NEED TO KNOW

• The 17-year-old Danish driver began karting with her sister and a friend during COVID-19 lockdowns

• Larsen won Ferrari’s FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars competition in 2023 and now races in the F1 Academy

• She sits fourth in the 2026 standings after a second-place finish in Zandvoort and will return in 2027

When most kids got restless during the pandemic, they found a new video game to play or a TV show to watch. Alba Larsen found her passion and a new career path.

The 17-year-old Danish driver tells PEOPLE it was boredom that led her to racing, a sport she’s quickly rising through the ranks of in hopes of becoming one of the few women to ever make it to Formula 1.

“I was bored during the lockdown, and I wanted to try something fun, so I went karting with my sister and one of my friends,” Larsen says. “It was just so fun, and I just loved the speed and the feeling of driving and getting behind the wheel and all this adrenaline and excitement of overtaking, defending, all these different feelings that you get in one go. I loved every second of it.”

After COVID-19 lockdowns began to end, Larsen started competing locally. Then regionally. Then globally. Larsen won the Ferrari-sponsored FIA Girls on Track – Rising Stars competition in 2023 and caught the attention of the F1 Academy, an all-women racing series created to support women on their way to hopefully competing in F1 one day. 

Only five women have ever entered a Formula 1 Grand Prix race weekend, but Larsen and her 14 fellow drivers scouted to race in the F1 Academy hope to become the next.

Larsen points to those numbers as opportunity rather than discouragement. The teenager tells PEOPLE she hopes to inspire the next generation of women entering F1, just as current F1 Academy managing director Susie Wolff has done for her.

“Obviously, my first priority is to drive and get to become a champion, but on the way I want to try and inspire young girls,” Larsen says. “I would say in the beginning of my racing journey, I didn’t really have any female drivers to look up to. It was more when I got more into the sport that I saw that there were a few, like Susie. I really want to try to be the next one that the girls look up to.”

Larsen will have the platform to do so, having already been announced to return to the F1 Academy for the 2027 season, racing once again with Ferrari. With two stages left in the 2026 season, the Dane is currently in fourth place, with two more races coming up this weekend in Austin, Texas, and the last on Nov. 21 in Las Vegas.

The budding racing star will hit the final stretch coming off her best result of the season, when she came in second place at the F1 Academy’s feature race in Zandvoort, Netherlands, during the last stage. She’s now on the cusp of a podium finish, sitting at fourth place with two races to go.

But for now, Larsen isn’t worried about her past results — or what people say about them. She’s simply focused on improving race by race.

“I’ve been given a lot of advice and good quotes throughout the years, but I always try to come back to the fact that I’m only doing this for me and it doesn’t matter what any other person thinks,” Larsen says. “There are a lot of people watching F1 every weekend, so there’s a lot of pressure. A lot of people comment on how you’re doing – both in the good and the bad times. So, I think I’ve always tried to not care what other people think. It’s just about your own journey. And that’s something I also try to say to other young girls: It doesn’t matter what other people think, and you’ve just got to focus on yourself and take it one step at a time.”

Read the original article on People