The Sphere with Formula 1 grandstands in place ahead of a Las Vegas Grand Prix. Illustrative image, not from this year's race. Photo: Harold Litwiler via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Wildcard seats in F1 Academy usually get sold as rewards. Luna Fluxa Cross’s seat at Las Vegas reads better as an exam, and the best paper handed in so far belongs to a 15-year-old Brazilian who won’t be anywhere near the No. 10 Hitech car.
The confirmed part first. Fluxa, a 16-year-old Spaniard and Mercedes junior since 2022, will make her F1 Academy debut as the wildcard in the sixth and final round of the 2026 season, in the Visit Las Vegas-backed No. 10 entry run by Hitech. Her CV is real: first woman in the Mercedes-AMG F1 Junior Programme, an OK-N Senior karting title with six wins and a 125-point margin, a maiden podium in the Eurocup-4 Spanish Winter Championship, and a full F4 Spanish season this year.
A wildcard is a shop window with a stopwatch in it
F1 Academy’s own wildcard programme is built around a single weekend seat meant to widen the talent pool in race regions. Since 2025, Hitech has run the entry as part of its three-car team, and the wildcard now scores in both the drivers’ and teams’ standings. That matters: it means a Las Vegas result is not a ceremonial cameo, it lands on a table.
The record also shows the door is not painted on. Seven wildcard drivers have scored points, Chiara Bättig became the first to take a pole and a podium at Silverstone this year, and eight wildcards have gone on to full-time seats. So the standard of proof in Las Vegas is not whether Fluxa looks good in the car. It is whether she scores, and how far she sits from the front. The Austin round, which came down to a one-lap restart, is a reminder of how little margin this field leaves.
The benchmark is already on the board
At the September rookie test at Circuito de Navarra, 18 drivers from 14 countries ran F1 Academy cars. Vicky Farfus, 15, of Brazil and Italy, was fastest overall with a 1:46.988, three tenths clear of Sofia Zanfari and Rosanne Den Drijver in the morning segment. Alexia Danielsson led the afternoon on a 1:47.259, with Farfus two tenths back. Fluxa finished sixth in both segments, according to F1’s announcement of her wildcard.
Sixth in a new car with new engineers is respectable. It is also the gap Las Vegas will be asked to close.
Farfus then added road results to the stopwatch. At the Fórmula GP Bradesco event on the Interlagos undercard last Sunday, she finished second in the final race after passing Marcelo Hahn on lap nine, and ended the event second overall on 31 points, level with Hahn and ahead on the tiebreak. Fabrício Fogaça took the title on 42. Three races is a small sample, and nobody should build a ranking on it. But a podium on home soil, in the same weekend Brazil was already busy with Rafael Câmara’s Formula 1 debut, is the kind of evidence that sits well next to a test time.
What to read into Las Vegas
Fluxa arrives with the stronger résumé on paper and a Mercedes badge, fresh off the team’s constructors’ title at Interlagos. Farfus arrives with the faster number in the same machinery and a fresh podium. Neither fact cancels the other, but only one of them is a lap time.
That is why Las Vegas is useful. Everyone is in the same car type, there is one weekend, and the points count. If Fluxa is inside the points, the junior-programme narrative gets a tidy sequel. If she is not, it is a data point rather than a verdict, and the Navarra time remains the figure she is measured against. One weekend, one car type, points on the line. If Fluxa scores, the Mercedes-junior story gets its sequel. If she doesn’t, Farfus’s 1:46.988 is still sitting there.
Who goes further: the Mercedes junior with the CV or the 15-year-old with the lap time?
Lead image: The Sphere with Formula 1 grandstands in place ahead of a Las Vegas Grand Prix. Illustrative image, not from this year’s race. Photo: Harold Litwiler via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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