German
Sophia Flörsch (born 1 December 2000 in Munich) is a German racing driver and one of the most prominent women in modern single-seater racing, both for her resilience and for the records she has broken in FIA Formula 3.
The 2018 Macau crash
Flörsch is widely known for surviving one of the most frightening accidents in recent motorsport. During the 2018 FIA F3 World Cup at Macau, on lap four of the final her car made contact at the high-speed approach to Lisboa, launched off another car at around 270 km/h, flew through the catch fencing and slammed into a photographers' bunker. She suffered a fractured spine and underwent a roughly eleven-hour operation; doctors reported there was no fear of paralysis. Her recovery and return to racing earned her the 2020 Laureus World Sports Award for Comeback of the Year. She returned to the Macau circuit to race again the following year.
Formula 3
In 2020 Flörsch joined Campos Racing for the new FIA Formula 3 Championship, becoming the first woman to race in the series since the merger of GP3 and European F3. The year was difficult on a competitive grid and she finished well down the order. She returned in 2023 with PHM Racing (run in partnership with Charouz), where she made history again by becoming the first woman to score points in FIA F3, taking a seventh place at Spa-Francorchamps. In 2024 she raced with Van Amersfoort Racing, again struggling for results on a stacked grid.
Endurance racing
Away from single-seaters, Flörsch built a strong sportscar career. She raced for the Richard Mille Racing Team in the European Le Mans Series and the FIA World Endurance Championship, and in 2021 became the first woman to finish on an outright ELMS podium since 2013, at Portimão. She has also competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the LMP2 class.
Throughout her career Flörsch has been an outspoken advocate for getting more women into top-level motorsport, and her story of survival and persistence has made her one of the sport's most recognisable junior-formula figures.