Former F1 Academy champion Marta Garcia has been released from hospital following a serious crash in a Le Mans Cup race at Barcelona.
The Spanish driver was leading Saturday’s race at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya when contact with a Ferrari car from the AF Corse squad triggered a frightening accident for the inaugural F1 Academy champion.
It occurred halfway through the 2025 season opener for the championship that supports the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans sportscar race, as Garcia’s Iron Dames Porsche car slammed into the barriers at high speed and caught fire.
Garcia, who later said in a post on Instagram that the crash registered a 21G impact force, was initially trapped in a cockpit that was filling with smoke, as her driver’s side door had been damaged in the initial crash. But after trackside marshals broke the passenger side door, the 24-year-old was able to exit the wreckage.
In a post on Instagram, she called the incident “one of the toughest moments in my career,” adding that she had inhaled some smoke and felt dizzy afterwards.
“I couldn’t open my door because it was stuck from the impact, and I started panicking as more and more smoke was coming into the car… until the marshals broke the co-driver’s door and got me out,” the post read.
She was taken to a hospital near to the track, which is situated around 25km north of downtown Barcelona, and stayed overnight as a precaution. Tests revealed she had suffered no major injuries, Garcia said on Instagram, and after a second night in hospital, she was released on Tuesday morning.
Since being released from hospital on Tuesday, Garcia has travelled back to the Barcelona track to support the Iron Dames/Prema Racing organization with which she competed in the 2024 Formula Regional European Championship (FRECA) by Alpine, posting a picture of herself trackside on Instagram.
The series is a step up motorsport’s single seater pyramid — the path for young drivers to learn the ropes if they hope to one day race in Formula One — from F1 Academy. It uses similar cars to the all-female championship, albeit with more powerful engines, and is supported by the Renault-owned Alpine road car manufacturing brand.
After finishing 28th in the 2024 FRECA standings following her F1 Academy title-winning season the year before, Garcia announced that she would stop competing in single-seater championships and concentrate on sportscar racing.
(Top photo by Simon Galloway/LAT Images for Formula E)