I'm Already Exhausted

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

Well, well, well, nothing ever goes my way (including anything this winter), but I’m back. Until some other things get sorted, you're stuck with me whenever I can get a word in, so let's dive into today's topic and be a little grumpy together.
 

What Actually Matters This F1 Season?

I can't be the only one who feels like the vibes are, for lack of a better (or more original) word, off as this F1 season really gets underway. So far, we've had everything that unfolded with Christian Horner and Red Bull, lots of ~discourse~ around F1 Academy (the grimy depths of which started all the way back during the holidays), the beginnings of a very weird silly season, monumental shifts in the worlds of digital and social media, and a whole lot more.

So here's the central question I want to answer today: What should we actually pay attention to now that we've seen what a truly strange and lopsided season this is likely to be? Sure, some folks will say we need to talk about Red Bull's absurdly fast car and the futures of the sport's aging stars and the potential musical chairs that'll unfold now that Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes seat is up for grabs. And yes, those are important; we'll eventually talk about them at various points this year. However, I want to get into the big-picture storylines that I don't think enough folks are focusing on but will ultimately dictate how this year — and sport — will run.


Content Creator Reckonings

This subhead sounds more like the premise of an upcoming season of The Challenge (call me, MTV), but it appears we reached a certain peak in F1 content creator saturation in 2023 that’s starting to rear its ugly head in 2024.

Formula 1’s content creator and influencer spaces have been on quite the rollercoaster in the 2020s, but they appear to be following the same trajectory of…basically every other digital space that’s ever existed. Here's what that cycle (which usually unfolds over the course of several years) typically looks like:

• At first, there are content creation pioneers who strike gold, rack up a ton of followers, and set the standard for how a certain commentary/fan space operates.

• Other people join in — some breaking new ground, most following what folks before them have done — and that space becomes more and more crowded over time.

• The pool slowly starts to become homogeneous — creatively and otherwise — as there are fewer innovations and more people chasing metrics and sporadic opportunities.

• Growth for a lot of creators stalls for a number of reasons (waning audience interest in subject matter, volatile algorithms, and more) and many of them get burnt out, embroiled in ~drama~, or a combination of both.

• That content creator/influencer space craters. Remaining folks who stay try to innovate and keep the cycle going, but it isn't quite what it once was and the culture at large suffers as a result.

It looks like we may be experiencing some of the downward parts of that cycle for the time being. Let’s talk through a few different factors that have converged to make this the case:

1. When I was growing up, my mom warned me that I would encounter situations where 20% of people do 80% of the work, and in the world of Formula 1 content creation, I’d say 20% of content creators are responsible for 80% of the original and interesting posts. To be clear: That doesn’t mean everybody else is automatically problematic; it can just start to feel like a growing number of folks are doing mediocre cosplay of their favorite creators and/or putting out the same stuff that most other people are, albeit with tiny, insignificant tweaks. Again, we've seen this in literally every digital content space; teen lifestyle YouTubers in the early 2010s all did the same goofy DIYs as Bethany Mota after a while, and everybody on the clock app has TikTok Voice™ nowadays in their Day In My Life videos.

The past two F1 seasons were extremely illuminating as far as who has the range and skills to pivot accordingly when the sport's leaderboard is stagnant and surface-level mainstream pop culture references are over-mined. (If I see one more “F1 drivers as Taylor Swift songs” list in The Year of Our Lord 2024 where it's obvious the person posting it only knows "Love Story," I’m going to scream. Please learn the names of a few other celebrities or at least a few other TSwift songs! Tap into a different part of the cultural zeitgeist! I'm begging you!)

2. In this vein, I've thought a lot recently about the differences between journalists/professional media folks and content creators. (In particular, these articles from Mashable and Embedded have been on my mind for several weeks.) I don't personally have an issue with people making their way into closed-off spaces through non-traditional means; after all, I'm the American lady who didn't know the difference between Formula 1 and NASCAR five years ago but who eventually started this email newsletter and semi-accidentally built a sizable audience discussing a Euro-centric sport. Whoops! And despite a solid (so far) career in media, I also didn't go to journalism school and am deeply skeptical of 90% of the curriculum taught at those programs here in the States. Clearly, I have no problem with doing things your own way and giving authority the middle finger when the head honchos are only interested in clinging to power for sake of their own fragile egos.

But I do believe a growing number of F1 content creators are trying to side-step the difficult realities of creative output, responsibility, and accountability by getting all, "I'm not a journalist, I'm a content creator!!!!!" when the time comes for them to act like professionals in conduct or innovation. That desire for all of the perks that come with increased visibility without a serious commitment to figuring out the harder duties that naturally bubble up too doesn't bode well for the world of Formula 1 content creation this year or in the near-future.

