Formula Flash x Inboxbox Collab by formulaflashinboxboxcollab

FLASH INBOX issue 01

BOX FORMULA

a motorsport substack collab

FLASH INBOX

INBOXBOX BY SASHA ROGELBERG www.inboxbox.substack.com X FORMULA FLASH BY OLIVIA HICKS www.formulaflash.substack.com

WORDS AND GRAPHICS BY SASHA ROGELBERG AND OLIVIA HICKS COVER IMAGE BY EDOARDO GIUDICI-SARAVAL VIA UNSPLASH

CONTENTS

JANUARY 2024

C RI

FORMULA 1'S STREETWEAR RENISSANCE 44

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CAREER WINS

COUNTRY

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UNITED KINGDOM

MERCEDES

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UNITED KINGDOM

TEAM MERCEDES

NOT YOUR BOYFRIEND’S FANTASY LEAGUE

CAREER WINS

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11 Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton TEAM

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DWAL GRI K

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TRYING NOT TO FUMBLE

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TEAM

Lewis Hamilton

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Lewis Hamilton TEAM

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Lewis Hamilton TEAM

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EDITORS FROM THE EDITORS FROM THE EDITORS FROM THE

Since its official beginnings in 1950, Formula 1 has always been just as much about money as about racing cars. In Italy, the end of World War II saw an economic boom. The expansion of commercial vehicle production and economic aid from the U.S. Marshall Plan resulted in the nation producing superior engines that powered the first F1 cars. Italian constructors such as Alfa Romeo, Ferrari and Maserati dominated in F1’s inaugural decade. This new era of 20th-century cars, beautiful as well as functional, drew nobility to the sport: Prince Bira of Siam (now Thailand) — who raced for Maserati, Gordini and Connaught — won the 1955 New Zealand Grand Prix. Aristocrats such as Sir Henry Birkin, a Third Baronet from Nottinghamshire; Prinz Hermann Viktor Maximilian zu Leiningen of Bavaria, son of Queen Victoria’s grand-nephew; and Caberto Conelli, Conte de Prosperis, of Piedmont all participated in grands prix from the 1930s to ‘50s.

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The early marriage between money and technology launched Formula 1 to the pinnacle of motorsport. In 2023, the sport valued itself at $17.1 billion. Reaching the apex of an industry is one thing; staying there is another. Sustaining an F1 team is expensive, and funding the best technology for the best cars is an F1 team’s No. 1 priority. Defending Constructors’ and Drivers’ Champions Red Bull Racing estimates a 2023 Formula 1 car costs about $15.9 million. The team was projected to make $510 million in revenue and paid three-time world champion Max Verstappen $55 million last year. We want to know where F1’s money comes from. Enter late-stage capitalism! With the rise of globalization and mass consumption, F1 has changed, and we’re interested in exploring how. As two Gen Z motorsport fans and journalists, we have the unique perspective of both loving F1 and being skeptical of it. We’re concerned by the survival and growth of the sport, along with its impact on our rapidly changing world. From the tobacco industry’s support of F1 to the rise of cryptocurrency sponsorships to F1’s diversifying fanbase and celebrity support to the sport’s influence on the NFL and fashion, we’re looking at the ways F1 is engaging with industry, marketing and audiences over the 34 pages of this zine. Enjoy, Sasha and Olivia page 2

FORMU LA 1'S STREE TWEAR RENIS SANCE Formula 1’s shift from couture sponsorship to streetwear relatability

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By Olivia Hicks

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NOWADAYS, A TRIP TO THE TRACK OR THE STEEL MILL ISN’T NECESSARY; COVERALLS CAN BE SPOTTED AT THE LOCAL SKATEPARK.

Formula 1 cars have never been accessible. They’re worth upwards of $20 million and, with a limited number crafted each season, are far and few between. That doesn’t stop spectators from wanting to test drive a championship-winning car.

The emergence of economical manufacturers in the sport helped bridge the gap between the viewer and the consumer. Fans can’t drive an energy drink, and most can’t scrounge up enough couch-cushion coins for a McLaren, but they can afford a Honda Civic and feel a bit of Red Bull’s championship-winning magic. That same business model is paying off as F1 expands from Rolexes to streetwear.

At the inaugural 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix, a season’s worth of driver clothing drops and fast fashion F1 merchandise came to a head.

Alpine paired up with the soccer superstar brand Kappa and the United Kingdom’s Palace Skateboards. Red Bull Racing repped Cherry LA, a California-based streetwear company. McLaren went the sporty route with vintage-inspired jerseys from Mitchell & Ness sold via the streetwear collaboration site, Culture Kings. While Haas and Mercedes teamed up with their usual style sponsors — Palm Angels and Tommy Hilfiger — the latter expanded the partnership to include Awake NY (you guessed it, a streetwear brand). The most hyped partnership boasted rapper A$AP Rocky as Puma’s poster child and released an exclusive drop of a mangled balaclava, painter’s paints and heatmap racing gloves inspired by the Grammy nominee’s nail art. The event itself partnered with UNDEFEATED, a sneaker store and apparel brand, and Maldon Golf with merch modeled by professional skateboarder Sean Malto. Most collaborations sold out over that third weekend in November. While F1’s foray into fashion at the much-anticipated Vegas race may seem like a shock to motorsport traditionalists, the signs have been there all along.

In 1983, United Colors of Benetton bridged the gulf between fashion and F1 by partnering with a string of F1 teams including Tyrell, Alfa Romeo and Toleman. Just as road car manufacturers saw their team successes trickling into the vehicle market, Benetton was the first fashion brand to show that on-track performance equated to increased sales, according to a brand study in the Journal of International Marketing. Benetton remained one of the few affordable brands associated with the elite racing series and only began i-

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ts runway appearances starting in 2019.

In 2020, Vogue reported that “street style was born at the Paris racetracks.” While France’s capital may have found its chic city style trackside, streetwear was born nearly 3,700 miles away in New York’s hip-hop scene, another 3,000 miles away on California’s coast and around the globe in Japan’s bustling streets. It isn’t a shock, then, that Japan’s domestic market for iconic vehicles and drag racing created a tight-knit bond with the country’s booming street style. In an odd mix of surf, skate, song and speed, streetwear’s all-over-the-place origins do have one thing in common: working-class roots.

Streetwear’s heavy reliance on working-class clothing staples and athletic wear comes straight from the automobile production lines in the heart of Michigan. From coveralls to balaclavas, blue-collar workwear has evolved parallel to speedways for decades. The term “blue collar” was coined from the denim and dark coveralls industrial workers would wear in contrast to the white button-ups of corporate yuppies. Racing suits weren’t required in the sport until 1963 when fire retardant coveralls became regulation. A decade later, fire-proof suits became the norm in the oil and chemical industries. Nowadays, a trip to the track or the steel mill isn’t necessary; coveralls can be spotted at the local skatepark. Stemming from humble beginnings, the friendship between racing and streetwear has largely graced less flashy speedways, with street racing and motocross acting as the major connections to the industry.

Red Bull’s entry into F1 was destined to bridge the gap. The brash and brazen energy drink company brought new color to the elite racing series in 2005. The team aimed to “win and to do it differently.” In just under 20 years, Red Bull has done just that with six Constructors’ Championship and seven Drivers’ Championship wins. The team turned a blind eye to the legacy, prestige and carefully crafted image that F1’s historical teams cherish so dearly. Rather, Red Bull puts 17-year-olds in 200-plus mile-per-hour cars, boasts about partying hard and seemingly always has colorful language on its tongue. Along with the energy drink and extreme sporting brand’s entry came a paddock guest list full of rowdy

skateboarders and BMX bikers. Now, staple brands in skateboarding are noticing F1. Supreme, a skate streetwear brand, first opened its doors in 1994 in Manhattan with a specific audience in mind: skaters. The company, however, made its success off of the increasingly popular concept of collaborations in the 90s. After Puma’s collab with Jil Sander in 1998, the era of streetwear partnerships commenced. But while other brands occasionally dropped a dual-name line, Supreme built its reputation in almost exclusively selling collaboration collections with the same limited quantity as designer fashion giants. In 2016, Supreme released a line of balaclavas in the streetwear and skateboarding brand’s Fall/Winter line. The mask, used on the slopes and speedway, entered into high fashion via streetwear’s influence. Before ski masks became a winter essential for the elites in St. Moritz, concealed the identities of UK drill rappers in London or graced the screen in Spring Breakers, balaclavas helped British soldiers survive the Crimean War’s frigid temperatures and adopted its name from the town of Balaclava in an 1854 battle, according to A History of Handknitting. Now, from Loewe to Stella McCartney, the masks hit fashion weeks across the globe as the trend took celebrities and content creators on TikTok by storm. Six years after Supreme’s release, GQ deemed balaclavas the year’s “must-have” item. As early as 2008, Supreme insisted that racing gear was on top of the trends. Over the last 16 years, the brand is one of the few that has embraced F1 along with producing motorcycle helmets. In 2014, Supreme sold a mechanic shirt with “New Formula Supreme ‘94 Performance Racing” printed on a patch and the breast pocket. A muscle tank, skateboard and beach towel with an edited photo of a Supreme-branded F1 car at the Monaco Grand Prix completed the racing side of the clothing drop. In 2021, the skating startup featured a cartoon F1 car crash. Streetwear brands like the Anti-Social Social Club and Off-White, a luxury take on street and skateboarding style, have even trickled their way onto driver helmets. Sean Gelael, a current World Endurance Championship driver and former Scuderia Toro Rosso F1 test driver, debuted a helmet inspired by a pair of Off-White sneakers for a 2018 F2 Grand Prix.

