Dimitri Boylan
Welcome to another episode of the Talent Transformation Podcast. We are here today with Nina Gademan, An F1 Academy driver, Nina, thank you for joining us.
Nina Gademan
Thank you for having me.
Dimitri Boylan
You’re an F1 Academy driver. And so for the audience that maybe is not familiar with Formula One. I thought you might describe what the Academy is, what your experience has been.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, so F1 Academy is a feeder series, like, with F4 machinery, so it’s the first step going into the ladder of F1, but it’s only for females to help them get higher up in motorsports, basically, to give us an opportunity to show what we are capable of on the track and hopefully continue our ladder into motorsports.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay, so it’s an effort to develop the talent pool, essentially.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, so we race alongside seven F1 weekends. Uh, we got Jeddah canceled, unfortunately. Um, so it’s only six weekends, uh, that we race alongside F1.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay. Uh, and last year was your first year in the F1 Academy, right? Yes. Um, you had a very good year.
Nina Gademan
It had its ups and downs,
Dimitri Boylan
Okay, but you, uh, you actually podiumed many times.
Nina Gademan
Yes, I did.
Dimitri Boylan
And you also took first place, uh, in your home country on your birthday. So that’s pretty amazing.
Nina Gademan
That was a really good weekend.
Dimitri Boylan
So you’re just at the beginning of the season for this year. How’s that going for you so far?
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, it’s interesting, because as a driver, you’re really in the spotlight, but this is a team sport. Um, and uh… when you came into F1 Academy, um… You ended up in a team, right?
Nina Gademan
Yes.
Dimitri Boylan
And is that the same team this year as last year?
Nina Gademan
Yes, I still drive for the BWT Alpine Formula One team. But however, we’re all supported by either a partnership car, which could be any brand or company, uh, or from the one team where I’m supported by Alpine, but on the back side, there are, like, other teams, like Prema Racing, MP Motorsport, that actually take care of our cars, and who provide the engineers and the mechanics to actually work on the cars. So last year I was racing for Prema, and this year I switched to MP Motorsports.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay, and so you’re adjusting to the new team. The team is thinking about what they have to do in order to win. How much are you influencing the team?
Nina Gademan
I think it comes from both sides. I mean, last year I raced for Prema, and it was a bit of a chaotic mess in the team itself, where I had a female engineer who I really liked to work with, but then the chief engineer was literally yelling at my engineer and that obviously it wasn’t helping the team vibe and bonding and everything. But also, as a driver, you need to push the team to also try to get the best out of it, and just trying to give them as much information as possible about the car, so they know what to do differently, or maybe make a setup change, or also looking at data is something we have to do together. It’s not only with the team, with the driver who needs to work.
Dimitri Boylan
Right, because you’re the only one in the car, right? And so, everything about the feel of the car has to come from you.
Nina Gademan
I mean, obviously, we collect a lot of data.
Dimitri Boylan
Yes. Um, but the feel is from you. How much of it is… how much does the team affect your strategy when you think about how to race? Do you change the way you race because you think, oh, this team is evolving differently, or at a different point in our evolution, and so I change the way I drive? Or do you feel like your driving is always focused on one particular way of doing it?
Nina Gademan
I would say that every team has a different way of approach. Our team, the car I drive right now in MP Motorsport is a lot different than what I was used to last year with Prema, for example, and obviously it needs a bit of a different driving style.
Where the team helped me to adjust to that. They explained to me what I need to change in my driving style, especially when we have qualifying, and we get the fastest pole up from the girl who got poled, and we can compare the data, and we can see where we lack time as a driver, for example, so it could be on the brakes, or I’m holding onto the brakes too long, or I’m too late going back on the power, could be everything, and then the team translates that, basically, from the data to me, what I need to do different in T1 or T10.
Dimitri Boylan
In that team dynamic, you are going to guess the youngest person.
Nina Gademan
No, I’m actually the oldest of the team, as drivers were. Oh, as driver-wise, yes.
Dimitri Boylan
But as a driver in your team, you are… I think one of the youngest. Because the drivers are pretty young, so… Yeah. I mean, the chief mechanic is probably not 23 years old.
Nina Gademan
No, I think he’s probably somewhere in the 30s or 40s.
Dimitri Boylan
Right, yeah, exactly. So, um, there’s a little bit of an interesting dynamic there, I imagine, being so young and yet in a very important position inside the team as the driver.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, but as well, as F1 Academy is the lowest level of, like, getting into the ladder of F1, there’s also a lot of young mechanics, young engineers who also step up through the ranking.
Dimitri Boylan
Oh, good.
