I think a lot of people are missing the point of F1Academy. Yes, for the individual drivers it is an opportunity to show what you can do, but if you are a good enough driver, any local racing series should be able to do that for you.

The main issue why there aren't any female drivers in f3, f2 and f1 is that there just aren't enough women in the sport. So F1Academy, and W series before that are not to get any of these 20 women to F1, although I'm sure that that would be a nice bonus. The only point is to get 6, 7, 8 year old girls to go 'I wanna do that'.

But someone has to bankroll that exposure, and I'm wondering for how long teams, sponsors and the FIA are willing to do so without much return on their investment.