When the FIA convened its annual Global Motorsport and Mobility Conference in Macau from 23 to 25 June, it drew over 450 senior delegates from 149 countries to debate the future of the sport.
Among those invited to present was Wesleigh Orr, founder and head coach of South African outfit WORR Motorsport – not to observe, but to table a continental development master plan that has been years in the making.
The premise is one the sport has largely avoided confronting: if Africa is ever going to produce a Formula 1 world champion, the development pathway cannot continue to exist somewhere else. Orr presented this case to the Africa Panel before taking it to an international audience that included FIA office bearers across every level of the organization, including the FIA President.
Behind that pitch sits a footprint already eight countries deep: Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Angola, South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Mozambique.
Seychelles and Uganda are in advanced talks. No other team, federation or development programme is currently building a grassroots-to-elite motorsport pathway like this anywhere else on the continent.
“If you are in Africa and you want to be a Formula 1 driver right now, as things currently stand, it’s a challenge,” Orr told the panel. “But through hard work, and through us sticking together across this continent, we are going to change that. A racing driver’s career is short – drivers who are six or seven years old need to move now. We do not have time to waste.”
The model is already in motion. In May, Botswana Motorsport – in collaboration with WORR Motorsport – launched the Karting Africa Academy in Lobatse, becoming the first national sporting authority on the continent to introduce the Karting Africa Academy chassis.
Forty young participants attended, many of them on a kart for the first time.
FIA President H.E. Mohammed Ben Sulayem welcomed the milestone directly: “By creating accessible and structured pathways into the sport, we are giving more young people the opportunity to discover motorsport, develop their skills and pursue their ambitions. Programmes like this are vital to growing participation and nurturing future talent.”
Tumisang Kagiso Modibedi, President of Botswana Motorsport, put it in local terms: “This launch marks a defining moment for motorsport in Botswana. We are proud to have made history as the first ASN on the continent to introduce the Karting Africa Academy chassis.”
The model is designed to work where permanent racing infrastructure does not yet exist, using temporary tracks and street circuits as entry points, with standardised equipment to control costs. Training covers more than driving. WORR works with national sporting authorities, officials, coaches and mechanics to build the structures each country needs to run its own programme. The end goal is a Pan-African championship series that produces world-ready drivers without requiring one of them to leave the continent to be taken seriously.
The reach extends beyond Africa’s existing motorsport nations. WORR has been approached directly by countries with no current FIA affiliation at all – territory the federation has never had a presence in. For a continent where most of the world assumed there was nothing left to build, that is the detail that turned heads in Macau.
“Karting Africa has gone beyond the FIA’s own borders,” said Rodrigo Rocha, FIA Vice President for Sport (Africa), who chaired the Africa Panel in Macau. For the federation, that represents rare territory: new membership and new reach, built on a model someone else has already proven works.
“WORR is no longer a South African race team. It is now an African Development Partner,” concluded Orr. “Africa has the talent – it has just never had the pathway. That is what we’re building.”