Nina Gademan
So if you look at F4, but then F2. F2 are… most of the times, the mechanics are a bit older, and the engineers as well, because they’ve already been through the ranks, like, just like the drivers.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay, okay, so the academy… okay, well, that’s good to know. Yeah. That you have some young people around you that are also in this stage of their career, where they’re moving into this new league, right? Complexity, attention, pressure. Yes. Did you feel a lot of pressure transitioning into Formula One, uh, or was it more of just learning to deal with a different kind of vehicle and a different kind of team dynamic?
Nina Gademan
The car is a bit different compared to the F4. Even though it’s the same chassis, basically, the wings and little tiny details are a bit different about the Academy car. So that was, I had to adapt to that a little bit. But for me, I’m a very Dutch down-to-earth person like Max and Stefan. I don’t really feel a lot of pressure. I remember I was really nervous when I got the chance to get to a film academy, but once I got into the car, I feel really good under pressure, actually. I enjoyed that.
Dimitri Boylan
Good. Yeah. And so, how did this all begin? I mean, I think I was told you got your first car when you were 5 years old, so you have been doing this for almost 20 years, I guess, right? Tell me about that. How did you get involved in this, and why did you end up in.
Nina Gademan
My parents used to do go-karting, but not any competitive race, just having a go-kart, go to the track, and then just do laps, basically. My mom quit when she got pregnant, and then I was born, but my dad continued karting, so I would. They would take me to the karting track, basically, and I would be walking around with my mom’s help, putting my mom’s helmet on a 3-year-old. So I don’t remember a lot from my childhood, but my mom obviously told me this, and I was screaming that I wanted to drive the go-kart as well, so they gave me one at 5 years old. Then the funniest thing is, they didn’t send me out on track. They actually put 2 cones down and then they attached a rope to my go-kart, because if I got in, I would just go flat out and be gone. They taught me to, like, brake at the cone, then turn, and then… Yeah. …pull away again, and they continued to do it, and then they put me out on the track, basically.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, well, I’m glad they took that careful approach there. Did you just like speed? Did you just like going fast?
Nina Gademan
I actually don’t know. I don’t remember a lot from my childhood, unfortunately. I remember, I started remembering things when I was 11, 12, I think. And I knew I really liked racing against the guys.
Back then, I was the only girl in my go-karting class, and I really liked racing against the guys. I had to be a bit more tough than them, basically, because, obviously, they saw me as this girl who didn’t belong there, and I had to be a bit more tough to keep up with them, basically.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, yeah, interesting. So then as a teenager, when, when did you think, okay, this is something that, you know, I’m gonna make a career out of this.
Nina Gademan
I didn’t ever think I would make a career out of it, because, as a family, like a normal family, we didn’t have any financial problems but going into racing, we were very poor, basically, compared to everyone else. I mean, we couldn’t afford a new go-kart. I never really had a tuned engine unless someone helped me.
Um, so I was all… I actually had bought a second-hand go-kart from, uh, Benfiscal, racing that free. Um, and then I would drive with that the whole year, even when it got bent or broken or whatever. Um, we tried to fix it then, and we would continue racing, but most of the guys I raced had a new go-kart every single weekend. But I would always keep up with them, so I knew I had talent, you know, karting, but I never thought I would make a career, because we didn’t have the money to actually break through. But I knew I really wanted to continue doing it.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay, okay, good, good. And in the academy now. How does that feel? A little different now, suddenly.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, it does feel a little different. I’m used to racing against guys, obviously, and racing girls is… I wouldn’t say different on track, I mean, you always get same people, you race against them. You know, some guys are really, um… how do you say it, they don’t really know when things go wrong, so they crash a lot, but that’s the same for girls, and some girls are really sensible, you can have a really good race with them without hitting each other for, like, 10 laps in a row. And so on track, it’s always the same for me, but off track, it’s a bit different. But either way, I don’t really hang out with the drivers a lot, apart from my teammates, ’cause I always like to stay within the team and don’t go out too much and talk to the other drivers. I also like to focus on my own thing.
Dimitri Boylan
On your own thing, okay. Do you think you’ll ever do a, do you look at “Drive to Survive” the show and think to yourself at some point you’ll be in one of those shows talking about every other driver?
Nina Gademan
No, I won’t be like that. Sometimes we have to do media things with other drivers, and probably you’ll see me standing there like ‘d rather be in the racing car right now than doing this.
Dimitri Boylan
Well, it’s interesting because in motorsport, as in every sport now, you know, the concept of celebrity has become an important part of the sport, right? So Lewis Hamilton has crossed over from being a, you know, just a driver in F1 to being a celebrity. Okay, and that’s good for the sport, okay, and you see that pressure in a lot of sports, too, for athletes to develop a social profile, to engage with the public in a new way. Um, I think you’ve done some things like that. Did you get involved in some social media to some extent?
