Flippy Floppies

Howdy, hi, hello. Welcome to Engine Failure, a culture newsletter that dives into what the fuck is really going on in Formula 1. It’s written by me, Lily Herman.

Greetings, pals! What a time!

I’ve been away for a while — a loooooong while. If you forgot that you subscribed to this newsletter in the past five months or so, I’m here to tell you that you did, in fact, do that at some point; I did not subscribe you on your behalf. Regardless, stick around and see what EF is about.

Once again, I’d like to say thank you to everyone for bearing with me. It’s been a weird year — much weirder than I was expecting. I feel like Ted Mosby at the end of How I Met Your Mother season four when he’s standing over the ledge of his apartment building about to jump to that other rooftop next door and starts monologuing (to A.C. Newman's "Prophets", no less) about everything he did in the span of 12 months. (But unlike Ted, I did not get beat up by a goat or, like, the 127 other things that happen during that season.)

And now a request heading into 2024: If you happen to work for a big brand with some money to spend and you want to be part of a very wild experiment that involves me, this newsletter, a Grand Prix (likely a North American-based one), and an absolutely bonkers commitment to the bit on my part, email me. I have some things that I’d like to execute but very much can’t afford on my own. And I promise this stunt will get eyeballs.

All right, I’m ready to stop blabbering a bunch of nonsense and get to gabbing about a bunch of other nonsense. Today's big meta-analysis and cultural critique is dedicated to the big topic on everybody's minds, which is...
 

Is Formula 1 Entering a Flop Era?

Our story begins with the end of the season in Las Vegas.

To put it bluntly, the Las Vegas race weekend showed that F1 has quite the inflated view of its own self-importance as an organization, a sport, and a necessity. And of course, just because F1 is aware of its growth doesn’t mean it has an accurate view of that growth. (Also, Formula 1 execs keep touting this super vague and highly questionable claim that the race brought an economic boost to Vegas that’s bigger than two Super Bowls. First of all, where are they pulling these numbers from? I’m a bitch who loves receipts and a good spreadsheet. And second, who will actually see the benefits of all of that alleged money if it does, in fact, exist? I doubt it’s The Everyman™ in Sin City. )

I’ve been a day one, hour one, minute one skeptic of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, largely due to the fact that I’m someone who can spot PR spin from a mile away — and this race had that in spades even when it was still just a rumor. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together could tell that the LVGP was never going to come without enormous asterisks: Constructing the street circuit on one of the busiest roads in America was always going to be a logistical and operational nightmare; F1’s shameless cash grabs at every turn were going to price out most fans, piss off tons of businesses, and leave very little margin for error; and you could see the problems with local stakeholders and communities coming from a mile away. Not to mention, Vegas doesn’t need F1; it’ll still ~Vegas~ regardless of if this clown car caravan comes to town.

Now of course, I want to talk about some of the positive feedback people either gave me or publicly discussed follow the race:

• A lot of folks mentioned what a refreshing change of pace it was to have the circuit right next to most of the accommodations. Many GPs are in the middle of nowhere, logistically challenging to get to, and/or are way too small considering the crowds they draw nowadays, meaning that attendees spend several hours every day just getting to and from a circuit. There's a lot to be said for most fans getting where they need to go with more relative ease.

• Related to that: Plenty of folks said they liked the more contained nature of the entire weekend. Sure, many GPs will have “fan experience” stuff to do in one area of a city or region away from the circuit itself, but several people pointed out that in Vegas, they could be in their hotel one minute, at the track the next, and then walking into a casino or nightclub or restaurant soon after.

• I feel like the branding and hype around this GP very much made all attendees aware that this was meant to be a premium experience. Sometimes, F1 fans show up to GPs with huge gaps in their expectations versus the reality of many of these races, whereas I feel like everybody was on the same page at a race for once.

• When the weekend was over, attendees and drivers alike thought that it was generally a decent-to-good enough race. It probably won’t go down as one of the most iconic weekends of all time as far as the actual driving, but expectations were so low by Saturday night that I think folks were pleasantly surprised that no driver was impaled by an improperly sealed manhole cover on international television. (A low bar, in my opinion! But F1 cleared it!)

So, those are some of the big pluses. Let’s go a little further towards the other end of the spectrum. 

