Sophia Flörsch

Sophia Flörsch is a German driver who began racing in the UK in 2015. She is one of the most talked-about and highly-rated female drivers of the past few years.

Her senior debut followed a six-year karting career, which included two championship wins: the ADAC Kart Bundeslauf Bambini B title in 2009, and the 2010 60cc Easykart European Grand Finals. She was picked up by the Red Bull talent scouts, and although she is not an official Red Bull junior team member, she is still associated with them.

She took part in the Ginetta Junior championship in 2015, and was one of the younger drivers in the series, aged fourteen. Despite her age and inexperience, she was one of the fastest drivers in the series, winning twice at Thruxton. She was the youngest driver to win a Ginetta Junior race. After Thruxton, she was second at Croft. Her season had built slowly, from a fifth at Brands Hatch. Observers from the media and teams sat up and took note.

 In a somewhat controversial decision, she left the championship after five rounds, in order to conserve money and to train for a season in Formula 4 in 2016. Single-seaters had always been her ultimate goal, but she was unable to start racing them until she was fifteen.

She returned to Germany, and duly entered the ADAC Formula 4 series, with the Motopark team. She was only just fifteen.

It was a tough year. The season started well enough, with a ninth place at Oschersleben, rising to fifth in the third race. After the first break of the season, Sophia’s lack of testing time started to show, and her results slipped. Other, older drivers working with better-funded teams were able to devote time to testing; Sophia had to take her final school exams instead. The team also had problems with strategy, often involving tyres, which were linked to the lack of testing time, and therefore experience of new tyres. She battled into the top ten on three more occasions, at Oschersleben, Red Bull Ring and the Nürburgring, but too many other races were marred by emergency pit stops, small accidents, poor starts and race plans that did not pay off.

Towards the end of the year, she adjusted her expectations to finishing the season, and learning as much as she could. F4 had been intended as a one-year springboard to Formula 3, but another season was needed for Sophia to prove what she was really capable of. She was 19th in the championship.

She got her second season in 2017, driving for Mucke Motorsport. It was a double attack on both the German and Italian F4 championships. In the Italian series, she only did a part-season, but became a solid top-ten finisher quite early. In May, she earned her best result: a fifth at Adria.

The ADAC championship was a different story. Sophia continued to find it hard going in the early part of the season. By the Lausitz rounds in May, she was sneaking into the top ten, but she could not find consistency. It took until the end of the season for her to click with the car, when she managed third spots at Sachsenring and Hockenheim. She had two fastest laps at Hockenheim and would have had another podium had she not been disqualified. This was not her first brush with the Clerk of the Course either; she was fined 20,000 Euros for sharing unauthorised footage earlier in the year of her almost collided with an errant course car that suddenly appeared on track.

She was 13th in the championship.

In 2018, she moved up to the FIA European Formula 3 Championship with Van Amersfoot Racing. It was a late deal so she had no time for testing. Towards the end of the year, she was clearly learning the ropes; she picked up her first top-ten finish at the Red Bull Ring in September.

In November, she went to Macau with VAR and impressed onlookers with her qualifying pace. However, her race proper was ended by a serious accident. Her car collided with a slower car and took off over its wheels, coming to rest in a photography bunker. Sophia suffered a broken vertebra and needed surgery. A small number of photographers and marshals was also injured.

She intends to progress up the single-seater career ladder, with the ultimate aim of a Formula One race seat. VAR ran her for another season in F3 in 2019; the team intended to contest the Formula European Masters series, but switched to the F3 Regional European Championship after the FEM was cancelled. This left Sophia and VAR on the back foot, although she had a solid if unspectacular year. Her best finishes were two fourth places at the Hungaroring and Imola and she was sometimes caught up in accidents that were not of her causing. She was seventh in the championship.

Later in the year, she tested an FIA F3 car with HWA Racelab. The team ran her on her return to Macau in November, but she did not finish. This was the end of her involvement with HWA.