ss to the masses and more to a high-brow consumer. HUF, a professional skateboarding brand and sponsor, is a prime example of that tendency to stick within one tax bracket. The brand brought founder Keith Hufnagel’s 1980s New York hip-hop, streetwear and skate culture to California. Now one of the biggest street style brands, HUF partnered with Toyota Racing Development earlier last year to create a racing-inspired streetwear line. But the skate company is riding F1’s wave of popularity like so many others. HUF recently released an F1 car t-shirt in collaboration with Goodyear, complete with a HUF-branded paint job. Distinctly devoid of team allegiance, both Supreme and HUF’s F1 collections spell a hard truth about the growing popularity of motorsport; for mass audiences, it’s more about the trend than on-track action. F1’s jump in viewership over the last handful of years, in large part thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive, has coincided with the addition of the Miami Grand Prix and the Las Vegas Grand Prix. F1 used to be a foreign sport to the majority of Americans, but stop by any local mall and likely McLaren, Williams and F1 merchandise can be spotted in an Abercrombie or Pacsun store window. Even better, Puma offers an in-store sim racing experience along with a full line of BMW, Ferrari and Mercedes-branded merch. While F1’s fast fashion relevance seems contradictory to its lavish identity, it may just increase the sports’ $2.573 billion revenue stream, as reported by Forbes in 2022. That same year, F1 merchandise sales tripled in scale compared to 2021, according to Fanatics. Red Bull, Mercedes, Ford and Audi make the Forbes 100 most valuable brands list, slotted between F1 partners of present and past like Santander, Goldman Sachs, Heineken, Oracle, Amazon, Netflix and Marlboro. Luxury fashion brands Rolex, Chanel, Gucci and Louis Vuitton also made the ranking. But exceeding the majority of those brands in rank were fast fashion giants Zara and H&M. Both brands have recently debuted racing inspired, or specifically F1inspired, clothing items.

Other streetwear and skating brands lean towards the grittier racing series: motocross, off-roading, rally car and drag. Racing has always been symbiotic with streetwear, but F1, with its glitz and glamor, catered le-

page 6 Pro Skater Nico Hiraga at the 2022 Miami Grand Prix.

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A L I R O S

F1 STILL SCREAMS OLD MONEY F1 may be venturing into less luxe territory, yet it continues to keep up a high-class image. In May, Chanel’s 2023 Resort collection featured 66 racing-inspired runway looks. From the vague (checkered sweaters) to the obvious (a full racing suit), the line debuted in motorsport’s beating heart: Monaco. As leather racing jackets swept social media and became the “It Girl” trend throughout 2023, so did Chanel’s $4,450 white t-shirt emblazoned with a flower and a number five F1 car. In the last couple of years, everyone from Celine to Diesel to Alexander McQueen to Gucci has revved their creative engines in an effort to hop on the racing trend. F1 drivers have also taken an interest in luxury fashion. As F1 grows in the pop culture zeitgeist so too does the sport’s demand in fashion circles. Lewis Hamilton is a regular on the Met Gala pink carpet and Daniel Ricciardo’s stateside influence gained the Aussie an invite in 2023 with Thom Browne. Hamilton’s top challenger in the paddock fashion show, Zhou Guanyu, is a Dior ambassador. Even the drivers not flashing sequins or silk come race day find themselves in the front row of Louis Vuitton fashion shows. Now synonymous with high fashion, F1 is the subject of headlines like The Cut’s blunt “If You Love Luxury Fashion, You Should Watch Formula 1.” But F1’s runway reputation isn’t so much a revival as it is a continuation. In 2010, Hugo Boss, Hackett and Gieves & Hawkes predated the likes of Tommy Hilfiger by backing F1 teams. In 2014, Marc Jacobs designed a menswear collection inspired by motorsports with the mind behind the Palace Skateboards logo pairing up with the luxury brand. A year later, Marcelo Burlon turned to motocross and Vetements included racing leathers in its spring show.

Subsequent high-fashion collections have included Moschino’s F1-inspired men and boys’ summer collection and Prada’s racing details in 2016, Tommy Hilfiger’s 2018 Gigi Hadid racing runway show with

Lewis Hamilton seated front row and German fashion brand GmbH’s driving gloves that same year. Casablanca, a French high-fashion label, came out with a Monaco Grand Prix collection in 2021 soon after Ferrari launched its official fashion line. Streetwear’s ties to F1 may broaden the sport’s appeal by attracting non-traditional audiences, but collaborations aren’t necessarily affordable for the everyday consumer. In 2019, Forbes deemed streetwear the new luxury. The examples are endless. F1’s partnership with the Anti-Social Social Club and UNDEFEATED in 2020 included steeply-priced t-shirts, umbrellas, jackets and a helmet that is reselling with a $5,000 price tag attached. Supreme’s 2014 Monaco Grand Prix skateboard is reselling on StockX for $902. It originally sold on Supreme for $49. Aside from resale prices, Las Vegas proved just how much fans were willing to spend on team-branded exclusive merchandise. A letterman jacket from the Cherry LA x Red Bull Racing collab retailed for $1,200. Street style walks a narrow line as prices soar for both high-end collabs and its original everyday blue-collar workwear staples. Black American culture hailed in an era of streetwear popularity in the 80s and 90s as baggy denim and Air Jordans graced the global stage. As the workwear style hit the masses in waves — first the studio, then the skateparks and now on trendy teen’s “get ready with me” TikToks and in the front rows of Fashion Week — Timberland boots and Dickie’s painter pants prices spiked. Carhartt seems to lie at the center of the debate. A hoodie from Carhartt and Palace Skateboards’ 2023 collab goes for six times the amount of a Carhartt hoodie on a workwear site. The difference? The addition of “Palace” under Carhartt’s signature small logo. Carhartt also recently collaborated with L’Art de l’Automobile, a Paris-based luxury sports car dealer. But even regular workwear prices have risen by upwards of 70 percent, according to first-hand worker experiences reported to Input Magazine. While brand collabs target audiences on the opposite side of a Venn diagram, workers continue to bemoan the steady rise in workwear price tags. It’s difficult to

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point an accusatory finger at one group for causing the workwear gentrification era, but it’s much clearer who is carrying on the legacy.

be flaunted. As F1 decides exactly what it wants to promote on this curbside catwalk, the series stands at a crossroads.

IS F1 IMMUNE TO THE FAST FASHION TREND CYCLE?

One, the traditional route, is a gilded and golden brick road headed straight to the Casino de Monte-Carlo while the other offers relatability and visibility through mass-produced t-shirts at the risk of diluting F1’s carefully crafted image.

F1 hit record viewership, yet the attention of newer fans may be dipping as spectators complain of routine team dominance. The sport has gone through audience surges and slumps in the past, just stretched out at a gradual increasing and declining rate. Similarly, fashion — historically operating on a 20year trend cycle — has seen a rise and fall and rise again in popular brands. But this cyclical format is occurring faster than ever before. 2024 is expected to see 2014-2016 trends come to the forefront once again. Streetwear popularity, in contrast, hasn’t seemed to wane. Keeping a strong hold on the fashion scene over the past decade or so, its rise and fall seems miniscule. In large part, the style has continued on because of its practicality. While Carhartt may run its course on the runway, the heavy-duty overalls and sturdy denim have endured saw blades and paint spills since the brand’s 1889 founding. But how long can racing walk the runway or snag the interest of Black Friday shoppers before it’s overdone? F1 may not have to worry. The series may have relied on fashion shows to spread the word about the the sport in the past; however, brands now travel to the paddock for a chance to partner with F1. Thanks to Hamilton’s loud race weekend outfits, the paddock isn’t just a place for drivers to run from the garage to the catering tent, it's a place to be seen. Specifically, for brands to

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The sport’s exponential growth has made it split at the seams in an old norms versus new marketing strategy tug-of-war. Even the grid is cut in half in promoting themselves as a part of the one percent versus relatable.

“ IT CREATES A CLASH OF WHO HIS FANS THINK HE IS AND WHAT LINES HIS POCKETS. “ Brake the Formula (@breaktheformula), a TikTok and Instagram content creator, argued that this struggle has seeped into F1 drivers’ marketing tactics. “Lando Norris’ brand is relatability,” the account said in a TikTok. “He live-streams with chats in hoodies and maybe stolen sausages that turn into inside jokes amongst his fans. He wants his fans to know him and he makes his merch and the items he promotes relatively accessible for most of his following.” While the hoodie-wearing, inside joke-having boynext-door persona may be a go-to in F1’s new era of popularity, other drivers contradict themselves, @braketheformula said. “Charles Leclerc's strategy seems to be leaning into the stereotypes of Monaco. Of late, he markets himself to the uber-wealthy, promoting yachts, private villas, watches and jewelry. So what is Charles Leclerc trying to do with his public persona? In videos, he comes off

as funny, charming or incompetent while his marketing strategy seems to want his lifestyle to appear unattainable and impossibly cool. It creates a clash of who his fans think he is and what lines his pockets. His massive fanbase is not going to be able to buy 99 percent of what he promotes.” When it comes to fashion (cargo pants or Chanel), the brands that drivers promote and teams partner with determine which road is taken. But what if the line isn’t so strict? Streetwear may be F1’s golden ticket. In an industry full of contradictions (think grease stains paired with pearls) and an increasingly obvious fracture in financial awareness, the quietly disruptive style straddles luxe and easygoing. ff

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In July 2021, Formula 1 ushered in a new era: a $100 million, five-year deal with Crypto.com, a platform for buying and selling cryptocurrency. As if the deal wasn’t enough of a statement of intent, F1 Director of Commercial Partnerships Ben Pincus said in the sponsorship announcement that cryptocurrency was an “area we are very interested in.” A year later, F1 had 16 crypto sponsors across its 10 teams.