It probably goes without saying that F1 is hornier than a reformed rake in a Gilded Age romance novel when it comes to American money. Even though some attendees said they had a good time and driver response has been generally positive after the fact, the LVGP had quite few obstacles to overcome — aside from the very obvious manhole cover problem and free practice viewing debacle:

• Higher-ups assumed that there’d be an unlimited supply of people — especially Americans — who’d have the ability to shell out hilarious sums of money for a single weekend on the Strip. There really wasn’t any evidence to support that, and ticket sales were always an issue with this race. I don’t think smaller GP crowds are inherently a bad thing, but it’s obvious that’s not what F1 was going for, and it meant their PR/comms squad had to wrangle some bad press.

• The race happened at 10pm local time, which means a whole lot of people couldn’t watch it due to their time zone — including many Americans. Some of the Vegas hype people have been touting numbers released from ESPN that showed that 1.3 million Americans watched this GP — making it more viewed than the USGP but less viewed than the Miami GP (despite the other two being aired on ABC aka network TV) — but as usual, this is a bit like comparing apples to oranges past a certain point. Also, if you like cherry-picked data and want to see how far F1 still has to go in terms of capturing Americans' sports attention at large: Just 48 hours after the LVGP, nearly 29 million Americans tuned in to watch the Chiefs-Eagles game, known to some as the 2023 Super Bowl rematch and others as the Taylor Swift Bowl, making it the biggest Monday Night Football audience since 1996.

• F1 as an org has reportedly managed to piss off government entities, businesses, and residents within a bazillion miles of Vegas, prompting questions about if the event will realistically be hosted for many years to come, regardless of what F1 says now. Elizabeth Blackstock, one of few motorsports journalists consistently holding F1’s feet to the fire over this race (and in general), did real-ass, on-the-ground reporting with people who actually live and work in Vegas; they had much more nuanced, measured things to say about the race and its larger implications if significant changes aren't made.

• The motorsports series didn't even have an exciting championship race to fall back on since Max Verstappen snagged his third consecutive title weeks ago. We also don't have the most exciting homegrown American driver in Logan Sargeant, who’s had to claim three different races as his home GPs this year and did lackluster press for all of them. I certainly think Vegas was his strongest showing as far as interviews were concerned, but the man just simply doesn’t rouse a ‘Murican crowd. (Plus, his situation at Williams is looking super murky as the 2023 season comes to an end.)

Personally, I actually found the racing faaaaar less interesting than the media sparring that was going on throughout the weeks and months leading up to Vegas and then through the race weekend itself. Why did we see such wildly hyperbolic coverage of this race, and why were some folks acting like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread when there were clearly some big discrepanices?

I can’t talk about this aspect of the Grand Prix without saying, with complete earnestness, that there hasn’t been enough credit given to F1’s PR/comms team — and specifically the American-based agency it outsourced much of that work to — for the 48-hour turnaround in media sentiment of the race as the weekend unfolded. I say this without a lick of snark: It was damn impressive, and I’m sure very few people were actually paying attention to how difficult that is to pull off. Truly, it was a masterclass! We went from folks saying on Thursday night that this GP was going to burst into flames and become the newly formed 10th circle of hell to people claiming that it was the greatest sporting event in the history of human civilization by Sunday morning. While these types of reactionary claims don’t come close to telling the full story, hats off to that tiny PR team for managing this narrative arc. Somebody get Molly McPherson on this ASAP!

I'll be honest: This race in particular, more than any other, had some higher-profile folks in the space rooting a little too hard for its triumph all year, and they tried to very quickly sweep any discord under the rug and declare the weekend an unmitigated success. But many of those folks with the loudest voices on how “worth it” the LVGP was were people who had special privileges, like gaining access to the paddock or a specific team’s garage, glitzy star-studded events that required an “in,” and/or corporate brand money (which, in many cases, paid for their trips). I’m not a Bitter Betty that those folks got those opportunities; however, as someone who attended a Grand Prix with a major sponsor earlier this year, I can say from first-hand experience that it certainly changes your perspective, no matter how objective you’re trying to be. It was delightful to have access to air-conditioning in the swamp-ass heat of Florida last May, and it’d be ridiculous for me to discount how that altered the way I felt during that entire race weekend compared to attendees who were out in the blazing sun for eight to 10 hours a day. The same principle applies here.

