1 Academy, the all-women racing series that is the latest addition to the Formula One pyramid. She climbed to that point while still residing in the United States.

Waiting for her in parc ferme after her first F1 Academy victory, aside from Campos Racing and members of Haas, was her father, who she describes as “a very emotional guy.” She added, “I don’t know if you saw the video of him in Barcelona, but he was a mess after my win.”

The hard work and waiting for the right moment paid off. Chambers sits fourth in the standings with four races to go in 2024 but feels finishing in the top three “is a reasonable goal.” And she already knows she’ll be on the grid next season, sporting blue as part of Red Bull Ford.

Chambers has found a way to live a balanced life, furthering her education while pursuing her motorsports career. Her goal? Reach the pinnacle of motorsport—her own way.

“I hope that (my story) gets people involved in motorsport. I think a lot of people assume that you have to be rich and come from money and be from Europe to be involved in motorsport, especially on the F1 side,” Chambers said to The Athletic, later adding, “This year has been the best year for my racing, and, of course, for me having fun as well. I’ve had the most fun this year driving than I ever have.”

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Chapters of Chambers’ life may surprise fans.

She appeared on a 2019 episode of David Letterman’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, which also happened to include Lewis Hamilton. Most know Letterman for his T.V. work, but Chambers knew him for his IndyCar ties. She and one other karter raced with Letterman in go-karts, spending an entire day at the track.

“He was really trying,” Chambers recalls. “He was trying so hard. He even spun out and hit the wall, and they actually showed it on the episode.”

Then, before she jumped to single-seaters in 2021 for a partial season in the F4 United States Championship, she became a Guinness World Record holder at 16 years old for the fastest vehicle slalom. Looking back, she realized, “I don’t think I’d ever driven any car at that point.” She only had her permit when she drove a Porsche 718 Spyder at a record-breaking time of 47.45 seconds.

Chambers says many people notice that she comes from an adoptive family, likely because she attends most of her races without them by her side.

She was born in Guangdong, China, a southeast coastal province that borders Macau and Hong Kong. At 11 months old, she was adopted and originally started living in Texas. Her younger siblings are also adopted — her sister is from northern China, and her brother is from Ethiopia.

“I can remember when they started the process with my brother, but with my sister actually, it’s kind of a unique thing where it actually ended up taking them, like, seven years or something like that, to get it all finished,” Chambers said. “I can’t remember exactly what happened, but originally, my sister was supposed to only be a couple years younger than me. And then I think that was about the time when there were a bunch of just issues happening in China with the social climate and everything. So they halted adoptions for a little bit.”

This detail of her life story remains at the top of her mind as her motorsports career grows, as she’s been an ambassador for the Gift of Adoption Fund since 2021. “We try to help out wherever we can,” she said. “Of course, having their logo on my suit and being able to spread the message as I go through my travels and everything has been something that I’ve been able to continue on with.”

After living in Texas for a year, Chambers’ family moved to the northeast, spending over a decade in New Jersey and New York. This is where Chambers’ motorsports journey began. Though living with an American family, NASCAR and IndyCar weren’t the series that caught her eye. Her family didn’t watch much of either, aside from the Indianapolis 500, of course.

But Chambers remembers watching F1 with her father.

“My dad was always a big motorsport fan since he was young,” she said. “He grew up in the U.K., so it was a little bit more in their culture than it was for us, but I grew up with it.”

Her dad took her to her first karting outing, and Chambers remembers it being right before the track closed for winter. She was seven years old, “when you’re trying out every sport ever to see which one you like if you like any.” She fell in love with it and asked throughout the winter months when she could return.

“My dad took me to some indoor tracks during the winter time. I didn’t like that very much. And then, as soon as the track opened again in April, we were there, and we did that full season together.”

Chambers began competing at age eight and won numerous regional and national championships across the next nine years. But motorsports wasn’t the only sport in her life. Though shorter in stature, swimming has also been a passion.

“I liked the racing, so to say. But I wanted something a little more and something that wasn’t so heavily up to physical attributes as swimming is,” Chambers said. “I knew I was never going to be the tallest person ever, so swimming was probably going to end at some point. So that’s where I found racing, and it kind of made up for all the things that I was lacking when I was swimming.”

From swimming, she learned the coaching style that works best for her. Chambers said she went through numerous coaches, some of whom she liked more than others, and learned how key it was to have the right people surrounding you to extract the best performance.

