‘Home is where the heart is’ may be a cliche but it is a sentiment we’ve all felt at some point in our lives.
Maybe it’s the sanctuary you’ve built for yourself, or visiting a family member’s home — sitting at the kitchen counter as you cook dinner side-by-side. Maybe it’s your closest friend, a meal that warms your heart as memories flash through your mind, or a city you visited during your whirlwind travels.
For Mercedes’ F1 Academy driver Doriane Pin, racing on track is where she feels most at home and happiest. The French driver’s home echoes with whining from engines and cheers from fans and teams, smells of burning rubber, and the sights of liveries’ vibrant colors. Pin has navigated her way from being too small to drive a go kart to now competing on the Formula One support series ladder — fighting for the title in her last season of F1 Academy.
Pin’s dream remains to compete in F1 — but there have been numerous times when she’s doubted whether this is possible. The pinnacle of motorsport is just a few junior categories away further up the ladder but, as any racer will tell you, the final steps are often the hardest. The number of spots simply decrease the higher you climb.
“You’re far from Formula One, so you don’t know if it’s possible,” Pin told The Athletic. “You don’t know what is going to happen, but you dream so much, so strongly about it that you don’t really think about Formula One every day. You just think about your journey and you see how it goes.
“From (the) age of nine or now, 21, I cannot say if I’m more sure that I will be joining (the) Formula One grid. I don’t know. But I’m working for it so hard and working every day at the gym, on track, to be a good driver and to push my limits, so maybe one day I will reach it, and I will be very happy.”
One of Pin’s earliest motorsports memories is watching F1 on television with her father. She became a fan, but didn’t begin dreaming about becoming an F1 driver until Sebastian Vettel won his world championships with Red Bull from 2010 to 2013.
“But then, when Lewis Hamilton came, seeing him winning titles as well — it’s very inspiring and you want to do the same,” Pin said. “I would say around 2013 or ‘14, when I started racing, I had those moments when I was watching TV and dreaming about Formula One.”
She frequented the track before she could actually race. At five years old, she watched at the local karting circuit while her father organized 24-hour karting events. “I loved sharing this with my dad,” Pin said.
She had to wait for her turn in the driver’s seat, though. Most drivers begin karting at six years old, but Pin had to wait until nine and a half because she was too small. But she was competitive even at that young age — opting for tennis to fill the void until she could jump into a go-kart. And once she did in 2013, Pin fell in love.
“It made me happy since the beginning because I like the environment. I feel (at) home when I’m on track,” Pin explained. “It’s (a) very unique feeling when you go home. When you’re home, you feel good, but when you’re on track, you feel as good as if you’re home.
“I love the speed. I love the adrenaline that you have when you’re driving — the vibration, the noise, the smell.”
Pin continued navigating the French karting ranks and though her finishes weren’t as high as her third place in the 2015 Subaru Karting World Championship, her finishes steadily improved.
But budget concerns slowly became more front of mind.
“I started go-karting at nine and when you decide to go in the French Championship and you start to decide that you’re going to do some good level of racing, you start to look for money. It was hard from the beginning to find someone (to offer sponsorship funding) — because it’s obviously very expensive and the money doesn’t come like this,” Pin said.
“I was very lucky that I managed to meet some friends of my dad. When my dad was working in a building, with two different companies in the same building, I was going (there) every Wednesday after school to talk about my racing. They fell in love with my story, so they helped me.”
For three years, those individuals helped fund Pin’s racing and her father became her mechanic. She wasn’t with a racing team yet. But then a problem arose.
“(In) 2018, we don’t have any anything anymore,” Pin continued. “And in 2019 we said, ‘We keep the money for 2019, and we do one race, the biggest race. And if we win, we win, and it’s good for us. If we don’t win, we don’t know what to do.’”
That big race was the French Karting Championship. The family pulled together, her uncle helping as well as numerous motorsports friends, Pin explained. Her kart was fitted with “good materials to compete,” as she put it, and she pulled off the massive feat when it counted — winning the championship. This brought her more racing opportunities.
“Linked to that day, to that win, I have this career,” Pin said. But the budget concerns persisted even after she graduated from karting. Following the 2019 championship victory, she competed in the FIA Girls On Track Rising Stars selection for entry into a Formula Four championship, which she lost after ranking second.
“’Here we go again,’” Pin said. “No idea of what I will do. We had the budget for not even one full race weekend of Formula Four.”
Renault invited Pin to compete in three Clio Cup races in 2020 and while she said it was a “good experience and good race craft,” it ultimately wasn’t the direction where she wanted to take her career. But it did raise her profile.
The Iron Dames, an all-women sportscar racing team, called — inviting the French driver to test in February 2021. Pin had a month to prepare before hopping into a Ferrari GT car and she impressed so much that she secured a full-time racing program with the team. Pin described it as “the opportunity of my life,” and she made her start in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, competing in a GT car.