3. Many content creators who became successful during the sport’s rise in popularity in the thick of the pandemic have either seen their views drop off or are struggling with the opportunities they're getting outside of solely Formula 1 or motorsports. 

I have two thoughts on the matter. First off, algorithms are a fickle business, and that’s why I stick to this humble newsletter. Email seems old-timey (and we all receive way too much of it), but because it's primarily a communication platform and not built around prioritizing #content, engagement, or advertising the way social media is, it’s actually one of the most reliable ways to build an audience for the long haul. At least I know that this email will be delivered in the vast majority of subscribers' inboxes; whether or not people open it is up to them, but hey, it's there. The same can't be said for an Instagram Reel or TikTok video, and that rat race of trying to create content that catches the attention of the algorithm and an audience and promotes engagement is exhausting. When it comes to feeds and FYPs, to quote famed Project Runway host Heidi Klum, “One day you’re in, and the next day, you’re out.” (And to answer the internet's favorite question: Yes, I did still love Heidi even when she was a worm.)

Second, it’s always a risk when content creators start moving away from their core subject matter, as they risk losing ~relatability~ and ~authenticity~ and ~authority~. (Ah, a word salad of buzzwords I hate!) One trend I’ve noticed after following tons of sports-related content creators and influencers for over a decade: Many of them tend to move to the general ~lifestyle~ space as time goes on, which is already a deeply oversaturated market overrun with the same boring (and often morally and/or ethically bankrupt) partnerships, events, and opportunities. It’s hard to sustain an engaged audience over time if your content is…identical to what so many other people are doing.

4. I’m also seeing an increasing “jack of all trades, master of none” energy from a lot of people in the F1 content creation space nowadays. Folks who focused on a handful of aspects of F1 a few years ago — such as engineering, race craft, and driver moves — are suddenly trying to market themselves as experts in all of those topics as well as pop culture, celebrity gossip, fashion and beauty, business partnerships and sponsorships, global economies, international conflicts, sports PR/comms, weather forecasting, and media analysis. Unsurprisingly, when anyone tries to simultaneously do all of that from a place of authority, much of it becomes a heaping bowl of discourse-y social media mush that lacks substance at best and spreads misinformation at worst.

I’m not here to tell people what they should discuss online. However, there’s an important distinction between saying, “Hey, this is something that interests me now, so I’m learning more about it and here’s why!” versus trying to immediately establish oneself as an authority figure in literally every part of an ecosystem at once. I actually really like it when content creators mention that they’re poking around other parts of the sport that they never really paid much attention to — but that can be done without trying to immediately stake a claim to the throne. These people also often belittle or erase the efforts of those who’ve been interested in that aspect of F1 long before it became trendy. (One example that gets brought up a lot: The number of dude creators who made fun of women, people of color, and queer folks for caring about the pop culture and fashion/beauty trends adjacent to the sport but are now trying to talk about those topics for clout and views. I'm continuously unimpressed with the copied-and-pasted — and absurdly bland —takes they spew and also dismayed at how often they're the ones who get partnership opportunities and larger access as a result. They need to do better, but so do the comms/PR folks in F1 who give these clowns paddock passes while breezing past folks who did this stuff originally and continue to do it better.)

5. Lastly, a lot of content creators who started their F1-related social media channels as pandemic projects have commented on how burnt out they feel now that life doesn't revolve around being quarantined and running an F1 page — and expectations from fans only continue to go up. For instance, in the past six months, we've lost two of the most popular and important WAGs-related Instagram profiles: @WAGsF1 and @F1ladiescloset, both of whom cited busyness and fatigue as reasons for their separate departures. I suspect we’ll see many other popular accounts scale back or give up altogether this year from sheer exhaustion.

So, could all of these problems mean anything good for F1 content creation in 2024? Sure. I’m not sitting around plotting which content creators or accounts will falter, but I don’t necessarily think a reset in the Formula 1 space is a bad thing. And as I said before, difficult seasons that don’t necessarily produce a steady stream of on-track action can really show us who’s up for the challenge of putting together something new versus who’s coasting on unearned clout, other people’s ideas, and/or generic attractiveness. (Some of y'all are going to pooh-pooh that last point in particular, but if you do, I'd argue you're simply not ready for that conversation and won't like the hard truths it'll uncover about yourself and some of your faves. Once again, I suggest you read Tressie McMillan Cottom's work on the subject. Her book has an even better essay on this phenomenon.) 

Moreover, we need more content creators who are interested in honing a craft (such as beefing up their interview skills, cultivating a more charismatic on-camera persona, building good conversations with guests, and learning how to do actual research) and not asking the same boring three questions to the same few people. But obviously, I know that's easier said than done. After all, the world of actual professional media in this sport is also a mess right now.
 