Nina Gademan
Yeah, I mean, I love social media to a certain extent where it doesn’t. It’s not on a racing weekend, because on a racing weekend I just really wanna focus on the racing. And then social media needs to not take over all the time and all your energy at some point, obviously. But outside, I really love to do like podcasts and any media or like magazine shoots. I mean, that’s a part of racing, and it’s a part you need to enjoy as well, because a lot of people get the opportunity to do it. Yeah, yeah. And then sometimes you’re like in such a flow where you’re like going for everything, and you don’t really realize you’re actually.
You’re doing it. So when I look back, I started racing into this high level again two and a half years ago, but it still feels like yesterday. It’s going so fast and sometimes you just need to stop and realize that you’re living the dream, basically. Yeah, I mean, because I know what it feels like to not live it.
Nina Gademan
But then, later on, I had to quit racing for 2 years, because we run out of money.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay. And but did you know you were always coming back to it? Or did you actually think at that point? No, it’s over.
Nina Gademan
No, obviously, we had some other priorities at that moment. But my goal was always to get back into racing. I never really thought about going into this high level for me. It was like, if I could just pay go carting to do that twice a month, I would already be really happy right just to go racing in general would make me happy. But then I started social media because I thought I could earn some money in there. I mean, at the time I had 3 jobs, and I would save up for 3 months to do one race and spend all my savings, basically.
And I knew that was not going to take me anywhere, so I took a leave, I started social media, and I was really afraid to be in front of the camera or post about myself, and people would make fun of me or something, which they did at the start. Yeah, okay.
would make fun of me. And now they do the same thing. So that’s a funny thing to see, obviously. But then it completely exploded, so I made content in the simulator rig about sim racing, or just F1 in general, and I would try to be really original, so I would do… Videos like I would do a track backwards or just trends like Ferrari when Louis Hamilton went to Ferrari and I would hop into the simulator and instantly make a video about it while it was still trending. And it just blew up in six months that I gained 300,000 followers on Instagram.
I met my manager, and then, obviously, when you have such a big following, you can offer something back to, like, sponsorships, or brands, or do, like, partnerships, or something like that, and that’s what actually got me back into racing, but, like, to a whole different level ever since then.
Dimitri Boylan
So, a very strong entrepreneurial spirit there.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, actually, no knowledge about entrepreneurship, but I met my manager, and he took care of that.
Dimitri Boylan
Well, I consider an entrepreneur to be that moment where you are not doing something and you create something. I’m not talking about it from a, I don’t, I mean, there’s business and there’s entrepreneur and they’re two different things. And the entrepreneur is someone who says, there’s nothing here and I’m gonna create something out of nothing. Okay? And you just take an idea and you cross this chasm where you say exactly what you said, which is, some people are going to make fun of me, some people are going to say, why are they doing that, some people are going to say it’s never going to work, and you’re not even sure it’s going to work, but you go do it. Yeah. And that takes that little extra something that breakout energy that you need to do something new.
And, you know, the good thing is that’s a reusable thing. Yes. You know, once you’ve done it, it gets easier to do it again. Sure. So that means you, you know, you have the courage to do new things, and that’s great.
How do you feel about women in the sport now? You know, you didn’t — you were there battling against the boys. You knew you were battling against the boys?
Nina Gademan
Um, I think that shift is happening now. You see a lot of women coming into the sport. I mean, I’ve had a female engineer before, I’ve had a female mechanic before, which I… I didn’t… you didn’t see a lot 10 years ago, for example, as well as drivers coming into the sport. You don’t have to start really young. I think one of the girls I was driving against this weekend started maybe 3 years ago. She’s also 21. So you don’t… you see the shift is happening, so not only young girls get into the sport, but also older… older women. Yeah.
Dimitri Boylan
This weekend, I did one of the surveys, and my survey was on, can women compete at the same level as the men in F1, and not to discourage you, but out of the 8 people I talked to, all eight said no. Which means you’re still fighting, you were still fighting against the barriers. You’re fighting against it because they said no, and they’re in racing.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, I mean, we did… the shift is happening, but there’s still so much that needs to happen.
Dimitri Boylan
So we’ll see what happens. You are kind of on the vanguard.
Nina Gademan
Yes, as I said to you before, motorsports is behind. Even though I think two years ago, in 2024, I was like midfield, that market-ish in Bridgeton 4, and then at the end of the season, I went to test with the team that won both championships, so basically, they were really good. And I used to be 1.5 seconds off pole.