racing, with over 300 companies represented across the 10 teams’ partnerships and suppliers and their logos proudly embossed on drivers’ cars and overalls. If F1 is the highest echelon of motorsport, it also has the most eyes on it, and more advertising cash at stake with teams willing to pull some strings to keep brands happy. The Athletic’s Luke Smith has compared the innovation needed to circumvent design regulations

THESE LOOPHOLES HAVE BEEN AROUND AS LONG AS SPONSORSHIPS IN THE SPORT. Ahead of the 2024 season, the forecast for crypto’s role in the sport seems mixed: The 2023 season saw a dip in the sport’s crypto sponsors, with partnerships dropping to 13 across six teams. But the crypto market had a good year, valued at $1.7 trillion at the end of 2023, compared to $871 billion a year prior, Reuters reported. At this juncture, F1 could lean more heavily on crypto in the coming year — as indicated by Sauber’s selection of crypto casino Stake.com as their title sponsor — hoping the sector continues to grow despite its volatility. Or the declining trend in crypto partnerships, paired with advertising regulations and legal and financial troubles in the crypto sector, may signal a waning interest in the market. Regardless of the path F1 goes down, it’s clear it is at a crossroads. And because of crypto’s association with abundant wealth, rafts of regulations and ethical concerns, it’s a true microcosm of F1 and the corporations that fund it. Sponsorships in F1 are just as much of the sport as the

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to the metamorphosis needed to similarly evade advertising and sponsorship regulations. This corporate chicanery has become a baked-in part of the sport, no better illustrated than through livery loopholes — the cracks teams and brands find to allow advertisements on the side of F1 cars, despite regulations that would otherwise prohibit them from doing so. These loopholes have been around as long as sponsorships in the sport.

F1'S CORPORATE DAWN On track, the 1968 F1 season was revolutionary for its introduction of the front wing and full-face race helmet. Off track, 1968 would also mark the turning point in F1’s marketing landscape. At the South African Grand Prix, Team Gunston ran the first F1 car with a painted sponsor livery. Driver John Love’s car, a privately entered Brabham, was covered in Gunston cigarette’s iconic burnt orange.

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WHEN DOES ADVERTISING BECOME DANGEROUS?

One race later, Lotus would run a red, gold and white livery on Graham Hill’s car to represent sponsor Imperial Tobacco Gold Leaf. In the first quarter of the season, automotive giants Firestone, Shell and BP left F1’s sponsorship pool, pushing the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) to permit unrestricted sponsorships in the sport for the first time. Previously, cars reflected the colors of their teams’ countries of origin. Over the next 56 years, as constructors increasingly relied on sponsors to fund teams, sponsorships became more diverse, as did team liveries and, subsequently, team brands and identities. Sponsors would become synonymous with constructors: Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna’s era as McLaren teammates are easily recognizable by the red-and-white Marlboro McLaren. Michael Schumacher’s time in a Marlboro-red Ferrari over a decade later was equally emblematic. McLaren’s Vodafone-era chrome livery of the mid2000s would define Lewis Hamilton’s tenure with the team, and serve to complement boss Ron Dennis’ affinity for gray. And you can thank water technology company BWT for Force India and Racing Point’s Pink Mercedes and Alpine’s Baskin-Robbins blue-and-pink livery of 2022 and ‘23. Of course, sponsorship liveries have also been tied up with tales of infamy. Haas’ 2019 Rich Energy black-and-gold livery would not only mark a year of poor performance (they finished P9 in the constructors’ standings), but also of controversy. The energy drink brand suddenly dropped Haas at the end of the season, citing aforementioned performance, but the company was also embroiled in its own drama, including the ousting of CEO William Storey amid accusations that Rich Energy copied the logo of bicycle company Whyte Bikes. Over the past five decades, liveries have become synonymous with the identities of F1 teams. As crypto’s footprint in F1 grows, so too do concerns for the sector’s role in F1’s changing identity.

Imperial Tobacco Gold Leaf becomes Formula 1’s first commercial sponsor ahead of the 1968 season.

BIG TOBACCO’S 50-YEAR FLAME WITH F1

Everyone from finance experts to sports commentators have raised the red flag as beloved pastimes and cryptocurrency overlap. Not only does crypto advertising in sports pose ethical questions, but also credibility issues. It’s not so harmful for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani to convince a fan her next sneakers should be New Balances. It’s another thing to take financial advice from an athlete or buy cryptocurrency because it's a team title sponsor. Arthur Solomon, a former senior vice president and counselor at Burson-Marsteller and spokesman for the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee, argued that regulators have a responsibility to ban cryptocurrency advertising in sports. “There are professional investment advisors who are regulated by the government to give financial advice,” Solomon argued in an op-ed for CoinDesk. “The Federal Trade Commission and other government agencies shouldn’t permit someone, just because he can hit a home run or throw a touchdown pass, to give financial advice on public airwaves.” Athletes, including Floyd Mayweather Jr., Shaquille O’Neal and Stephen Curry, have either found themselves at the receiving end of crypto lawsuits or accused of promoting cryptocurrency for their own gain, also known as “shilling” in the financial sector. An odd collection of big-name celebrities were hit with legal charges by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in early 2023. From Lindsay Lohan and Soulja Boy to Jake Paul, the star-studded crypto circle used social media to promote TRX and BTT cryptocurrency, according to SEC legal filings. The commission argued that those involved failed to disclose receiving compensation for their posts. In a similar scandal, Kim Kardashian paid $1.26 million to settle a crypto dispute. The SEC said that, like other celebrities, Kardashian had failed to adequately inform followers of a $250,000 payment in exchange for promoting EMAX tokens on Instagram. Celebrities and athletes trading or investing in crypto isn’t novel. However, the currency and trading platforms are often policed by gray policies that leave

In 1974, West Germany enacts the Lebensmittelgesetz, or Food Law, banning TV and radio tobacco advertising.

Team Gunston uses a Gunston cigarette livery at the 1968 South African Grand Prix, the first time a Formula 1 car has displayed a sponsor.

The UK’s Social Services Committee asks for a ban on all tobacco advertising in 1980, following an industry commitment to cut poster advertising by 30%.

In 1993, the French cabinet votes to ban all tobacco advertisements.

Marlboro leaves McLaren at the end of the 1996 season, and tobacco brand West begins title sponsorship of the team instead.

Benson & Hedges becomes Jordan F1’s primary sponsor in 1996, leading the team to run an all-yellow livery and adopt the “Hissing Sid” mascot. Until 2005, Jordan would use the yellow livery, adjusting the text on the car’s side pods to accommodate local marketing regulations. “Bitten & Hisses,” “Buzzin Hornets” and “Be On Edge,” were some alternative designs.

In 1997, Philip Morris International becomes Ferrari’s title sponsor. The Marlboro logo would appear on the Prancing Horses’ cars until 2006.

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uneducated investors in legal trouble and fans financially vulnerable. Even athletes starring in Super Bowl commercials aren’t necessarily protected depending on what they disclose. Concerns over 2022’s fan-dubbed “Crypto Bowl,” a reference to the glaring cryptocurrency branding and advertisements, changed the game. The 2023 Super Bowl looked a little different as Fox Sports insisted there would be no cryptocurrency advertisements. Other sports are taking note. As cryptocurrency stands on a shaky and volatile foundation, the same loyalty in sponsors F1 has cherished previously has seemed to subside. Between 2022 and 2023, crypto sponsorship turnover swelled. Ferrari dropped its blockchain backer Velas, Red Bull ended its Tezos contract and Williams Racing cut ties with Virtua. Despite F1 teams rolling back crypto sponsorship and the U.S. cracking down on crypto crime, the highly volatile currency continues to grace more than half the grid. From McLaren’s double crypto partnerships with OKX and Tezos to Williams’ sponsor Kraken to Alpine’s crypto exchange investor Binance, cryptocurrency seems like the new tobacco in F1. Even as lawsuits ramp up, regulation remains vague and ever-changing; in countries with more strict laws that prohibit any kind of advertising or promotional material, motorsport teams are getting crafty.

CRYPTOCURRENCY’S ‘STAKE’ IN RACING During the 2023 F1 season, Alfa Romeo routinely swapped out its Stake.com title sponsor logo for Kick, a streaming platform. In host race countries with strict online gambling and cryptocurrency laws, a new paint job seems to do the trick for skirting regulations. Section 9.1.b of the FIAissued F1 sporting regulations allows for constructors to change liveries mid-season if the FIA and the Commercial Rights Holder agree. A team’s two cars must be “presented in substantially the same livery at every competition” if the two bodies fail to approve the new livery. The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement is entered in November 1998 by four major tobacco companies in the U.S. in order to settle lawsuits against the companies for tobacco-related health problems. The settlement money in part funded the anti-tobacco industry Truth Initiative and dictated the restrictions on youth targeting of tobacco marketing, including at sporting events.

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In 2000, Williams nix their Mild Seven livery, becoming the first F1 team to forgo a tobacco sponsorship since the introduction of sponsorship liveries.

In June 2003, the European Union passes the Tobacco Advertising Directive, which banned “cross-border tobacco advertising and sponsorship in the media other than television,” including sponsorship for events such as the Olympics and Formula 1 races.

Great Britain passes the Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act, enacted July 31, 2005, as the deadline to end tobacco sponsorship in "global events" such as Formula 1 races.