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Unlike other drivers across different series, especially those who end up in the F1 pyramid, Chambers never made the jump to living full-time in Europe. Instead, she competed in karting mainly in the United States and  Canada and lives full-time in Indiana. She described European karting as “the pinnacle of karting” but says, “I think that there are a lot of drivers in the U.S. as well that have a lot of talent and can race on the same level as the European racing can.”

Not making that jump to Europe did raise a few questions. Chambers’ partial F4 season happened at the end of her junior year of high school and the beginning of her senior year, prime time for college applications. The world was still bouncing back from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“My parents and I said we’ll continue on racing as long as we can, but being in the U.S., not quite making it over to Europe yet, and being able to get some of the European sponsorship as well, we weren’t sure how long I would be able to race for. And even if I did continue on, you’re not going to be able to drive forever.”

So she continued applying to colleges and ended up at Arizona State University, pursuing a fully online degree in Business Administration and Management. Chambers grew up managing her career alongside her parents, so this degree was a natural fit. Given that she did not know the future of her racing career, Chambers did apply to different universities as if she would be in person. However, the online format provided flexibility for when W Series eventually came knocking for her to test at the end of 2021 in Arizona.

Her racing career continued with the W Series in 2022 when she teamed up with series champion Jamie Chadwick at Jenner Racing. The following year, she competed in the 2023 Porsche Sprint Challenge North America and Formula Regional Oceania Championship in New Zealand. In the latter series, she became the first woman to secure pole position and win in its history. She believes that moment helped her get to F1 Academy in 2024 with Haas F1 Team and Campos Racing.

But she is still pursuing her college degree, balancing the travel, competition and pressure of online exams.

“I find the great importance in (that balance),” Chambers said, “and it’s also something that’s very unique within racing drivers.”

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F1 Academy debuted in 2023, and Marta García won the inaugural championship. Many questions surrounded F1 Academy, especially considering the other all-women series, the W Series, didn’t finish the 2022 season and entered administration in 2023.

Chambers wanted to see where F1 Academy would go in its first season, a decision she still stands by. The category only allows women to compete for two years, and over half of the grid, including points leader Abbi Pulling, will not compete in 2025. Chambers is the first move in the drivers’ market for next season, moving from Haas to join Red Bull Ford.

She’s been sitting on the news for quite some time. Conversations with teams about 2025 began to pick up around mid-season, around when Chambers’ F1 Academy results started picking up. She finished third and fourth in Miami and came in third and first in Barcelona in June.

But she had been on Ford’s radar before her first F1 Academy win. Chambers competed in the first round of the Mustang Challenge earlier in June, stepping in for a driver who was injured earlier in the year. She said, “When given the opportunity to go drive a race car, I always say yes. So I went and did that just for fun and, of course, to get some experience in a different kind of car. And it turned out to be something even bigger.”

It was the first race of the year, and numerous “big people from Ford” attended that weekend. Jim Farley, the CEO who also competed, and  Ford Performance Motorsports Global Director Mark Rushbrook met Chambers and hosted a dinner for the competitors.

“It’s also big news when an F1 Academy driver goes and does other racing elsewhere. So I think, of course, there were a lot of eyes on me that weekend regardless.”

Chambers said you must adapt your driving style to a heavier car like the Mustang, similar to jumping between open-wheel racing and another motorsports category. While there is the hope of competing in other series outside of F1 Academy, she said there haven’t been a whole lot of discussions around it. However, “Ford being Ford, I think (they) would love to have me back in Mustang again. It’s one of their most iconic cars ever, an American race car as well.”

Chambers put pen to paper in August, before F1 Academy’s race weekend at Zandvoort. But she had to keep it under wraps aside from sharing the news with her family and close friends. She said the company filming a docuseries on F1 Academy, Hello Sunshine, knew and did attempt to fish it out of her.

A big move is on the horizon for Chambers. And she’s got aspirations to race for wins and championships at “the pinnacle level of motorsport” — in any given series. The American driver’s current focus is the open-wheel racing path, like F1, but she’s open to the World Endurance Championship, IMSA and the prestigious Le Mans.

She’s a racer at heart.

“My idea of success is having a nice long career, maybe some good results here and there. But I’m not somebody who thinks winning is the only way to see success for me,” Chambers said. “Ever since I started racing karts, my dad always told me that the weekend will be a success in our book as long as I drove to my full potential. So even though that weekend might not have been my best weekend results-wise, if I drove to my full potential and didn’t leave anything else on the table, then that’s a good weekend for us, and I think that kind of can be said for my career as a whole.

“As long as I continue on with my career and continue performing at whatever my potential is, then I think that’ll be something that I’m happy with.”

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Top photo via Red Bull Racing