INTERVIEW: Megan Bruce on her four-year sprint from novice to F1 Academy

At that stage, aged 18, Bruce had her sights set on a mechanical engineering degree when the opportunity to build her own Caterham and compete in the Academy Championship was presented to her.

One of the stipulations in taking part in what is basically a beginner series is that no driver can have previously competed in karting, a racing series or hold a racing licence. They have to be true novices.

Caterham also offer the competitors a choice to either build the car themselves, or they will build it for you. Bruce opted for the former, alongside her father, Andy, whose personal motorsport experience extended to nothing more than driving in club weekends at Silverstone and Goodwood.

"Me and my dad thought, 'Well, that would be a really good experience for me to build the car from scratch and then race it', that before going to uni, it would be brilliant to get that knowledge," she said.

"It was all quite rushed, though. There was not too much time to build it. They delivered the car at the end of November, and because I was doing a ski instructor course in Switzerland at the beginning of January, I think I had about three weeks to fully build the car, and not everything turned up all at once."

"I left with most of it done, but not quite. I just left my dad to do tiny bits that hadn't turned up."

Bruce went into that inaugural championship with no serious expectations. Beyond attending the club events with her father, and being enthused about motorsport by Jamie Chadwick's exploits in the W Series — notably when she won the latter two of her three titles in 2021 and 2022 — Bruce was as raw a rookie as you could get.

"The Caterham Academy is good to get that knowledge of understanding the basics because the actual car is so raw," she said. "You don't have any assistance or anything, and heeling and towing was a new thing for me as well.

"I had my manual driving license, but racing a manual is very different, naturally. It was just really good to get a basic knowledge of, first of all, learning how a car is built, but also how to drive it, fully unassisted."

Bruce and her father had nothing more to go off other than "a massive handbook of numbers and pictures", akin, I joked to her, to an IKEA manual. "You had to tell the difference between one picture and the next, and that's what we were doing," she said.

"I definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without my dad because he has more knowledge, but it was still quite difficult to see exactly what to do for each step," she added with a chuckle.

In her first race at the Curborough Sprint Course, Bruce endured an inauspicious start as she recalls going off at the first corner on three occasions. "I think after my dad was like, 'Oh no, this is not very good'."

Such disappointment, however, was short-lived. In the third of the seven rounds at Oulton Park, she qualified third of the 25 cars running.  By race five at Snetterton, she had secured her first podium en route to finishing tenth in the standings. Crucially, the racing bug had bitten, and there was no turning back.

That year, in 2023, F1 Academy paved the way for female drivers around the world. "I saw that, and I knew I really wanted to do that," said Bruce, mindful of the fact such an opportunity appeared far removed after a few races in a Caterham."

Single-seater testing followed in late summer. The plan for 2024 was for further testing, as well as a second campaign in a Caterham, in the upgraded 270R Championship. Bruce's father, however, had other ideas, as he funded his daughter through GB4, dovetailing that programme with Caterham.

"The plan was to do Caterham and test a bit more throughout '24, doing the official testing days with GB4, but then we were like, 'Let's just do the season'," said Bruce. "But it was definitely very, very tricky.

"Obviously, I had one season of racing under my belt compared to world karters coming in, or those doing a second season, and they've done karting before. It was a lot to deal with coming from just one season with just seven races spread over six months.

"But because of my limited experience, I wanted to get more races under my belt, racecraft-wise, qualifying-wise, everything because I was playing catch-up."

Despite her inexperience, Bruce did not disappoint. Racing for Fox Motorsports, she secured nine top-10 finishes in the 21 races across seven rounds, including a high of sixth in the final race of the fourth round at Snetterton, to finish 11^th in the standings. In the Caterham 270R Championship, Bruce scored four podiums en route to a solid seventh overall.

Returning to GB4 last year, with KMR Sport, a brilliant fourth in the first race at Oulton Park was the highlight of a campaign in which she missed the final four-race round at Donington Park, as the opportunity she craved came knocking with an F1 Academy wildcard outing in Singapore.

Bruce had earlier taken part in a rookie test and was one of the stand-out performers. "It is a very good initiative for people who want to be in F1 Academy," she said. "They can prove what they've got.

"There are so many women from all series. For all of us to be on the same track on the same day to prove what we can do was really good, and we came away from that very well. I think it definitely helped me get the Singapore wildcard. That came about very, very fast."

Bruce replaced the injured Aiva Anagnostiadis for the two races in Singapore with Hitech TGR, finishing a credible 12^th and 13^th around one of the toughest circuits on the F1 calendar.

"It was stressful, but obviously really exciting," said Bruce. "They called me up, and I just went straight to Hitech to practice on the sim for Singapore because obviously it's a very hard track for anyone.

"To learn in a week was pretty difficult. It was also my first street track, so that was also very interesting, just the heat and everything, and we also got rain, which was also tricky."

"But it was amazing to prepare, and also to see how an F1 Academy weekend works because it's so different going from GB4 to then racing with F1 worldwide and everything."

With Bruce's star rising at a rapid rate of knots, Campos Racing stepped in to offer Bruce a full-time race seat, just three years after she stepped behind the wheel of a racing car for the first time, and with no previous karting experience.

Bruce was outstanding in the Canadian weekend in Montréal, claiming second and third in the first and third races. After four rounds and two to come, she is currently sixth in the standings, level on points with Payton Westcott and trailing only second-year pros Alisha Palmowski, Emma Felbermayr, Nina Gademan and Alba Larsen.

All three of those drivers are also affiliated to F1 teams. For this year, Bruce has the support of TAG Heuer. She recognises that a driver like Palmowski, backed by Red Bull but also her team-mate at Campos, along with Rafaela Ferreira, who is supported by Racing Bulls, has advantages.

Bruce, however, cannot fault the work of Campos. "In some aspects, it will help them more, but we all have Campos at the end of the day, who still help us prepare a lot," she said. "That's the best learning tool I can have right now.

"When we do our preparation with Alisha and Rafa at Campos, we're all doing it at the same time, working on the same things at the same time. We can look through each other's data, and it might suggest something. I can try that and vice versa. We're still learning from each other."

"She has the extra support of Red Bull, but when we come to Campos, she's sharing her experience as well. I'm learning off her as much as I can as well because she's a second-year driver.

"For me, Campos is helping me loads anyway. Their experience is so invaluable, and I guess, in the first year, it's not as overwhelming."

Given Bruce's progress, it is highly likely she could replace Palmowski for next season in being backed by Red Bull. She naturally concedes it would be "cool to follow in her steps", but it is not the be-all and end-all.

"She's doing amazing this year at the moment, and to see her development, from the first and second year with Red Bull but also with Campos, learning with them as well, has been really good and probably expected," said Bruce. "We knew how good she was from GB4 and the first year at F1 Academy.

"I can't say I would love to step into her shoes, but I'm happy right now with TAG Heuer. As long as I'm learning as much as I can this year with TAG and with Campos, just improving myself, that's the best I can do."

Images courtesy of Getty Images.