The 2021 season marked her first in car racing, with Pin also competing in the Michelin Le Mans Cup in GT3. She secured multiple podium finishes, ending the year fifth in that championship. Pin then won the Ferrari Challenge Europe championship the following season. That same year, she won her class (GTE) in the 4 Hours of Portimão — a sports car endurance race in Portugal and part of the European Le Mans Series season where slower GT cars race at the same time as quicker prototype machines. It marked the Iron Dames’ first class win in the series, while Pin also secured a class victory in the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, Belgium.
Her nickname, “Pocket Rocket,” came from her speedy performances with the Iron Dames. When Pin joined the team, there was a substantial age gap between her and teammates Sarah Bovy and Michelle Gatting — around a decade, according to Pin. It all goes back to when they were fighting for their first podium in GT racing, when Pin was battling on track against a factory-backed driver to secure a third-place finish.
“In an interview, (Bovy, speaking about that race) said, ‘Oh, she’s a little pocket rocket,’” Pin recalled. “‘She’s little, but she can be very fast in a big car. I’m sure she will take this third place, and we’re gonna enjoy the podium.’”
While Pin continued making her name in endurance sports car racing — jumping to the LMP2 category in the World Endurance Championship in 2023 — her target remained to compete in single-seaters on the F1 support ladder. Also in 2023, she competed in the South East Asian F4 Championship — taking a win and second in the standings.
And that same year, Mercedes and F1 Academy came calling.
News broke in January 2024 that Pin would not only join the Mercedes Junior Programme but would represent the Silver Arrows squad in F1 Academy and be supported by PREMA Racing and the Iron Dames (the two companies forming a sister team relationship).
“They have so much experience and to start a single-seater career with a team like this, it’s the best way to start,” Pin said. “I’ve learned a lot since (2024).”
The French driver’s 2024 season featured her making her F1 Academy debut and competing in the Formula Regional European Championship, also racing for the Iron Dames. Pin looked poised to fight for that year’s F1 Academy title after winning the first race in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but Alpine’s Abbi Pulling subsequently ran away with the championship. Pin ended the year with three victories and as runner-up in the standings.
One of the biggest lessons she took onboard last season was how “working hard will always pay off.” This is nod toward how she had a strong season start, but then struggled more from the second round in Miami and didn’t have the answers as to why. Her FRECA season started in May, after the Miami event, and she was sick during the first round of that championship at Hockenheim, Germany.
Pin said there wasn’t an impact on her performance that weekend, but when competing at Spa later that month, she broke her ribs while coughing with her cockpit seatbelts on.
“We didn’t (find) out directly. I (had) been driving the second race and I was not good,” Pin said. “We found out (afterwards) that I had five ribs cracked.
“I never had an injury before, so when you go through this, you don’t know what to do, what to expect, how you will feel, how you will come back. You have this doubt of, ‘Imagine I don’t come back as good as I was before.’”
Pin needed to build muscle around her ribs to help with recovery and rest. She said that breaking your ribs “is the worst thing” because “if you break your leg, you can still work your upper body, but if you have (broken) ribs, you cannot do cardio, you cannot do whatever. You cannot pull something; you cannot open the door without having pain. So it was a tough moment.”
The FRECA round at Spa last year was the weekend of May 24-26, and F1 Academy did not return to action until its Barcelona round on June 21-23. Pin had to withdraw from racing in the 24 Hours of Le Mans — the showpiece WEC and sports car event — but she was back and competing in F1 Academy that weekend in Spain.
Despite the setback, she did return as strong as she was before — but he success was spread further across the rest of the season, as Pulling dominated the standings. Pin’s next two victories came during Race 2 at Zandvoort in August and Race 1 in Qatar during the season’s penultimate round.
“It was sometimes a bit up and down,” Pin said when talking about the lessons she learned in 2024, “but the down helps you to be better for high moments afterwards.”
She knows the game better heading into this season and is competing in F1 Academy and FRECA once again — the latter being a mixed grid of male and female drivers. And she already has a victory under her belt, taking F1 Academy Race 2 at Shanghai, but no longer has the top spot in the standings after finishing third in Race 2 in Jeddah.
Ten races are left in Pin’s last F1 Academy season and it remains to be seen where she will compete next year and if her F1 dream can continue. But she’s making sure to push to the limit and enjoy each step as it comes — a piece of advice she wishes she could give herself when she started out karting.
“Sometimes you forget to enjoy because you are so much into results and you think you (might) make sad people or make people unhappy and stuff. But you forget what you like. I remember when I started, I was in love about the sport. It’s how it got me through the difficult moments and also through my whole career.
“Now, I enjoy (it) so much, and it’s how it works. If you enjoy everything you do and with the people you like and the people you’re working with, the result and the work comes naturally is how you perform.”
(Top photo: Pauline Ballet – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)
