Bianca Denise Bustamante (born January 19, 2005) is a Filipina racing driver who is set to compete in the 2025 GB3 Championship driving for Elite Motorsport.[1]
From January 31 to February 4, 2022, Bustamante competed in a W Series test in Arizona, United States, along with 14 other prospective drivers.[2] She then participated in a second pre-season test in Barcelona on March 2–4 along with 11 other potential drivers and 9 automatic qualifiers from the previous W Series season.[3] On March 22, Bustamante was confirmed to compete in the 2022 W Series season.[4] She finished the season in 15th place scoring 2 points across 7 races.
Formula 4 UAE Championship
On January 9, 2023, Bustamante was announced to race under Italian team Prema Powerteam for the 2023 Formula 4 UAE Championship.[5] She finished the season in 27th place scoring 3 points across 15 races.
On February 3, 2023, Bustamante was confirmed as the second driver to compete in the newly launched all-female F1 Academy series with Prema Racing.[6]
Bustamante finished 3rd in the series' first race at the Red Bull Ring, but was promoted to P2 following the disqualification of Nerea Martí.[7] Having finished ninth in the second race, her car suffered a technical failure on the formation lap for the third race and did not start.[8]
Bustamante initially qualified 2nd for the second round at Circuit Ricardo Tormo, but was demoted to 8th for a track limits infringement.[9] Having recovered to fifth in the first race, Bustamante then won her first race in the reverse-grid second heat – earning personal congratulations from President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, Jr.[10][11][12]
Bustamante did not finish the first race of the weekend at Monza, before grabbing her third podium of the season in the following reverse-grid race and winning the third and final race of the weekend.[13]
Bustamante scored a total of 116 points, finishing 7th in the championship standings; one point behind MP Motorsport's Amna Al Qubaisi.[14]
In Round 1 at Jeddah, Bustamante finished fifth in Race 1 and was promoted to sixth (from eighth) in Race 2 due to penalties for other competitors.[17][18][19] Bustamante qualified in fourth for the second round at Miami and finished the first race in ninth after stalling at the start, but set the fastest lap in consolation; in Race 2, she scored her first podium of the season with a second-place finish.[20][21] In Round 4 at Zandvoort, Bustamante crashed during qualifying and finished outside the points in both races – a pointless streak which continued in Singapore after she received a stop/go penalty in Race 1 for being out of position on the grid, before colliding with Tina Hausmann in Race 2 whilst recovering from a spin.[22][23]
Bustamante finished the season in seventh in the driver's championship[24] and left the McLaren Driver Development Programme at the conclusion of her F1 Academy campaign.[25][26]
In December 2023, she received backlash on social media after it emerged that she had liked several tweets critical of Formula One driver Lance Stroll, one of which used ableist language.[34]
In March 2024, vehicle rental company Avis ranked Bustamante the third-most influential non-European female racing driver; at the time, she had a combined 2.2 million followers across Instagram and TikTok.[35][36]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Filipina
