The F1 Academy racing season is daunting. With all the intense traveling, tricky tracks and stiff competition, the calendar can get the best of you, if you aren’t careful.
During an early October racing weekend in Singapore, Alba Larsen, the 16-year-old phenomenon that Forbes Travel Guide has teamed up with this season, showcased one of the qualities that distinguishes the good drivers from the great ones — resilience.
After a challenging first race in Singapore that ended in a collision and a 10-second penalty, Larsen returned for the next event undeterred and secured a respectable fifth-place finish. She sits in seventh place in the F1 Academy season, which is no easy feat for a racing rookie. But this is no ordinary rookie.
“I feel like at the beginning of my career,” Larsen told us a few weeks before the Asia race, “I could get very angry if something didn’t go my way. Like, if I got spun out in the race, I could sit and hammer in my steering wheel and get super mad. But now I’m a lot better at focusing on a new situation every time something happens. You need to reset your mind.”
To mentally and physically prepare for the action, Larsen stayed at Mandarin Oriental, Singapore, a property filled with gorgeous suites, heralded restaurants and one of the city’s top spas.
There, Larsen connected with the hotel’s trailblazing general manager, Jill Goh. Much like the racing world, the hospitality industry has historically been a male-dominated sector. According to a 2023 study by Penn State University, for every 10 men in hospitality leadership positions, there were just under two women. Goh has been with the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group for decades and considers the company family. “I grew up in Mandarin Oriental,” Goh said with a laugh. “I always joke when people ask me, ‘How long have you been with the company?’ I say, ‘Over 30 years — I started at the age of 12.’”
In 2024, Goh became the first female general manager of Mandarin Oriental, Singapore since its 1987 opening. Of course, it was a different time back then, one in which women were often excluded from most senior hospitality positions. “When I started in this industry,” Goh said, “unfortunately and uniquely, some hotels wouldn’t even allow female colleagues to be at the front desk. There were hotels 30-plus years ago that would only have male colleagues at the reception. And I was like, ‘Why?’”
It’s a good question that young women, like Larsen, will continue to ask. Fortunately, ladies of Larsen’s generation no longer have to chart the course alone. Across generations and industries, women can now share their experiences, wisdom and support with each other.
In fact, when Goh learned of the potential to collaborate with Larsen during the Asia leg of her F1 journey, a vision for a partnership swiftly took shape. “My mind was working so quickly,” Goh said. “If [Larsen] were to be here, can we use the opportunity to create some activities revolving around her sharing at this young age how to conquer a profession that is very rare for female talent?”
The thoughts kept racing around in Goh’s head: “Let’s have a fireside chat set up for her, and then we will invite the young generation in Singapore from different schools to listen to her. And then we can talk to inspire these teens to say, ‘Hey, look, maybe we’ll have a few more F1 Academy ladies from Singapore, right?’”
Goh ensured that the alliance happened. On October 1, Larsen, dressed in her sponsored Tommy Hilfiger attire, joined Goh and Irene Chua, the vice president and group publisher of Northstar Travel Group for Asia, at Mandarin Oriental, Singapore’s MO BAR for the “Fueling Ambition: Women in the Driver’s Seat” conversation. Here, the three women shared insights and inspiration with a multi-generational crowd eager to meet “the fastest girl in the world.”
But even before this event was announced, the hotel that Goh drives every day was uniquely poised to provide the ideal stay for the Singapore Grand Prix. The hotel is in the middle of the iconic Marina Bay Street Circuit. Many of the property’s sleek 510 rooms boast amazing views of the circuit, and its proximity to the racing paddock makes it a favored stay among competitors and fans.
Still, the hotel’s finest amenity may be its leadership. “In today’s hospitality industry,” Goh told us before Singapore’s F1 Academy race, “females have, to some extent, achieved equality. And many hotels are trying very hard to grow their numbers. Some would simply look around and say, ‘We want more females because we want to increase the numbers.’ Personally, I don’t believe in that, because if someone looks to me for a job, I don’t want the company to recruit me because I’m a woman.”
Goh continued, “Don’t allow others to underestimate you. When it happens, it actually fuels me to prove them wrong.”
Be it in fine hotels, F1 racing or any other industry, the playing field should be equal. And judging by the audience at Mandarin Oriental, Singapore’s fireside chat — the scene was filled with girls asking the panel questions and getting autographs scribbled across glossy photographs of Larsen — the next generation of young women is moving full speed ahead with the confidence it needs to succeed.