Shortly before the start of the 2020 FIA F3 season, she signed a deal with the Campos team. This meant that she had to go into FIA F3 without testing the car beforehand. She started a rather erratic year with a 26th place at the Red Bull Ring, although this improved to 16th in the second race. Her best result was twelfth at Monza, in September. It appeared that she was finding it hard to settle and she often tangled with other drivers, suffering off-track excursions.

She was more successful in her return to sportscar racing. Together with Katherine Legge and Tatiana Calderon, she was announced as one of the original Richard Mille Racing team, an all-female crew supported by the FIA Women in Motorsport Commission. They were set to race a bright red LMP2 prototype in the European Le Mans Series and Le Mans itself and the car made the start, but the first two rounds clashed with FIA F3 and Sophia could not start. Her first race with the team, now with Beitske Visser replacing Katherine Legge due to injury, was the Paul Ricard round, where they were eleventh in class. Of the three races Sophia did, the best was Monza, where she was tenth in the popular LMP2 class. 

Le Mans itself ran quite smoothly. The three-woman Richard Mille team was thirteenth overall and ninth in LMP2.

Sophia kept her options open for the future. In 2020, she tested an electric DTM car for Schaeffeler, having become one of their affiliated drivers. Later, she tested an Extreme E car, but was not selected for any of the teams. Although she did not rule out another season in single-seaters, she moved completely into closed cars in 2021.

Most of the year was spent in the DTM, now running as a GT championship. She drove an Audi R8 LMS for Abt Sportsline and it was a tough season spent trying to learn from both her rivals and her team-mates, Kelvin van der Linde and Mike Rockenfeller. Her best finishes were two ninth places at Assen and Norisring, in the second half of the season. She was 18th overall.

Prototypes were a more successful hunting ground for her. She continued to drive for the Richard Mille squad in the FIA Endurance Trophy, alongside Beitske Visser and Tatiana Calderon. Apart from crashing out of Le Mans itself, Sophia had a good, competent year, recording top-ten finishes in all of the other five races. The best of these were two sixths at Portimao and Bahrain.

Portimao would prove a lucky circuit for her later in the year. She was invited to join Algarve Pro Racing for the last round of the ELMS season, driving an LMP2 car very similar to the Richard Mille car. Her team-mates were Richard Bradley and Ferdinand Habsburg. They were third, the first time the team had got onto the podium and the first time a woman driver had done so.

She also tested with WRT Racing in the official Bahrain WEC test. She was the quickest driver on track. 

Despite her positive WRT test, she returned to the Algarve team in 2022, competing in the European Le Mans Series. Her usual co-driver was Bent Viscal. They had a superb start to the season at Paul Ricard, overcoming a red flag in qualifying that meant Bent was unable to match Sophia's pace, but Sophia quickly got the car up to fourth from tenth. Bent led briefly at the end of the race, but was second after a pitstop.

The rest of the ELMS season did not quite reach those heights: they were eighth, tenth and twelfth in the three other races Sophia did before leaving the team due to a clash of activities.

Her second Le Mans at the wheel of an LMP2 prototype gave her and her team-mates a 20th place overall, fifth in class, again with the team overcoming problems early on.

At the end of the season, Sophia demonstrated a Brabham Formula 1 car previously raced by Giovanna Amati in Bahrain.

Her 2023 season began with something of an about turn. She returned to FIA F3, supported by the FIA and driving for the PHM-Charouz team. It took her a while to get back to a good pace, but she was the quickest of the four PHM drivers throughout the season and she scored her first points for a seventh place at Spa. These were the only points accumulated by the team. She was 23rd in the championship. For the season-ending Macau race, she moved back to Van Amersfoort Racing, competing at the Guia circuit for the first time since her accident. After qualifying in 17th, she was 15th in the qualifying sprint race and then eleventh in the main race. She then signed with Van Amersfoort for the 2024 FIA F3 season. 

Midway through the 2023 season, she was also announced as a member of the Alpine F1 team's academy.

She has been an outspoken critic of W Series and sex-segregated racing as a whole. 

(Image copyright Alexander Trienitz)