Stake, a self-described “crypto casino and sports betting” online platform, shot up in gross gaming revenue in 2022 nearly 25 times its $105 million 2020 revenue, reported the Financial Times (FT). In just eight years, Stake has transformed from an off-shoot of co-founders Ed Craven and Bijan Tehrani’s cryptobetting online dice game to a gambling platform with a retainer of high-profile celebrities and a revenue of $2.6 billion. Early on, the pair sought advice from Dan Friedberg, who went on to become the chief compliance and regulatory officer for FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange platform that collapsed in late 2022. FT reported that Friedberg previously gave advice to Ultimate Bet, a cryptocurrency gambling site that was fined for software espionage used to bet against players. Mercedes-AMG Petronas partnered with FTX until the company crumbled in November 2022. FTX rose to become the third-largest crypto platform with a value of $32 billion. As news of the company’s close relationship with Alameda Research trading firm became public, customers withdrew investment. Within a couple of days, the platform filed for bankruptcy. A year later, Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, was found guilty of seven conspiracy and fraud charges, including two counts of wire fraud conspiracy and two counts of wire fraud. BankmanFried denied the charges. In November, FTX sued Red Bull crypto sponsor Bybit for $953 million in assets and cash, according to the Wall Street Journal. For a touring circus like F1, Stake’s operation in legally ambiguous areas plays to the team’s advantage. A sizable number of the six million accounts registered to Stake.com are located in Asian countries like Japan where cryptocurrency laws are fuzzy at best, the FT found. On Jan. 1, Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber, formerly known as Alfa Romeo, announced the team would be referred to as Stake F1 Team, with Stake.com acting as title sponsor. Stake is the first online gambling and crypto title sponsor to have its name in bold among the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren. The team will likely be referred to as Kick F1 Team in a handful of races in 2024, according to Autosport. In countries such as China, where crypto and sports betting advertising is banned, swapping Stake for Kick will likely be regulation.

Ferrari introduces the red, black and white “barcode” livery in 2007. Some claimed that at 200 mph, the barcode blurred enough to resemble the Marlboro logo it replaced.

In the 2005 season, McLaren continues to be sponsored by West, but the “West” type on the side of their cars are replaced with driver names “Kimi” and “Juan Pablo.” This is the same strategic livery used in past years when local tobacco advertising brands were in place in countries such as Germany and France.

Ferrari removes the controversial barcode design after the 2009 F1 season.

But strangely, Kick’s principal stakeholder is Stake, with the company backed by Stake and co-founded by Tehrani and Craven. The temporary team name change serves as a convenience loophole for Stake shareholders, who will continue to profit from Kick. It’s not uncommon for corporations to have subsidiary companies or to be principal stakeholders for other corporations. In fact, it’s a very convenient way to skirt regulations well within the confines of corporate law — almost as if corporate law was designed to benefit corporate conglomerates in the first place. We’ve seen this in F1 before: After sweeping bans on tobacco advertising in the early 2000s, Ferrari swapped its Marlboro logo and Philip Morris International partnership with Mission Winnow, whose logo first appeared on Ferrari’s 2018 car at the Japanese Grand Prix. Mission Winnow is a “content lab” owned by Philip Morris International. Because Mission Winnow exists with so many degrees of separation from Philip Morris’ tobacco brands, it was able to appear on Ferrari’s cars (non-continuously) through 2021. Mission Winnow quietly renewed a smaller contract with Ferrari in 2022. Stake’s switcheroo may be familiar, but the StakeSauber partnership marks a new era in motorsports, one that could see fans supporting teams with vague stakeholder names rather than the sport’s beloved auto manufacturers.

custom fan-inspired logo spelling out “LOVE,” rather than its recognizable emblem. Ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix, McLaren teased its “stealth mode” campaign and pulled the cover off of a pitch-black paint job for the night race. The team’s nicotine pouch title sponsor was notably absent. In VELO’s place stood OKX, the second-largest cryptocurrency company.

“

Online gambling and crypto involvement has surged in just a few years as the slippery slope of sponsorship slickens. In 2020, 188Bet Sportsbook scored an unprecedented deal as the official sports gambling and betting partner for F1 Asia. In an odd shuffling around of illicit sponsors, crypto has become a scapegoat for teams with smokeless tobacco companies as title sponsors.

In both the Netherlands and Singapore, tobacco product and electronic cigarette advertising is outlawed. Rather than outright declaring the motive behind switching out the bootleg backer,

$4.9 BILLION WAS INVESTED IN CRYPTOCURRENCY STARTUPS AND ICOS IN 2017.

ROUGHLY 80% OF THOSE COMPANIES WERE SCAMS. McLaren has created a promotional strategy that builds the new car design around fan participation, influencer social media campaigns and the potential for a gold mine of headlines.

During the 2023 season, McLaren introduced three distinct liveries. On the surface, these Instagramhyped reveals were nothing more than swapping out the McLaren’s papaya orange body to celebrate significant races on the calendar. However, along with fan-commissioned art came a new sponsor logo.

F1’s return to the Shanghai International Circuit in 2024 poses issues for everyone involved. In a newly passed law, China banned online e-cigarette advertising and applied the country’s tobacco advertising laws to e-cigarettes and products, including deeming promotion in mass media, public areas, public transit and outdoor areas illegal.

VELO, a self-described “modern take on nicotine,” stretched the length of the car at the Silverstone circuit. In the Netherlands, the company sponsored a

Unlike in Singapore, McLaren won’t have the luxury of replacing VELO with a crypto stakeholder in Shanghai.

In February 2019, McLaren announces its partnership with British American Tobacco, creator of the VELO tobacco pouch brand.

At the end of the 2021 season, Ferrari drops Mission Winnow, a “content lab” owned by tobacco giant Philip Morris International, as their title sponsor. Philip Morris International continue to quietly partner with Ferrari.

McLaren draws controversy ahead of the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix for its VELO livery. The Netherlands had recently banned the sales of smoke-free tobacco, but because there were no regulations on tobacco pouch advertising, the papaya team was able to run the VELO livery, using the anagram LOVE on the side pod instead, a continuation of the brand’s “LOVE THE UNEXPECTED” campaign from a year prior.

Ahead of the 2022 season, McLaren reveals its VELO side pod livery. By the end of the 2020 season, tobacco companies spend an estimated $100 million in advertising, primarily with Ferrari and McLaren. According to anti-tobacco group Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products, Formula 1 had spent $4.5 billion in tobacco advertising over the course of its 70-year history.

In December 2023, Ferrari launches the Ferrari E-Lab in collaboration with Philip Morris International to “explore new energy-related technologies that could support the decarbonization journey,” part of Ferrari’s efforts to become carbon-neutral by 2030.

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At the beginning of the crypto-craze, the People’s Bank of China was ahead of the curve in banning national financial institutions from dipping a toe in crypto. The regulation went into effect in 2013 and since has extended to prohibit most cryptocurrency activities and promotions, including Bitcoin mining. While McLaren and Alfa Romeo may have swapped out a few logos, other teams are paying attention to McLaren’s debut sponsorship-swapping technology that graced the circuit at the start of the 2023 racing season. McLaren teamed up with Seamless Digital to create a screen on each side of the cockpit that allows for a rotation of sponsorship names. AlphaTauri will adopt the technology in 2024. As crypto takes over Big Tobacco’s hold on the sport, F1 operates more like a revolving door of sponsors rather than relying on one for a team identity. Even Stake’s title sponsorship contract is only for two short years. In 2023, F1 hit the 300 mark for the largest number of sponsors split among 10 teams in the sport’s history, according to Motorsport.com. Space on an F1 car, measuring roughly five by two meters, is limited. McLaren’s model for a commercial on wheels may be an increasingly popular option as teams swap out sponsors from race to race and year to year.

CRYPTO’S MORAL CATCH-22 But is crypto sponsorship such a bad thing? It’s difficult to pinpoint why exactly cryptocurrency sponsorship feels so icky. The Seven Pillars Institute argues that many of the digital currency’s ethical concerns stem from a lack of a central regulatory authority. In the U.S., crypto lawsuits are handled by the SEC, but its loose definition as both a trading commodity and currency leads some scholars to argue it should fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The SEC has only recently made a dent in the mountain of sketchy crypto cliques. In the groundbreaking Centra Tech case, a duo of Atla-