I enjoy the voyeurism associated with watching biddies do Rich People Things™ as much as any other person; I’m a Taurus, after all. But there’s a difference between simply showing off all of that access (do you!) versus pretending that it means your voice can give a be-all, end-all depiction of what attending a certain GP must be like for everybody. Those opinions can swirl around in the ether just like all of the other ones, but I’m personally not interested in prioritizing them. And honestly, we should all be a little suspicious of anyone in the F1 world who’s pretending that all was perfect in Sin City.

And a last issue related to this: I was disappointed to see that many U.S.-based outlets sent random writers to the Grand Prix who either said outright that they weren’t F1 fans and/or made it clear they were sent by a brand or on someone’s dime to simply take in the glitzy splendor of the Vegas weekend. (Even worse, many of those same outlets have definitely worked with freelancers on pieces about Formula 1 in the past, and it seemed odd that they wouldn’t commission work from those people, many of whom were already present at the race.) Not only did that create a ton of needlessly fluffy content — deliberately branded, thinly veiled in sponsorship, or otherwise — but it also led to some of the least inspired writing from American journalists on this sport this year. I’ve been incredibly complimentary in the past of the ways in which U.S. outlets — and a particularly scrappy cadre of freelancers on this side of the Atlantic — have innovated how this sport is talked about online and in print; while there were a few standouts, the Vegas race weekend was largely a bummer from a press perspective despite the fact that there were supposedly more writers and journalists doing coverage there than at pretty much any other F1 setting this year. I don't think everyone had to put out hard-hitting pieces on the state of the weekend, but across the board, there were missed opportunities galore!

Overall, the truth that emerges about Vegas seems to include a lot of smoke and mirrors (how appropriate!) and is much more complicated than the F1 institution would like you to believe; it also creates further complexities in how we talk about this season and Formula 1 as a whole. That race weekend was larger than life, but there also seemed to not really be a salient point to all of it. People moved on as they always do shortly thereafter; no one, for the most part, is sitting here still bathing in the excesses of Vegas. And I can't help but think about how all of that money — which apparently came out to around $500 million — could've been spent on improving so many other aspects of the sport that would've touched so many more fans, personnel, race volunteers, and more. Talk about taking away the wrong lessons.
 

The Vegas race weekend also brought about another pivotal cultural touchpoint in the growth of F1 in the U.S.: Netflix hosted its first-ever live sporting event, a golf tournament with professional golfers from the Box to Box Films series Full Swing and F1 drivers who were obviously seen on Drive to Survive. But that's only part of a larger story of Formula 1's ever-evolving relationship to DTS.

As Izzy Ramirez laid out in her great piece summarizing the sport’s recent growth, Formula 1 as an institution is dealing with problems related to growing too fast, not having particularly interesting or innovative solutions to new issues, and no serious organizational interest in really understanding its new audiences past how much money can be made off of them. Drive to Survive is at the center of all of those puzzles.

Personally, I’ve long thought of Box to Box Films' work as being broken down into three distinct phases so far. The first three seasons of DTS are phase one of the org’s project into getting new fans through its filmmaking. Seasons four and five — as well as the introduction of other Box to Box productions like Break Point and Full Swing— seem like phase two, where, as I’ve previously written, F1 and its various cast of characters begin to be a little too self-aware while the studio feels like it needs to keep introducing shiny new things to keep momentum and expand its cinematic universe. Now, the Netflix Cup signals the beginning of phase three for Box to Box Films, which includes its version of when the Marvel Cinematic Universe collapsed several different superhero storylines into a single movie franchise. This was meant to be the phase where F1 was fully embraced by its newly acquired (and majorly American) audience during a seminal year that involved three U.S. races. As we now know, that didn't go quite as planned.

Now that we’re in phase three, I’ll posit a question I’ve previously asked in this newsletter: How long can DTS realistically go on for? Six seasons of any Netflix show, regardless of genre, is miraculous, but the longer it's around — and as the storytelling gets sloppier — the show and sport will be dealing with the law of diminishing returns. Sure, because the series will always exist somewhere on Netflix for the foreseeable future, there’ll always be a potential funnel for new fans. But it’s just not the same now that the novelty has worn off and the work product isn’t nearly as strong as it once was.

As we’ve established, Box to Box Films has put out a number of sports docuseries in the past year and a half, all in the hopes of chasing the initial success of Drive to Survive with other sports. There are, of course, some lingering problems with this strategy: 

• The more saturated the market becomes, the less each individual project stands out and the more fatigued an audience tends to get. (While streaming services are very tight-lipped about their numbers, some other early indicators are showing this.)