And I didn’t know the car wasn’t great, because that was the first car I was driving, and I thought the car was supposed to feel like that. And then I went home to the team, and I was only a 10 foot 4, basically. So I was doing a good job, and I was being the fastest of the day. So that day, they had 4 drivers.
They would test, and then whoever was the best, obviously, got the seat for the championship. And I was the fastest, but they didn’t tell me I was doing a good job or anything. I needed to be fastest, and that was, like, the standards, because I was a girl. I’m pretty sure one of the other guys was fast, they would get, like, oh, you did well today.
I knew if I was the slowest, even if it was only a tenth slower than the other guys, I would be second, because there wasn’t, obviously. Yeah.
Absolutely. They have this initial thought about it that, okay, you’re really never going to make it then. Yeah, yeah. There’s a bias that exists before everything happens.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, when I was in university, which was a long time ago, I remember a friend of mine walking. I was walking up the campus road, and she was walking down, and she was crying. Um, and I said, ” Hey, what’s the problem?” And she said, well, I went to my… she was in the engineering school. She went to the professor to get help with something, and he told her that she should not be studying engineering. She should be at home.
Nina Gademan
Just be at home?
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, as a woman. Now we’re going back to 1980, but that’s a really negative experience for somebody who’s going to school and trying to study engineering. Back in those days, the girls were just beginning to choose engineering as a subject, and there weren’t that many female engineers studying in engineering schools. And so they were getting some resistance there. And you know, it takes a lot of confidence and determination to push through those types of things, break those barriers.
The other thing I noticed is that I didn’t know a lot about motorsports. And, you know, my children are your age, okay? So when you’re thinking about what your kids want to go into, obviously, if you don’t see a lot of women in sport, you don’t think that it’s a great sport for them to go into. But the other issue is safety. I had a very 1980s view of motorsport. And so racing has really evolved a lot. And I’m amazed at how much safer it’s gotten.
Now, your parents were already in this, so they do a lot of others.
Nina Gademan
Maybe not actually a lot. They would just have a go-kart for fun. I don’t think I had a lot of knowledge about going through the ranks, or knowing what it takes to get there, because I think if they knew up front how much money they were going to put into me, they would have never put it in to go to karts. They would have never done it, I think. Yes.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah. Well, they were probably thinking you would do like them. I mean, at some point, I guess they realized that you were going to do much more than one joke.
Nina Gademan
I think at some point they just lost control like this. Okay, this is gonna take away too much money away from me. At some point they got into this flowers like, “Okay, but she’s good. So we need to get maybe get our new suits. Yeah, get into this racing championship, or you need to put on… We don’t want to do it, but we need to put on new tires today,” and I think they go into this flow. That’s sort of, uh, oh my gosh, she won. What do we do now? Okay, we need to put new tires for the next test in.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, yeah, okay. I can see how that can happen, and then you suddenly getting a little deeper.
Nina Gademan
Yeah, five years later, you spent all your savings on your car, basically.
Dimitri Boylan
Yeah, yeah. So here you are in 2026. How do you feel about the rest of the season? Pretty excited? Do you feel like the team is really gelling?
Nina Gademan
Yeah, I mean, we’re all still very pumped. The team championship, we’re not doing a pretty good job. I think we’re P4 in the team championship. We’re only seven, six teams. I dropped a little bit in the championship, but I’m still very close to that top three. So I’m still very pumped to get good results in the next race, and the team as well, to hopefully climb up those standings a little bit.
Dimitri Boylan
It’s a little too early to think about what you do after racing. I’m gonna ask you anyway.
What do you, do you, do you think about, uh, well, first of all, in, in racing, uh, obviously you’ve got a season ahead of you, could be a great season. Yeah, you got a lot of momentum. And. really great situation. Do you think that? You know you will race the boys again?
Nina Gademan
Yes, I will.
Dimitri Boylan
You will? Yeah. Okay.
Nina Gademan
I did last year in the Winter Championship, which I did to prepare for the F1 Academy. So I raced against 36 boys. I actually raced in December in Abu Dhabi against, I think 35 boys as well, P5, so that was good. And yeah, hopefully next year, when I’m done with the F1 Academy, I can race against boys in a bit of a faster car as well.
Dimitri Boylan
Okay. That’ll be great. It’ll be good to see that.
Nina Gademan
Yeah. Looking forward to it. I’m really looking forward to it.
Dimitri Boylan
I think the boys should be worried
Nina Gademan
Let’s see first.
Dimitri Boylan
Well, listen, it was fantastic. Thank you so much for coming in and spending a little time with us. I wish you…great luck in your season. I love the entrepreneurial energy that you have, and, uh, you’ve done a great job of, uh, finding early success. I wish you all success.
Nina Gademan
Thank you so much for having me.
Dimitri Boylan
Thank you.