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ntic Beach twenty-somethings jumped on the crypto craze after losing their money with a botched Miamibased exotic car brand. Raymond Trapani and Sam Sharma founded an initial coin offering (ICO), alongside Robert Farkas and set up a fraudulent cryptocurrency business that aimed to revolutionize crypto by creating debit cards, allowing investors to spend their crypto in real-time. However, everything from the company’s team LinkedIn profiles and college degrees to the Visa and Bancorp-backing was fake. The business wasn’t only built on false pretenses, but the concept itself never saw fruition. The cards that Centra Tech had celebrities like Mayweather Jr. and DJ Khaled promoting were nothing more than prepaid Bancorp cards manually loaded with cash. As celebrities and athletes bought the Centra Card hype, everyday investors who were influenced to buy into the platform suffered significant financial losses as the company unraveled. Centra Tech’s SEC case wrote the “how to take down crypto” rulebook for the FBI. The Department of Justice used the case to send a message to the crypto market in a time of rampant fraud. One member of the company faced eight years in federal prison while the founder behind the operation left the courtroom with no prison time despite pleading guilty to a host of charges, including securities fraud, according to court documents. The SEC defines “securities” broadly as a range of investment interests issued to startup funders. The whole scam had a familiar flavor reminiscent of a Catch Me If You Can series of scheming with a Henry Hill mobster main character. Cryptocurrency began as a way to reinvent the financial sector so customers didn’t have to trust big banks with their money — a kind of anarchism. However, the opposite occurred. While some ICOs began as legitimate ways to digitize a global currency, the unregulated market without a central financial authority became a cesspool for scams, like Centra Tech, that fostered even more mistrust. The ICO title also allowed crypto business owners like Raymond to print money, putting the power of financial institutions in the hands of anyone who could create a website and had a chunk of change. As an epidemic of scamming and illegal arms and drugs trading taint-

ed crypto’s original concept, the biggest news outlets were calling the beginning of the crypto craze the best time to be a money launderer. Based on its original concept, an estimated $4.9 billion was invested in cryptocurrency startups and ICOs in 2017. Roughly 80 percent of those companies were scams, according to the Satis Group. In 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported that $4 billion was tied up in cryptocurrency scams, many of them Ponzi schemes. Even the largest cryptocurrency platforms with legal roots, like in the case of FTX, have been fraught with fraud and SEC violations. Tezos, one of McLaren’s current cryptocurrency sponsors and former Red Bull partner, was the biggest ICO when it launched in 2017. Despite its success, the company faced a handful of class action lawsuits, one alleging securities fraud that Tezos settled for $25 million, and a fine from the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failing to reveal the founder set up a crypto company while still working at Morgan Stanley, according to Reuters. The SEC has also recently targeted Alpine sponsor Binance and Haas sponsor OpenSea. The regulatory body sued Binance for an alleged sale of unregistered securities while a former OpenSea product manager was sentenced for NFT insider trading for personal financial gain. The real ethical question, at least in sports, lies in whether consumers believe teams have their best interest at heart when promoting crypto platforms. Companies may recover and celebrities can shell out millions, but, at the end of the day, investor and fan dollars are at stake. That sinking feeling some fans feel about the ethicality of crypto and its involvement in F1 is a longstanding sports tradition. F1 has long relied on the tobacco industry for money and publicity. Though big tobacco has had a five-decade love affair with F1— compared to crypto’s short situationship — the two industries’ involvement with F1 shares stark commonalities.

F1’S TOBACCO TIES IGNITE CONTROVERSY The tobacco industry’s involvement in F1 since the inception of sponsorship liveries highlights how partnerships with the sport serve highly regulated corporations.

As countries across Europe began to regulate tobacco advertising, Big Tobacco got smart, changing how they engaged with the public — who was growing more skeptical of the industry — and finding clever ways to navigate advertising bans. Jordan F1 team, sponsored by Benson & Hedges, was easily recognizable sporting a bright yellow car with black text proudly displaying the cigarette brand. But as tobacco sponsorship bans swept through Europe in the 1990s, starting in Germany and France, Jordan got creative. The 1997 car replaced the “Benson & Hedges” text with “Bitten & Hisses,” an homage to their de facto snake mascot Hissing Sid. The team was likewise the “Buzzin Hornets” from 1998 to 2000. In 2002, the team adopted the slogan “BE ON EDGE,” before Benson & Hedges and Jordan parted ways in 2005, after the enactment of Great Britain’s Tobacco Advertising and Promotion Act. Teams such as McLaren, sponsored by West in the late 1990s and early 2000s, took similar evasive action with their liveries, replacing the “West” side pod text with their drivers’ names, using the same font and coloring. Despite tobacco’s growing unpopularity in the early 2000s, cigarette companies were able to continue to grab ad space because of how complementary their product was with other F1 sponsors, such as TicTac (which implicitly promised to rid a smoker’s bad breath) and Budweiser beer (which helped reinforce a smoker’s image as rugged and masculine). In times when tobacco commercials were banned across Europe and the U.S., the Marlboro logo on a car’s side pod could regularly be seen on TV. Moreover, if a brand’s logo was slapped on a prominent part of an F1 car, and a photo of that car was used in another, unrelated ad, that brand would have increased exposure from a third party — having a spot on a livery was a true bang for cigarette companies’ buck. Crypto companies have taken advantage of similar loopholes. At the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix, crypto advertisements were banned as part of Singapore’s larger ban on crypto advertising. But despite efforts to curtail on-track evidence of crypto’s support of F1, logos on liveries and race suits made the ban futile. As Sergio Perez lifted the trophy on the podium, the By-

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bit and Tezos logos were clearly visible on his racing overalls. Netflix’s Drive to Survive has also created a thirdparty effect for F1’s recent sponsors. Though former Mercedes crypto sponsor FTX collapsed in November 2022, its logo would continue to appear in perpetuity on season 5 of Drive to Survive, giving the disgraced company — as well as other former sponsors — free air time. The sunsetting of tobacco’s support for F1 could predict crypto’s similar fizzle. Cigarette smoking in the U.S. peaked around 1964 before the United States Surgeon General’s Reports illustrated the health risks associated with smoking. Three years later, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) noted that it was “impossible for Americans of almost any age to avoid cigarette advertising.” After Reader’s Digest’s publication of the report in plain terms, more people learned about the adverse effects of smoking. A 2014 review in Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers found that in 1965, 42% of U.S. adults were smokers, compared to less than 20% by 2011. Public opinion of cryptocurrency since Bitcoin’s 2009 introduction has similarly faltered. Though 39% of adults who are familiar with cryptocurrency reported being not at all confident in its reliability and safety, that number grew to 75% in adults unfamiliar with cryptocurrency, the Pew Research Center found in a March 2023 survey. While similar in the trajectory of public opinion and the ability to evade sponsorship regulations, Big Tobacco has both been regulated and researched and has simply been around longer than cryptocurrencies. Since 2005, the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) has worked to address illicit tobacco trade, investment, advertising, promotion and sponsorships. The FCTC includes over 180 parties, including countries in the E.U. and was the first global public health treaty. Big Tobacco’s opponents may have argued this effort has not done enough to stymie industry growth, but there has still been abundant research on the shortand long-term effects of smoking spanning almost a century. Industry marketing strategies have been sim-

ilarly researched and understood. Despite heavy regulations, Big Tobacco’s power endures. The FTC reported an increase in cigarette sales in the U.S. from 202.9 billion in 2019 to 203.7 billion in 2020, the first increase the commission has measured in 20 years. The sheer survival of the industry is part of what makes it unique. It’s been entwined with F1 for over 50 years, creating some of the sport’s most iconic liveries, with regulatory loopholes allowing these liveries to become synonymous with teams such as Jordan, McLaren and Ferrari. That type of longevity no longer really exists in the sport today, as demonstrated by the increased use of Seamless Digital’s rotating screens for sponsorship ads. It’s likely that F1 teams won’t have trouble continuing to find sponsorship funding in one way or another, but the quickly shifting tides of cryptocurrency and brand longevity have threatened a key piece of F1’s identity: its branding. F1’s waning reliability on longterm sponsors is congruent with younger generations’ attitudes towards brands. A McKinsey & Company survey of Gen Zers in the U.S. and U.K. found that 62 percent of Zoomers were open to purchasing an item outside of their favorite brand, and 50 percent would be open to switching brands if an alternative were cheaper or of better quality. In some ways, F1’s rotating door of sponsors is a good thing: It means companies are being regulated and held accountable. But the sheer number of sponsors, many of them short-lived, could also be a harbinger for a new era of F1 where the iconic liveries that defined the careers of so many teams and drivers no longer exist. ff BOX

f1 x crypto.com

MCLAREN X OKX AND TEZOS

ALPHA TAURI

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Red Bull Racing x BYBIT

MERCEDES

FERRARI

ASTON MARTIN X CRYPTO.COM AND SOCIOS

ALPINE X BINANCE

WILLIAMS x Kraken

ALFA ROMEO X STAKE, SOCIOS, EVERDOME AND CRYPTODATA

HAAS F1 TEAM X OPENSEA

2023 CRYPTO SPONSORS

BY SASHA ROGELBERG 29

How Formula 1 Took a Page from the NFL’s PR Playbook

TRYING

NOT TO

FUMBLE

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When Liberty Media acquired Formula One Group in 2017, its goal was to emulate the NFL’s business and sporting models. From 2007 to 2016, nine different teams won the Super Bowl, including the New York Giants in 2008, who, in an upset, defeated the New England Patriots, the defending American Football Conference (AFC) champions the year prior. American football, in Liberty Media’s eyes, was unpredictable. Any team could show up on “any given Sunday” to win a game or even a Super Bowl.

And despite NFL games making up 93 of the top 100 TV broadcasts last year, its public image — aside from its recent association with Taylor Swift — has faltered with accusations of racism (the NFL has three Black head coaches in a league with 32 teams made up of 58 percent Black players) and cover-ups of sexual violence (in 2021, quarterback Deshaun Watson quietly settled civil lawsuits from over two dozen women suing him for sexual harassment and sexual assault, and the Houston Texans enabled Watson by issuing non-disclosure agreements to some of the women with whom he met).

By comparison, only three constructors had won world championships in Formula 1 during that same 10-year span. At the end of the 2016 season, MRT Mercedes left the sport, unable to find a new buyer for the team, and Force India and Williams both struggled to turn profits. What’s more, ahead of the 2017 season, Vice reported that United Kingdom viewership of F1 had fallen to a 12-year low of 390 million viewers. Inheriting what they saw as a predictable, financially unsustainable sport, Liberty Media made their expectations for F1 clear: “Our goal is to build a longterm healthy ecosystem and build a sport that has much of the same elements that the NFL has on any given Sunday – that anybody can win,” Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said in an April 2023 investor call. Liberty Media wanted to increase competitiveness, and sought to do so through the implementation of a cost cap, allowing smaller teams to have similar resources to legacy constructors; they wanted better racing and set in place 2023 regulations that would enhance a car’s ability to overtake another; they wanted to give fans access to drivers and created Netflix’s Drive to Survive to mirror the NFL’s expansive social media presence. In some ways, these strategies worked: In the first three races of 2023, all teams scored at least one point, a first since the introduction of the new points system in 2010. At qualifying for the 2021 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, the top eight drivers drove within a .487second margin, the closest qualifying since 2012. In other ways, both F1 and the NFL have shown signs of recent struggle. Sports Illustrated reported in July 2023 that ABC lost 25 percent of its F1 viewership of the Miami Grand Prix broadcast compared to 2022. Buzz Radar found in a September 2023 case study that social media mentions of F1 hit 70.2 percent in the first five months of the year amid a lack of title fights.

