Up to Speed follows eight teenage girls training to beat the boys in F1 using cutting edge science. These champion go-karters from around the world have been hand picked to train with F1 legend David Coulthard’s initiative, More Than Equal, where for the first time in motorsport history, scientists are studying what the female body actually needs and building the training tools accordingly. There is no scientific evidence that women cannot compete equally with men in Formula 1, these girls are simply the first generation with the science to prove it.
But science alone won’t get them there. They are friends and rivals, juggling racing with schoolwork, missing family, navigating adolescence, and competing for sponsorship inside a sport built entirely around male drivers, and it is all in preparation for Formula 3, the mandatory gateway to F1. It is a brutal bottleneck where thirty fixed seats represent the only road forward. In the entire history of that championship, only one woman has ever competed. This is the concrete wall between these girls and Formula 1, and they are running at it anyway.
Emma Sullivan is a critically acclaimed, award winning Australian director. INTO THE DEEP, her first feature length documentary, was screened as part of the World Documentary Competition at Sundance 2020, and released on Netflix in 2022. The documentary played a critical role in the conviction of Danish inventor Peter Madsen for the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, a crime that unfolded during the filming of the documentary.
It was shortlisted for a 2023 Grierson Award in the Best Single Documentary – International category, and she won the 2023 ADG award for Best Direction in a Documentary Feature. Previously, Emma received a grant from European Capital of Culture to make a series of short documentary films across Denmark, all of which were screened at the Big Little Film Festival 2017, and at Noordelijk Film Festival in 2018.