• All sports are different; trying to create equally compelling shows about motorsports, tennis, golf, and cycling, to name a few, is a tall order. Not to mention, some of these sports aren’t particularly accessible to a general audience even if the series itself is good. (I really enjoyed Tour de France: Unchained, but streaming the actual Tour de France isn’t necessarily straightforward here in the States, especially for any of the stages that aren’t the first or the last ones.)

• Plenty of other studios and sports saw the fanfare around DTS and tried to copy the strategy. Just look at Welcome to Wrexham and Quarterback, which have different objectives but seem to have reached their various target audiences and are coming back for new seasons next year. (Also, I was initially going to do a whole section here about film theory with regards to sports docs, but it was getting far too cerebral, and even I was getting bored when reading my own analysis. That said, there's some really interesting literature on how the pandemic led to a massive boom specifically in sports docs, when sports docs came to be viewed as "quality" or "prestige" TV in it of themselves, and how sports docs go about crafting narratives nowadays. I even read chapters of a book dedicated to intersections of identity and sports narratives for fun!!!!)

And as that swath of documentary-style sports programming continues getting bigger, some larger existential issues continue to pop up:

• What becomes the purpose of a show like Drive to Survive as it continues to produce new episodes? Is it meant to convert people into active F1 fans? Provide entertainment for folks who simply want to watch the show once a year? Keep existing fans engaged? Do all of the above or something else entirely? I can't really tell if the show or F1 as an org has an answer.

• Just because people become fans of something doesn’t mean they’ll stay fans forever, especially without proper — and extensive — engagement. A sport’s central organization has to create and manage the infrastructure to build, maintain, and further grow a fandom. That requires a lot of know-how — and if F1 has shown us anything, it's that orgs don’t always take the common-sense route. (And while there are certainly plenty of individual people working within the F1 ecosystem who care a great deal about fans' experiences, the organization as an 70-year-old institution has made it clear it really only cares about our money, not as much about us as people or as various fandoms.)

• Among the many wrong lessons lots of sports orgs are taking from this uptick in programming is the idea that a series is necessary or key for growth. But think about how a sport like pickleball has completely infiltrated the U.S., despite not being the subject of some massively successful docuseries project; instead, many see it as a local — and in some cases, divisive — hobby that everyday people can personally participate in with ease.

A last question I’ve been asking myself: Will Box to Box’s luck run out soon as far as all of these series are concerned? Personally, I believe 2024 and 2025 will be pivotal years, as the production company has more than half a dozen other sports projects in the works and is facing more competition than ever before in an ever-shifting film and TV landscape. The ground that Box to Box is relying on is shaky, and if doesn't look for ways to pivot, it could be difficult to find an easy way back to its roots.
 

Part III: Some Words for the F1 Media Ecosystem

As I prefaced at the beginning, I'm going to spend the least amount of time on this section, as it's the part of the sport's obstacles that most people are already focusing on.

Much attention has already been paid to Max Verstappen and Red Bull's domination this season, and it's been labeled as huge part of the reason the sport could become such a flop. I think that's a pretty simplified view that glosses over numerous other problems with how the sport is situated, but I do believe that one entity having such command over a sport is a pretty obvious — and not necessarily easy to solve — issue. Given that y'all probably already understand the broader implications of that and saw it in action for yourselves this season, it's not worth me spelling out.

To me, the other big conundrum as far as the grid and the sport's potential downward trajectory is concerned is the lack of turnover we're seeing among drivers and a subsequent lack of curiosity and hype around those who could join the ranks due to that slowed turnover. While we had three initial new rookies on the grid this year (whew, sorry to the Nyck de Vries fans out there), I'd say my little croissant Oscar Piastri stole the show as being the most singularly promising figure. I also didn't find Nico Hulkenberg or Daniel Ricciardo's returns to the grid to be all that awe-inspiring, especially given the teams they came back to. (Danny's subsequent injury and time away only made everything that much more underwhelming). And while a few questions remain about the grid for next year (largely Logan Sargeant's spot at Williams), there's simply not a lot to be excited for at the moment as far as new talent coming in since driver contracts are getting longer and longer. But given that numerous contracts are up next year and the 2024 silly season could be a real chance for some honest-to-God mix-ups, drama, and intrigue, it's putting more pressure on the sport to really deliver.