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Meanwhile, F1 has come under recent criticism for its growing presence in the Gulf. In March 2023, over 20 UK Members of Parliament (MPs) expressed concerns over F1’s expansion to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, which, according to the MPs, have “questionable human rights records,” including high rates of incarceration, particularly of political prisoners. The two sporting industry giants are in the constant throes of preserving and evolving their brands internationally. They’ve also demonstrated an interest in building a relationship beyond taking pages from PR playbooks. The mingling of the two sports, from athletes investing in teams to sharing venues, goes beyond wanting to build a mutual audience and overcome respective slumps with each other’s help. The bigger these two sports get, the more they rely on being immune to the controversies associated with their expansion.

PERKS OF A PARTNERSHIP Though F1 may only race at the Miami International Autodrome surrounding the Hard Rock Stadium for one weekend out of the year, its presence is felt there year-round. It’s hard to miss the 190,000-square-foot paddock complex overlooking the 3.36-mile race track on the perimeter of the Miami Dolphins stadium. Since the NFL team began hosting F1’s traveling circus in 2022, Dolphins owner Stephen J. Ross and CEO Tom Garfink-

Organizers for the inaugural grand prix admit to having lost money after the 2022 event, which was deemed lackluster by drivers and fans. The 57-lap race was decidedly sleepy, and the fresh track’s rough tarmac was, according to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, better suited for karts than F1 cars. But with a 10-year contract with F1, Miami coursecorrected the next year, and in the process, increased the local NFL team’s presence at the event. Organizers decided to bring the paddock inside the stadium and construct the 190,000 square-foot, three-tiered Paddock Club building that would host 6,000 guests on the grand prix weekend. At the 2023 Miami Grand Prix, players Tua Tagovailoa and Jaelan Phillips put drivers through fake combine training, with scores posted on the stadium’s leaderboard. Later, F1's George Russell took Phillips along for hot laps in a Mercedes AMG GT-R supercar. Sports outfitter Mitchell & Ness partnered with McLaren to create a line of jersey-style merch ahead of the Grand Prix weekend, a reprise of a similar line they launched ahead of the 2021 U.S. Grand Prix. But after the May race, F1’s presence continued to be prominent at the Hard Rock Stadium.

el have been intentional about deepening the connections between the two sports at Hard Rock Stadium. Garfinkel is part-owner of the Miami Grand Prix. “The Miami Dolphins is our core business, obviously, it’s why we exist and why we’re here,” Garfinkel told The Athletic. “But the race is a very significant investment and a very significant business for us now. Miami has been interested in growing itself as a sports epicenter for decades. The Hard Rock Stadium hosted the MLB World Series with the Miami Marlins in 1997 and 2003. Since 1984, they’ve hosted the Miami Open tennis tournament. In 2020, it hosted Super Bowl LIV, bringing in 4,500 new jobs to South Florida and an economic impact of $571 million, according to the Super Bowl Host Committee and Miami Beach commissions. Finding the same success from the Miami Grand Prix two years later was more challenging.

Though the garages and pit areas have been emptied and used for hospitality, they still display signs with driver names and photos and contain a few F1 simulators. Inside the stadium, there are still photos of drivers and Dolphins players together. Dolphins season ticket owners will have access to a ticket package, with a section of the Turn 18 grandstand reserved for the football fans on the Grand Prix weekend. The relationship between the NFL team and F1 has the opportunity to be symbiotic, Garfinkel believes, with the Dolphins bringing in new potential F1 fans, and European sports fans helping the NFL expand internationally.

THE NFL GOES GLOBETROTTING In 2007, the NFL launched its International Series, a string of regular-season NFL games played overseas. The inaugural game between the New York Giants and Miami Dolphins brought over 81,000 fans to London’s Wembley Stadium. Originally held exclusively at Wembley, the International Series had grown by 2016, expanding to Twickenham Stadium in London and Estadio Azteca

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in Mexico City. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London hosted its first NFL game in 2019, and the series expanded to Germany in 2022, first to Munich’s Allianz Arena and then to Frankfurt’s Deutsche Bank Park, which hosted its first NFL game in 2023. Arena Corinthians in São Paulo, Brazil, will hold its first International Series game later this year. The International Series is an expansion of the NFL’s American Bowl, an international pre-season game played from the 1986-2005 seasons.

Ricciardo posed for a picture with McLaren’s Lando Norris and fans at a burger restaurant in Australia in January 2024, with Ricciardo wearing the same Allen jersey.

The NFL announced in November 2023 that the International Series would have five total games. The sport is considering hosting an upcoming Super Bowl in London sometime after 2026.

Ahead of the 2022 NFL season, Lewis Hamilton joined the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group, owners of the Denver Broncos who bought the team for $4.65 billion that same year. The group is helmed by Walmart heir Rob Walton.

The introduction and expansion of the International Series has been a definitive success. The 2022 Munich game where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers faced off against the Seattle Seahawks generated 70.2 million euros for the city. With 5.8 million U.S. viewers, according to the NFL Munich Game Impact Assessment study, it became the most-watched international NFL game. "The economic and social impact generated from our first regular season game is impressive and underlines the positive contribution the game had on the city of Munich and beyond, and we look ahead to playing future games in the country in the coming years." The MLB and NBA have both expanded internationally, as well. The NBA has hosted its Global Games since 1978 (with McLaren driver Oscar Piasti attending an NBA Paris game on Jan. 11, 2024), and the MLB has played over 200 games across 11 countries over the past 30 years. The expansion of the NFL across the pond and beyond is part of a larger effort to reach a $25 billion revenue goal by 2027. The growth of American football across Europe is evidence of the European interest in the fanfare and flourishes of American sports. It’s a similar model that U.S. grands prix organizers are embodying with their focus on the fan experience. F1’s earnest love of Americana has helped these efforts. Drivers such as Daniel Ricciardo, who has taken up a friendship with Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, have provided inadvertent marketing for the NFL team. Ricciardo appeared in a December 2022 behindthe-scenes video on the Bills’ YouTube channel showing his experience at an NFL game. Most recently,

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Other drivers have taken their interest in the NFL a step further.

TEAM INVESTMENTS

Hamilton’s connections to the team ran deep before he became a minority owner. He hosted Broncos quarterback Russell Wilson and his wife Ciara at the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix and is friends with co-CEO of Ariel Investments and Starbucks chairperson Mellody Hobson. (After the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Hobson invited Hamilton to spend Christmas with her and her husband George Lucas.) But the other driving factor for Hamilton to join the Broncos ownership was the team’s diversity and equity efforts. Hobson’s Ariel Investments is a Minority Business Enterprise investment company, meaning it is at least 51 percent owned by ethnic minority individuals in the U.S. The NFL has never had a team with a Black majority ownership, and Hobson’s presence on the Broncos’ ownership team — as well as former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s minority ownership — was a statement of intent from the Broncos on increasing Black leadership within the sport. "I also want to acknowledge the bond that I have with the players, who like me, have had to overcome a lot in their lives, and I know the amount of focus and discipline it has taken for them to get here," Hobson said at an August 2022 press conference announcing her partial ownership. Hamilton’s own desire to increase equity in motorsport through the Hamilton Commission and Mission 44, aligned with the values of the team, though the DEI efforts within NFL minority ownership will likely remain a performative drop in the bucket. But DEI commitments aside, Hamilton also brought clout to the Broncos. After attending a Dec. 10, 2023 game against the Los Angeles Chargers, Hamilton’s i-

nstagram post of himself wandering through SoFi stadium in a Broncos jacket racked up nearly 700,000 likes.

Beyond the NFL and F1’s desire for a shared audience is the shared need for growth, or at the very least, survival.

The interest in team ownership goes both ways.

At the beginning of the 2022 NFL season, New York magazine editor Will Leitch meditated on how the league has been able to continue to enthrall audiences despite recent setbacks and controversies.

In October 2023, Super Bowl defending champions Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce became the latest stakeholders of Alpine F1 Team.

“It has made its mission to be all things to all people, like Coca-Cola or Chevrolet,” he wrote. “And it has succeeded magnificently.”

Private investment firm Otro Capital announced in June a $218 million investment in the team, a 24 percent stake. The group includes actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, who helped transform Wrexham AFC with a $2.5 million investment in 2020, as well as golfer Rory McIlroy, heavyweight boxer Anthony Joshua and footballers Trent AlexanderArnold and Juan Mata.

An American football game is the ultimate form of escape, he argues. By evading pushy questions about scandals and lawsuits and employing a too-big-to-fail attitude, the NFL has been able to rely on audiences simply forgetting about or overlooking their misgivings to return to simply watching football. As the NFL becomes more institutionalized — expanding to Europe and working to add eight more teams to the league by 2034 — it becomes easier for them to bulldoze over dissenters.

“I think everybody can see the appeal," Mahomes said after the ownership announcement. "I've been able to get to a couple races now, seeing the environment, and then obviously watching Drive to Survive on Netflix you see how competitive it is.”

