Nina Gademan: Living the dream
Two years after nearly walking away from racing, Nina Gademan is third in the F1 ACADEMY championship and set to drive a Formula 1 car in Goodwood.
The morning was warm and windy in Silverstone, the F1 ACADEMY paddock already buzzing despite the early Friday start. Nina Gademan had just come off the only practice session of the weekend and gone straight into a massage. When she sat down across from me, she was relaxed, in good spirits, and clearly aware that the rest of her day was already spoken for. I had less than ten minutes with her.
“It was a bit dirty, but it was a good session,” she said of the track. “So, not too bad.”
Not too bad has become something of a theme this season. Nobody circled Gademan’s name as a title favourite coming into her second year in F1 ACADEMY. She arrived at Silverstone, the series' first-ever visit to the circuit and round three of the championship, sixth in the standings. By the time she left, she’d closed the gap to the front from a full second down to half a tenth, and moved up to third with an extra podium behind her.
“I remember we lacked a bit of pace in testing here, two months ago-ish, I think,” she told me. “And then we just worked hard behind the scenes, focusing on the things we needed to. And now we’ve closed the gap from one second to basically half a tenth to Palmowski. So, yeah, I think we made a good step.”
It’s a modest way to describe what’s actually a quite remarkable turnaround, and it fits a driver whose career has never followed the easy route. Gademan had her first go-kart at five years old and fought her way through the Dutch karting ranks the way most drivers do, on ambition and family sacrifice.
By nineteen, the money had run out. She stepped away from racing entirely for a year and a half, long enough that most people would have let the dream go. Instead, she leaned into sim racing, and the videos she posted on social media found an audience large enough to put her in front of a manager, and eventually the sponsors who funded her way back into a real car.
The comeback, once it started, moved fast. Her F1 ACADEMY debut came as a Wild Card at Zandvoort in 2024, where she became the first Wild Card driver in the series to score points. A full-time seat followed in 2025 with Alpine and PREMA, four podiums and a maiden win at her home race in Zandvoort, on her own birthday. This year, she’s moved to her compatriots at MP Motorsport, opened the season with a win in Shanghai, and is now building a genuine case for the title.
“I think the switch from PREMA to MP has been really good,” she said. “Working together with the team has felt quite natural so far, as well with Alpine, obviously, also behind the scenes.” She talked me through the season so far without ceremony: Shanghai going almost too smoothly, Montreal going badly wrong. “Those weekends happen. I mean, they also happen in F1 to drivers. I think the most important thing is how, after that, you look back at it, you reflect on it, you’re working with the team, you try and find out what you can do better.”
That steadiness reads differently once you know what else she’s carrying. A year and a half ago, Gademan was diagnosed with scoliosis, a condition that arrived suddenly and without warning. It has changed how she trains and what her body can do on any given day. Squats are off the table. Running is off the table. She’s on a bike instead, and much of the treatment she gets for it is, in her words, painful. A heavy crash last year in Jeddah put 20 Gs through a spine that was never built to take that kind of impact.
“I was actually very lucky I didn’t break my back,” she said. “Because I’ve got scoliosis, obviously, my spine cannot take that hit.” She rattled off, almost matter-of-factly, everything the diagnosis has taken off the table: “I need to train differently than other drivers. There are exercises like a squat that I can’t do. I can’t run, so I’m on the bike all the time, and I can’t do rowing or whatever. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t do, and a lot of treatment I get on the side, which is very painful sometimes. But it’s getting better.” Then, simply: “It’s not holding me back anymore a lot in racing.”
“It’s something I accepted already a long time ago, that sometimes I just have to race in pain.”
None of this featured in the highlight reel from Shanghai or the podium at Silverstone, and she clearly prefers it that way. When I asked how she’s approaching this week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, where she’s about to drive a Formula 1 car, she was almost stubborn about keeping her focus on the weekend in front of her. The team wanted to walk her through the car's procedures before Silverstone. “Tell me after the weekend, please,” she told them. “I don’t want to think about it this weekend.” It’s a small moment, but it says a lot about how she operates: one job finished before the next one gets any of her attention.
The car in question has history attached to it. Gademan will take the Lotus E20, the car Kimi Räikkönen drove to victory at the 2012 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, up the Goodwood Hill on Thursday, 9th of July, alongside Alpine’s current F1 driver Pierre Gasly, part of a five-strong Alpine line-up across the weekend that also includes Franco Colapinto, Paul Aron, and Alex Dunne.
“It’s really exciting to drive an F1 car,” she admitted, “obviously, it’s everyone’s childhood dream, even though it’s not on a proper track.”
“Just to be living this dream is still kind of surreal sometimes because I used to live a normal life. I used to have three jobs and save up money for a race. So I know what it’s like out there as a normal person, basically. And just to live the life I want to right now and actually performing well is surreal sometimes. Sometimes I forget about it. I need to calm down, realise I’m living the dream, and get on with the work.”
Next up is Zandvoort, F1 ACADEMY’s fourth round and the race that means the most to her and where fans have shown up for her in force. One of them, she told me almost in disbelief, had her signature tattooed onto their skin. “That’s what we love,” she said, and there was no performance in the way she said it. She has good memories there, a Wild Card debut and a maiden win, and she’s not shy about what she wants from a repeat visit. “We’re coming for another win in the Zandvoort race, and then hopefully tons of fans again at the garages.”
Whatever happens there, Gademan has already made her point at Silverstone: results built without noise and a season that keeps getting better.