And then, of course, there's the much harder piece of the puzzle to solve: How do you get nine other teams to catch up to one that's beating everyone week in and week out? I know the fans of the sport who focus much more on its engineering aspects have a loooooot of thoughts on this, but at the end of the day, everything is easier said than done. We can all be hopeful that next year will get better on this front, but I'm not sure if we can count on that happening quite yet. Only time will tell.
 

Part V: So, Is Formula 1 Entering a Flop Era?

Ah, I missed gossiping with a bunch of strangers on the internet, especially during a time when F1 at large is paying more attention than ever before to what's going on away from the track. I’m ready to talk about all of the piping hot WAG tea I’ve had to sit on for the bulk of this season.
 

WAGageddon 2023

You remember how Degrassi: The Next Generation got an almost entirely new cast between seasons nine and 10? (Goodbye, Emma Nelson and Manny Santos; hello, randos and a new version Clare Edwards, a character whom the show spent seven seasons trying to make me like. It didn’t work!) Well, it feels like that’s what happened from May to August this year with the F1 WAGs. The previous “generation” of WAGs fell like dominoes in the first half of 2023, and now we’re left with…a fuck ton of models. I’m not even generalizing here; almost all of these new women on the WAGs grid are models.

To do a lil’ recap of the major turnover and breakups we’ve seen since the year started:

• Charles Leclerc stopped dating Charlotte Sine around this time last year and only a few months later started seeing Alexandra Saint Mleux, a woman who looks like a slightly more tan version of Charlotte but is a few years younger. She’s reportedly an art student, which makes sense, because all of these Monegasque kiddos seem to have what I call Rom-Com Jobs™. (Also, per my long-standing policy, I don't link to WAGs' private IG accounts, but Alexandra's adjacent art account has remained public.)

• Carlos Sainz and Isa Hernaez are dunzo. He’s now dating model Rebecca Donaldson, whom I explained to my Patreon subscribers months ago has a Kardashian-adjacent claim to fame: She went as Scott Disick’s date to the series premiere of The Kardashians several years ago and became a quasi-plot point. (Also, ngl the Carlos/Isa breakup seems to have done wonders for Isa: Not only has she posted a number of subtweet-y gems on TikTok, but her style has been much more fun and experimental compared to her looks in the months prior to the conscious uncoupling.)

• Esteban Ocon and Elena Berri are kaput. There’ve been some rumors linking him to some folks, but nothing I feel confident in discussing publicly. As for Elena, she started dating a guy who appears to, at the very least, spend a lot of time in Brazil, and she's been soft-launching him on IG Stories for the past four months. It’s a bit of overkill if you ask me, but do you, girlypop!

• As I discussed last spring, Lance Stroll dated Israeli model and former reality TV contestant Dian Schwartz earlier this year, but that romance was short-lived. Now he’s with Canadian — you guessed it — model and former reality TV contestant Marilou Bélanger. I admire Lance's predictability.

• Fernando Alonso and Andrea Schlager called it quits early on in 2023. Nando appears to have potentially kept up his trend of only dating women who already work in the paddock by being linked to Spanish F1 journalist Melissa Jiménez. They’ve been pretty quiet as of late though if they're still seeing each other, or at the very least, interest in them as a pair has died down.

• Not directly on the grid but possibly the most interesting 180: Mick Schumacher and Justine Huysman parted ways last winter and he’s now with Danish model and sometimes-YouTuber and TikToker (in the way rich, conventionally attractive people half-ass every hobby) Laila Hasanovic. Their coupling coincides with him now looking like the sixth Backstreet Boy, and she’s attended several GPs in the past few months. Mick’s also become more of a fixture on her social media accounts, which is completely different from his time with Justine. (It’s a bit Swiftian a la moving from Joe Alwyn to Travis Kelce, if you ask me.)

So, why is everybody dating models? And what does this say about the state of Formula 1 WAGs culture, the culture of the sport at large, and about us as F1 fans? (Yes, I will always make this about me, the consumer!)

Let’s start with the F1 WAGs. On a surface level, it’s not that deep: Models are hot and F1 drivers can also be very hot and have that whole adrenaline thing going on. Additionally, it makes sense that a bunch of race car drivers, who are jet setters often meant to be seen and not heard, would find kindred spirits in models, who are in much of the same boat. (Unsurprisingly though, many of these models are more like "models" — as in, few are doing real modeling work that would realistically earn them a living — and they come from wealthy backgrounds and already run in the same tiny social circles that these drivers do.)