Formula One Group appears to be taking a similar approach: At the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, despite missiles and drones hitting an Aramco oil depot near Jeddah about 10 miles from the circuit, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and team principals insisted the event go on as planned.

A pet project for the NFL stars, their investment has the opportunity to transform an ailing Alpine team. 2023 saw an extensive turnover of leadership within the French team, with CEO Laurent Rossi being replaced in July by Philippe Krief. Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane left a few weeks later after the Belgian Grand Prix, and Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry left at the end of the season to join Williams. Alpine also fell to P6 in the 2023 constructors’ standings after finishing P4 the year prior.

McLaren quietly announced in December 2023 that Bahrain's sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat will take full ownership of McLaren Group, of which the F1 team is a subsidiary. Since the announcement, McLaren has continued its online branding strategy of highlighting driver personalities and western brand partnerships. The week of the ownership announcement, the team’s social media accounts pushed the usual Christmas content, and on Jan. 11, McLaren’s Extreme E team announced a NEOM McLaren XE ODYSSEY 21 Lego product, a companion to the F1 Lego Technic released in 2022. With a churning content mill, it was easy for McLaren to bury connections to the Gulf’s alleged “sportswashing.”

It remains to be seen how the investment will impact Alpine in the coming years. After Reynolds and McElhenney’s investment in Wrexham, they were credited with helping the team advance to the English Football League in April. Their FX docuseries Welcome to Wrexham publicized the team’s journey.

SUPERFICIAL EFFORTS GET SERIOUS

None of the above connections between the NFL and F1 will be the panacea to helping the other survive. Many are superficial or self-indulgent. But they do serve to help each sport expand their reach and broaden their institution, ultimately helping the other preserve their too-big-to-fail status. BOX

The bottom line of all these efforts is obviously to grow the respective sports and to do that, there’s a focus on exposure and growing audiences through the investment in fan-centric experiences and novelty, a return to the ethos Liberty Media is borrowing from the NFL to enhance F1.

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W E N RID G ALK W A ER

BY SASHA ROGELBERG

After 25 years, Martin Brundle’s grid walk has become a clash of Formula 1’s old guard and new priorities Martin Brundle will not play the air guitar.

In one of the most watched 2023 interviews, Brundle stops Machine Gun Kelly on the grid ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix, clueless to the interview that would follow. After Brundle introduces himself, welcoming a dazed Machine Gun Kelly to the grid. “I have no idea what you said, but thank you.”

The interactions that follow are cordial, if not forced, and a little nonsensical, with Brundle curious about the rapper’s interest in the business of Formula 1. But then Machine Gun Kelly turns the question on Brundle: “What do you think of my business?” Brundle keeps his head, saying that the music industry and F1 have always shared a synergetic relationship. The interaction that followed — Machine Gun Kelly asking Brundle repeatedly to do an air guitar, or air piano, and Brundle repeatedly refusing — would suggest the relationship is anything but synergetic. page 26

Since 1997, Brundle has hosted grid walks, braving the gauntlet of F1 personnel and celebrities lining the track of each circuit, producing off-the-cuff interviews that range from informative to absurd. Recently, as F1 has grown its wealth of sponsorships and popularity, a track once solely lined with pit crew and drivers has become overflowed with celebrities, whose interest in the sport varies greatly — as does Brundle’s success interviewing them. As a motorsport great tries to connect with the big names representing big brands, the interactions that follow represent the meeting of the past and future of the sport. How well these two eras gel could be indicative of what’s to come in F1. The incongruity of Brundle’s unassuming presence and earnest approach to question-asking with high-profile celebrities is part of the grid walk’s charm. Brundle, though unobtrusive, is a giant of F1 — considered one of the greatest drivers to never win a grand prix, and rival to Ayrton Senna in F1’s feeder series. He’s clearly qualified to be asking questions to grid-walkers, but the success of those interviews relies heavily on the willingness of the interviewee to engage with Brundle’s distinct British awkwardness. At the 2023 British Grand Prix, for example, actor Cara Delevigne snubbed Brundle of an interview despite Brundle insisting that individuals on the grid prior to a race are required to speak with the media. Delevigne later said she was asked to decline an interview, and Alfa Romeo, who hosted her, tweeted, “Respect goes both ways: nobody should be placed in an uncomfortable situation or forced to do things against their will.” The interaction was inconsequential but the implications were clear: Why host celebrities at an event that they don’t seem to want to engage with? It wasn’t always like this. At the 1997 British Grand Prix, a young Brundle walked up a sparsely populated grid ahead of the race looking for familiar faces to interview. “Rubino,” Brundle calls out, placing a hand on Rubens Barichello’s shoulder. He asks him how the Brazilian driver will fare starting at the back of the grid after three engine failures the day prior.

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At one point, Brundle moves to the side to let a car drive past him, not batting an eye. Four years later at the 2001 British Grand Prix, the grid before lights out was noticeably busier. At this grand prix, Brundle trials a new segment of his grid walk, “Marty’s Random Person.” He spots a man who ends up being a French journalist who predicts that Mika Häkkinen will win the race. Brundle notes that the grid is full of celebrities, but the audience watching doesn't see them. Instead, we see Brundle poking fun at a retired Damon Hill’s luscious long locks and trying to ascertain information about car set-ups and team morale based on his interview snippets. The interviews are a trove of F1 lore. Two decades later, though the format of the grid walk remained the same, its content had shifted to accommodate the growing celebrity population on track. In a recent flashpoint, Brundle attempted to interview Megan Thee Stallion, a guest of Red Bull at the Grand Prix (and brand ambassador of CashApp, one of Red Bull’s sponsors) at the 2021 U.S. Grand Prix. Though Megan Thee Stallion seemed interested in speaking with Brundle, her bodyguard shut down the interview, saying Brundle couldn’t speak with the rapper. “I can do that because I did,” Brundle replied. The saying would later appear in Brunde’s Twitter bio and in several meme iterations. But beyond the conduct of the interviewees or their handlers, the very presence of celebrities on the grid has caused controversy. At the 2023 Spanish Grand Prix, Brazilian footballer Neymar stayed on track even after the grid walk period, standing on the grass at the start of the race’s formation lap. The footballer’s potentially dangerous situation forced the FIA to crack down on grid walk access. Fans are left wondering why celebrities show up to the event if they’re going to act clueless or entitled. After all, F1 tickets are expensive — ahead of the Las

Vegas Grand Prix, drivers such as Daniel Ricciardo called on F1 to make the sport more accessible to those across socioeconomic lines. The unlimited access celebrities are granted in return for what fans deem as little interest in the sport itself has been criticized. Even Brundle himself has commented on the influx of famous faces on the grid: “I like to call out some of the celebs that I think are just using the grid a little bit if I'm honest,” he told the Sun in November 2021. “They don't really have a passion.” "I know there are millions of fans at home going 'I should be on that grid. I'm a massive Formula 1 fan, not them.’” If F1 cars are becoming moving billboards, then F1 grids and garages are the new red carpets. Celebrities, even if they are fans of the sport, can get free advertising by simply being present at grands prix. This is the new reality of the sport. And if Brundle is to continue his grid walks, he has an important decision to make: How much will he engage with celebrities, and how much will he push back and snub them? How much will he accept the direction the sport is heading in, giving increased access and attention to F1’s deep-pocketed supporters? The dilemma hardly pertains to just Brundle. Every member of F1’s old guard, even loyal fans, must determine the amount of frills the sport needs. And in exchange, the Formula One Group and FIA guiding the direction of the sport must figure out how much dissent from F1 purists they want to consider. BOX

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Max Verstappen

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How women are infiltrating the fantasy racing space while disrupting the sports industry altogether

When Maeve White first sat down to watch Netflix’s Drive to Survive in 2020 with her now-fiance, she didn’t think it was much more than a show about cars — something she had never shown interest in before. Now, the 28-year-old shares technical tire analysis, driver market features and race breakdowns with her nearly 20,000 TikTok followers. In between trending TikTok sounds and breaking news, White invites viewers to tag along as she updates her Formula 1 Fantasy roster. F1 Fantasy dropped in 2018 as a way to grow buzz around the elite racing series stateside and capitalize on the lucrative fantasy football market, a sector that brings in 29.2 million participants annually, according to Statista Research. By 2023, the F1 game had reached 2.3-plus million global players. While F1 did not respond to requests for user demographic data, women make up a larger chunk of both the fantasy sports market and F1’s viewership base than ever before: In November 2023, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali reported that 40 percent of the sport’s global fanbase was female, an 8 percent increase from 2017. Despite record female engagement, fantasy sports haven’t always landed with female audiences. The words “fantasy” and “sports” conjure up an image of a dimly lit man cave with maybe a few beer cans strewn about. A “welcome female sports fans” banner doesn’t quite fit into the picture. But the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association (FSGA) is pushing against that narrative. The advocacy group, describing itself as the “voice for 60 million fantasy sports players in the United States and Canada,” wants to take fantasy sports’ reputation as an activity solely for mom’s basement dwellers and widen its appeal. The FSGA has ramped up fantasy sports marketing to women in recent years, seeing a significant rise since the association first began collecting player data in 2017 with the help of research company Angus Reid. In 2022, 35 percent of fantasy players were female, a jump from 29 percent in 2017. “It's a more inclusive space than it ever used to be,” Paul Charchian, former chair of the FSGA and current co-chair of its research committee, said. “[It’s] a more welcoming space for [people] outside of its traditional demographic.” Fantasy sports got its name in the mid-1980s. By the end of the decade, an estimated 500,000 people participated in sports prediction and monitoring games. While official fantasy sports leagues have grow-

by olivia hicks

n exponentially in popularity since (despite a dip in 2004, 2005 and 2009), the concept far outdates its name. In the mid-19th century, a coin and springpowered contraption allowed fans to predict baseball outcomes. It wasn’t until the 1960s that baseball’s statistics-heavy layout gathered fans in forecasting on-base percentages and batting averages and heralded the fantasy format known today. Fantasy sports may teach players Stats 101, but not everyone is convinced by the game’s significance or legality.

