Three drivers. Three first names that match. One development programme tasked with producing Britain’s — and Finland’s — next generation of grand prix talent. At McLaren’s Woking headquarters, Ella Häkkinen, Ella Lloyd and Ella Stevens have become impossible to discuss in isolation, and not only because the paddock has nicknamed them “the Ellas” after Rihanna’s 2007 chart-topper.
Häkkinen, 17, is the daughter of two-time world champion Mika and races in Formula Regional European Championship. Lloyd, 19, from Pembrokeshire, is the first Welsh driver on McLaren’s books and currently sits fourth in GB3. Stevens, 16, the youngest of the trio, was signed to the McLaren Driver Development programme in January 2026 after winning the British F4 rookie title. Together they form the most concentrated cluster of female single-seater talent any F1 team has assembled.
Three routes to the same garage
The Ellas arrived through wildly different doors. Häkkinen grew up around paddocks — her father won the 1998 and 1999 world championships with McLaren — but only began karting seriously at 11, late by modern standards. “I rode horses competitively until I was 12,” she said at the team’s Woking launch event. “Dressage taught me how to read pressure before it arrives. That translates more directly to a racing car than people think.”
Lloyd’s path is the romance of the bunch. Her family ran a small haulage business in Pembroke Dock; her first kart was second-hand and her early seasons were funded by community sponsorship from across south-west Wales. She carries a small embroidered Welsh dragon on the inside of her race suit collar — a gift from her grandmother before she signed with McLaren’s junior programme in 2023. Lloyd became the first British woman to win a Formula 4 race since Jamie Chadwick’s W Series-era victories, and her promotion to GB3 for 2026 was accelerated after she finished third in last season’s F4 standings.
Stevens, from Surrey, is the prodigy. She holds the record for the youngest pole-sitter in British F4 history and was identified by McLaren’s talent scouts after a karting weekend at PFi in 2024. Team principal Andrea Stella has publicly described her racecraft as “unusually complete for her age.”
Why McLaren is investing now
The timing is not accidental. The FIA’s F1 Academy, launched in 2023 and now in its fourth season, has shifted the economics of female driver development. Each of the ten F1 teams is required to nominate and fund one driver on the all-female F1 Academy grid; McLaren currently backs Bianca Bustamante there, but the Ellas operate outside that quota in mixed championships.
That distinction matters. The path to a grand prix seat runs through F3 and F2, not F1 Academy, and McLaren is the first team to commit funding to three female drivers on the conventional ladder simultaneously. The investment carries commercial logic — Mastercard signed a multi-year deal with McLaren in 2025 explicitly tied to female participation — but Stella has been careful to frame the programme in sporting terms.
“We are not running a marketing exercise,” he told reporters in Bahrain. “Ella, Ella and Ella are here because our scouting network ranks them inside our top fifteen juniors globally. The fact they share a name is a coincidence we have learned to enjoy.”
What comes next
The nickname stuck after Lloyd, during a 2024 simulator session, played Rihanna’s “Umbrella” through the engineering room speakers. The “ella, ella, ella” hook produced predictable laughter; the name has been used internally ever since and was officially adopted in McLaren’s 2026 driver-academy branding launched last month.
The trajectory from here is steep. To reach F1, all three must clear F3 and ideally F2 — a route that has produced just one female grand prix starter, Lella Lombardi, in the championship’s 76-year history. Susie Wolff drove a Williams in practice in 2014 but never raced. The statistical wall remains daunting.
Key milestones for the 2026 season:
- Häkkinen targets a top-five finish in Formula Regional European Championship and a Macau Grand Prix start in November
- Lloyd needs a GB3 podium to trigger the McLaren clause promoting her to FIA F3 testing in 2027
- Stevens steps up from F4 to GB4 mid-season if she leads the championship by the summer break
None of the three will start a grand prix this year, or next. But McLaren’s calculation is that the gap between female karting talent and the F1 grid is not biological — it is structural, financial and developmental. The Ellas are the team’s bet that the gap can be closed in a decade rather than a generation.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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