That said, what I do find fascinating is that F1 WAGs culture seems to be creating two extremes: Those few WAGs who are seen all around the paddock and even integrated into their partners’ teams (like Carmen Montero Mundt and Lily He) and those who don’t want to be seen at all. To be honest, I’m not surprised at the shift compared to just a year and a half ago; many of these women likely saw what happened to their predecessors (such as the mass cyberbullying Luisa Oliveira Barosa experienced simply for being Lando Norris’ girlfriend) and decided to opt out. I don’t blame ‘em. There’s also been plenty of criticism of some of their various sponcon efforts that took place within the confines of the paddock and the sport. The previous generations of F1 WAGs, which I’d say were around from January 2020 until June 2023, had to deal with a gigantic uptick in the sport’s popularity and interest in their personal and professional lives and tried to make a buck off of it; the new crop is a lot savvier in seeing that that didn’t always pay off in the long run.

The current F1 WAG recession is also in complete opposition to what we’re seeing in virtually every other sport, where there’s renewed hyper-interest in WAGs. Victoria Beckham was the real main character (if we’re being honest) of the Beckham docuseries, while Coleen Rooney finally told her side of the Wagatha Christie scandal in a new three-part doc on Hulu. (My quick review on the latter: It was very boring and should’ve been an 60-minute film. Coleen Rooney obviously had way too much creative control over that project and got rid of many of the juicy tidbits.) Alix Earle and Allison Kucharczyk (better known online as Allison Kuch) have become bonafide stars partially off of their NFL WAGdom. Meanwhile, as I predicted a year ago, Morgan Riddle has become top tennis WAG, complete with a lengthy New York Times profile.

And of course, there’s the most famous WAG of them all: Taylor Swift. I know media outlets all over the world are covering every single move of the courtship between Blondie and Travis Kelce, but it’s reached a level of tabloid absurdity here in the States I haven’t seen since the late aughts and early 2010s. There are a number of great pieces contextualizing the national obsession (and in some cases, growing fatigue) with these two that you can read here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Why so much WAGs worship? Part of it is society’s current obsession with nostalgia around aughts culture. We’re also really reaching peak social media voyeurism, where folks love to take a look behind the curtain and into the lives of folks who simply don’t act like us. And of course, media has made easy to get swept up in the love stories of these pairings; there’s a reason why sports romances are among the most popular subgenres in the larger romance novel market. But on top of all of that, WAGs offer a different entrance into sports than were previously open to many folks. They certainly aren’t the only avenue — nor am I suggesting that all women follow WAGs culture or that only women follow WAGs or that it's all that women can be interested in — but it’s definitely an access point that wasn’t as readily available in the same way.

Yes, I know fashion and beauty influencing within sports aren’t the same thing, but I’m putting this section in here and y’all will simply have to deal with it!!!

I was shocked to open my usual daily NYLON newsletter and discover that the outlet was doing a full editorial package of motorsports content ahead of the LGVP sponsored by ELF Cosmetics, whom y’all may vaguely remember sponsored Katherine Legge during her Indy 500 campaign last May. (She’s also profiled in the package.) The slate also pulls in old articles that NYLON’s published in the past, largely written by the talented India Roby, who re-popularized the term “motorcore” a year ago and gave it new life. (Tbh, I’m surprised NYLON didn’t hand this package over to India to write given how much she’s done with F1 on the site. I mean no disrespect to the writer who did it, of course.)

Longtime EF readers know that this is far from the first time beauty brands have mingled with motorsports. In fact, I interviewed intrepid motorsports podcaster and beauty publicist Manvi Mittal last year about the trend. Since then, we’ve seen other interesting campaigns, like Yuki Tsunoda teaming up with Bulk Homme for two seconds and Alex Albon doing hilarious little sponcon posts with CeraVe. (Y’all, it needs to be said that CeraVe is and always will be That Bitch™!!!!) Tbh I’m shocked that Lewis Hamilton seems to be dropping every kind of new product these days — including non-alcoholic spirits — except a moisturizer.
 

Friendship Bracelets Come to F1

I’m not gonna worry about the Conspiracy Corner question from this summer, so let’s start from scratch here.

Today’s question: In honor of the film adaptation of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes coming out earlier this month, which F1 driver do you think is most likely to win the Hunger Games, and what would his strategy be?

Submit your answer here.