“It's a more inclusive space than it ever used to be.” “For a long time, people didn't understand where fantasy sports was relative to gambling,” the FSGA said. “A lot of the bigger [sports] leagues just didn't feel comfortable making investments in fantasy sports.” But media magnates saw a revenue stream in fantasy sports that outweighed its risks and invested when fantasy sports was just beginning to boom. ESPN showed investing early was profitable and set the sports media company up to become the most popular place to play, according to the FSGA. The fantasy market is only projected to swell. Business Wire predicts the global fantasy sports market revenue to grow at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14 percent by 2026. Fantasy NFL’s $70 billion industry value is expected to surge to greater heights as well, according to Forbes.

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Racing’s slow fantasy growth stateside Like baseball, motorsports is an overflowing cup of stats. The F1 game allows users to get as deep into the data as they prefer and use driver stats, like Charles Leclerc’s record for the most pole positions a driver has failed to convert to wins, to make strategic strategy decisions. With $100 million in the bank, players can choose two different constructors, or teams, and seven drivers. In the 2023 edition of F1 Fantasy, users could transfer two drivers ahead of each grand prix, taking out the traditional user-to-user trade action of fantasy sports. Players scored points in 2023 for overtakes, finishing position, team rank and the fastest pit stop times. A quick search reveals Reddit threads with detailed driver valuation instructions and lengthy YouTube videos explaining how to stretch the team budget. The rise in motorsport content creators on social media platforms has transferred closed-door strategy meetings to X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok. “I saw F1 posted the top selected drivers, and I literally had these exact same drivers on my team,” White recalled. “I ended up posting about that, and then I just saw that there were tons of questions in the comments: What is this? Is this an app? Is this a website? How do I sign up? How does it work?”

White said she wouldn’t have been able to identify what a “good” stat was in the sport. Fantasy sports’ male-dominated culture didn’t help ease the daunting task of joining a league. Despite this, fantasy football has seen the greatest spike in female participation. A whopping 79 percent of fantasy players participate in fantasy football in the U.S. and Canada, while women make up 35 percent of those involved, according to the FSGA. Fantasy motorsports are growing at a slower pace. In 2022, only nine percent of fantasy players participated in NASCAR with 13 percent participating in daily fantasy games. “We only have three out of the 2,000 [surveyed] that answered F1,” the FSGA said. “We know F1’s growing here, and it's super obvious, and the Las Vegas event [is] the indicator of how much it's grown here, but we really are not seeing it meaningfully gain here yet… I'm sure it will come in time. Every sport that gets big ends up getting a sizable fantasy following at some point.”

“That rang this bell that not that many people actually know what this is.”

F1 is big.

The 2023 season’s sprint format and altered fantasy points system meant White’s direct message inbox and comment section were filled with users asking for more information.

The elite racing series brings in one billion viewers over a season with U.S. viewership rising from 500,000 in 2018 to 1.4 million in 2022, according to ESPN.

For White, the beauty of fantasy racing lies in the different levels of engagement. While White attended the U.S. Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, in October and religiously checks F1’s social media accounts for breaking news, other fans occasionally check in with the sport come race day. White acts as an interpreter between the two camps.

While F1 has all the ingredients for success (growth in the American consciousness and among female spectators), fantasy sports haven’t always stuck in sports-obsessed countries. In the United Kingdom, fantasy soccer failed to stack up to the nation’s robust and established sports betting industry, the FSGA said.

“There's still a lot of people who are what I would call ‘novice’ F1 fans,” White said. “[There is] still a lot of room for people to get more and more involved.”

Fantasy sports’ American roots and F1’s official fantasy sponsorship may improve fantasy racing’s chances, but that's only possible if popularity remains consistent.

Before F1, White had never joined a fantasy sports league. She doesn’t want new fans to feel the way she did as an occasional football spectator.

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“[Fantasy football] definitely seemed really intimidating to me as someone who ‘casually’ watched football,” White said. “I would go to a bar and watch a football game and know how the point scoring worked and generally understand what's happening but definitely don't have the level of detail to know the best running back in the country or the best offensive lineman.”

Despite record viewership in recent years, the 2023 Miami Grand Prix saw a 25 percent dip in U.S.

viewership — something fans collectively attribute to Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s dominant winning streak. The interest and participation of fantasy players over the course of any sporting season is correlated with players’ team success and failures, said the FSGA. F1 Fantasy players may have not been motivated to update their driver lineup come September when there seemed no end in sight to Verstappen’s recordbreaking ten consecutive wins, but White sees a silver lining in the monotonous wins. “There were obviously other teams like Mercedes that were dominating [previously]. Maybe it's some sort of pendulum that swings at some point or [another] when Red Bull isn’t dominating anymore and then people get excited again,” White said. “With other sports, there's something fun about cheering for the underdog; the [New England] Patriots in football for a while were the most dominant team. People kept watching because they wanted someone to beat the Patriots or because they're Patriots fans and wanted to continue watching to see their team dominate.”

Social media brought a new era of fantasy sports Making up as much as 64 percent of new fans and 40 percent of total viewers, women and girls are shaking up the sport while carving out an online community. Although these DRS devotees are taking over TikTok, female fans are also, in the case of White, infiltrating the male-dominated space of fantasy racing. 2023 was a big year for women in sports. As Taylor Swift’s relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce brought more women into the football stands and the stardom of female professional basketball players increased, women are reclaiming the old boys’ club of basketball brackets and competitive cliques. But F1 managed to stray from the pack as female content creators changed the way F1 social media teams interact with fans and create viral content. It’s hard to ignore not just the purchasing power of female racing fans, but also their swift impact on the sport’s marketability and online fan space.

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F1 content creators are attempting to create a community in an increasingly digital fantasy landscape. While F1’s mega-league of faceless usernames creates a lower-stakes entry into fantasy sports, it’s also fractured a bit of its magic.

“In the old days, people would have to score it by hand and, to trade drivers [or players], call a commissioner on the phone and ask him to make that trade,” the FSGA said. Accessibility may have increased with the age of the internet as barriers to playing broke down, but the F1 game’s anonymity doesn’t always allow for community building.

MEN

White’s online platform has challenged that as she creates leagues with friends and followers. When White started creating content on social media, she was surprised by the amount of men who liked and commented on her posts, something she attributes to F1’s traditionally male audience. In the couple of years since she started her account @f1nalcorner, White’s engagement demographics have shifted alongside F1’s viewership, welcoming more women and Americans into the sport. “[Now engagement is] 40% female and 60% male,” White said. “But I think at one point it was probably closer to 20:80.” Women attempting to break the glass ceiling in racing aren’t always taken kindly or seriously. Motorsport is traditionally male-dominated and caters to Europeans. An American woman sharing thoroughly researched technical information in a TikTok format contradicts that image. As fangirl culture rises, a section of male F1 fans has pushed back against the term “fanboy” in an attempt to degrade women’s interest in the sport. Other fans gladly label themselves as such. While White firmly expressed there are welcoming groups within the sport, especially one-on-one interactions, her comment section hasn’t always reflected a safe space for girl power. “I really just try not to take it seriously,” White said. “Obviously, when you read it that sucks, but at the same time, there are so many people clearly engaging by commenting and sharing that I just don't really take it personally.” White and her fiance’s favorite comment to quote is “Women detected, opinion rejected.” At the end of the day, comments are brushed off, made a joke of and serve as fuel to bring even more women into the sport. ff

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CREDITS 01

PHOTO VIA PUMA

PHOTO VIA @NICOTHEDUFFLER ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO BY RUBEN GUTIERREZ VIA UNSPLASH

PHOTO VIA CHANEL RESORT 2023 COLLECTION

PHOTO BY CORTEIZ VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO BY TENSHI VESTE TANZE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO BY THE SEATTLE HARDWARE COMPANY VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO BY ONI VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO OF PETER REVSON VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO VIA @DANIELRICCIARDO ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO VIA SUPREME

PHOTO VIA STOCKX

PHOTO VIA PUMA

PHOTO VIA PALACE SKATEBOARDS

PHOTO VIA MALBON GOLF

VIDEO SCREENSHOT VIA RED BULL RACING

PHOTO VIA CHERRY LA

PHOTO BY ERIK HANSMAN VIA UNSPLASH

PHOTO BY ANDREW PONS VIA UNSPLASH

PHOTO VIA DECKORATE

PHOTO VIA STOCKX

PHOTO VIA SUPREME

PHOTO VIA STAKE F1 TEAM ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO VIA STAKEF1TEAM ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO VIA @DANIELRICCIARDO ON INSTAGRAM, MITCHELL & NESS, FERRARI AND UNSLPASH

PHOTO VIA @LEWISHAMILTON ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO VIA @DANIELRICCIARDO ON INSTAGRAM

PHOTO VIA AMAZON

PHOTOS BY ARON MARINELLI, ERIK DROST AND DELL VIA UNSPLASH AND WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO BY JEN ROSS VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

PHOTO BY MAXIME VANDENBERGE VIA UNSPLASH

PHOTOS BY UNSPLASH, CANVA, HAAS F1 TEAM AND RED BULL RACING

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