🚨 REMEMBER HER NAME: PAYTON WESTCOTT! 🏎️🔥 She grew up racing, but now this promising teenage driver is determined to prove she has what it takes to reach Formula 1. The competition is fierce, the pressure is real, and her biggest test may still lie ahead! 👀 Could she become F1’s next breakout star? Read her exclusive story and tell us what you think! 🏁👇

Payton Westcott has always been comfortable behind the wheel.

The F1 Academy driver grew up in a racing-obsessed household and first gripped a steering wheel on her own when she was just 6 years old, after her dad, Kevin, put her in a go-kart as a form of “babysitting.”

“It was really a thing at the track we went to growing up where all the men would put their kids in karting while they would go and drive on the track themselves, and it would distract the kids for a little while,” Westcott, 17, tells PEOPLE. “I drove for quite a while before one day my dad’s coach noticed me and said I wasn’t half bad, so he decided that he should try to put me into go-kart racing.”

Westcott’s family “had no idea” about the world of go-kart racing until her father’s coach suggested she join — a recommendation that turned out to be a great one. Westcott continued to fall in love with racing and started competing in go-karting events at age 11. Four years later, at age 15, she moved to Italy full time to pursue racing open-wheeled cars as a career.

“I’m eternally grateful to him for putting me in racing,” Westcott told F1 about her dad this past June.

Now, the Laguna Beach, Calif., native continues to master courses around the world as one of the 15 full-time drivers in the all-female F1 Academy racing series, which comes to Austin, Texas, for its penultimate event of the season this weekend. And while she does get time away from the track, Westcott tells PEOPLE driving remains top of mind as she races in a simulation at home — “whether it’s going to a professional sim or just at home with my friends or playing and messing around.”

An avid reader and casual television watcher, Westcott says she finds comfort in her books and cozy nights in with her family — when she has the chance to visit them back in California. But those visits have been so far between this year that her mother has lapped her in television shows they watch together. “She likes to skip ahead of me,” Westcott laughs.

But there’s not much time for television when there are races to be won. Westcott has continued climbing the ranks of the sport she now loves just as much as her father. Fresh off her first-ever F1 Academy win this past August, Westcott is eyeing a top-5 finish in her debut season with the racing series, designed to recruit more women into the sport’s top racing series that has only seen five women enter an F1 Grand Prix weekend.

Westcott told the F1 Academy website that it was an “incredible” feeling to get her first professional win in the series. “It takes a big weight off my shoulders,” the teenage up-and-comer said. “I really did it to prove to myself that I could do it, and I’m so happy.”

Even as Westcott’s own career blossoms, she’s found inspiration from her rivals on the track.

“I definitely look a lot to the others around me,” Westcott says. “I acknowledge and really pay close attention to everyone. Doriane [Pin, the F1 Academy 2025 Champion] is especially a great person to learn from.”

Westcott says Pin has been coaching her this season and “it’s been really helpful to have her there,” pointing out the minute details she could focus on to improve her racing as her career rises. “It’s really helpful to have her there giving me advice and just helping me,” Westcott says. “And she’s such an incredible teammate and woman. I just feel so grateful that I get to learn from her and really grow with her.”

The American F1 Academy star tells PEOPLE her focus now is to “end the year on a high note.”

“I’m always looking to keep improving,” Westcott says, looking ahead to the series’ final two events in Texas and Nevada, and then to the 2027 season. “I think in racing, the best thing is just building your career as well as building your experience and building your level. So I want to keep improving, keep moving up.”