Sports Media in Free Fall

While we’re on the general topic of media, let’s switch gears from social media to the media industry.

In case y’all didn’t know, media is imploding around the world — especially American media but particularly American sports media. In the past nine months or so, we've seen the end of the New York Times sports desk (in favor of coverage through the NYT-owned site The Athletic...there's been long-simmering drama), the extra bleak death of the already-gutted Deadspin, and the total combustion of Sports Illustrated after years of despair, to name a few major recent incidents. (It should be noted on that last one that the owner of The Players' Tribune struck a deal to keep SI going, but eh, I've been in this industry for 12 years and seen a lot of stuff like this tank. We'll keep an eye what happens long-term, but I'm skeptical.) This also doesn’t include the number of individual sports writers and editors across the landscape who were laid off — or left the profession in the hopes of, you know, making actual money and having a smidge more job security elsewhere.

Similar to some of the issues we see with the content creator space, there are a lot of problems unfolding now that’ll affect what we see in 2024. It feels like many journalists are writing the same five stories about the sport. I don’t even blame them in a lot of cases, as they’re often at the mercy of F1’s comms/PR teams, the comms/PR departments for the individual teams themselves, the sponsors that sometimes give those reporters access, and the publications they write for. It’s also a well-known fact that the FIA keeps a absurdly tight leash on its motorsports press, especially around Formula 1, and isn’t above threatening to revoke — or actually revoking — media access over relatively mundane coverage that isn't sparkling. And because people with real reporting backgrounds ask, well, hard questions, it's unsurprising that many F1 entities are trying to substitute them with inexperienced bloggers and content creators, who tend to be much more favorable in their coverage. (I do think adding content creators to the media mix is a net-positive, but they should there in addition to journalists, not as a replacement for them.)

As a result of there being fewer actual journalists in F1 in general — and even fewer who write about the sport full-time and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty — many incredibly important stories never get investigated in full, or at all.

To list two major incidents that’ve taken place since the start of the year: 

1. When it comes to Christian Horner’s sexual misconduct investigation and the general situation at Red Bull, I’ve eye-rolled at the lack of journalistic rigor coming from much of U.S. and international sports media at large; everything around this case should’ve received far more investigative reporting and attention from the get-go and continues to be woefully underreported. To fill that void, many F1 fans are relying on updates from anonymous Twitter accounts and tabloids, leading to many questions about the veracity of claims.

I don’t believe this is purely the fault of any one writer or publication; knowing what we do about how the F1 media ecosystem works, I can see why a lot of folks weren’t interested in touching the matter and still don’t want to report on it despite the numerous obvious loose ends. And as a result, it still feels like we’re missing a great deal of the story — and can’t expect to see much follow-up in the future. (It’s also in F1 and the FIA’s best interest that this whole ordeal gets swept under the rug as the season kicks into high gear.)

On top of those problems, it’s not particularly controversial to say that F1’s press corps is generally super homogenous, and many of its members have covered the sport in the same way for years — and even decades. There’s a great deal of complacency, not just because some folks don’t know any better and/or don't really care, but also because the delicate politicking required to maintain access means that many good reporters don’t want to sniff around controversies more than they have to. I've spoken to quite a few credentialed media professionals who'd like to see this change — but they just don't have the ability to do anything without potentially losing it all. Even if they were to come together and speak up, the sport's gatekeepers would be fine kicking them to the curb and replacing them with a bunch of PR mouthpieces who are just happy to be there and will print whatever the organization tells them to. It's a lose-lose situation.

Moreover, covering the intersection of sports with issues like politics and feminism requires a deft touch, air-tight sourcing, exquisite reporting, and other hard-earned journalistic skills, which are often acquired working other beats over time instead of writing up the same tactical race coverage week after week. Real talk: I'd trust reporters who covered the #MeToo movement here in the States but never watched a second of Formula 1 way more to take on the Horner situation thoughtfully and within the proper legal bounds than many of the credentialed F1 journalists on the ground who are closer to these people.

(Oh, and if you’re like, “Lily! I thought you’d have more to say on the Red Bull situation!”, I definitely do. I’m choosing to see how some critical pieces of this deeply complicated situation play out and letting my ideas fully percolate.)

2. I've yelled about this in my F1 group chats for a month and a half: On March 1, Road and Track published a bombshell story titled “Behind F1’s Velvet Curtain,” where Kate Wagner, a journalist who normally covers cycling, unraveled all of the problems with the F1 apparatus behind the scenes. I’ll say that it’s unequivocally one of the best pieces of journalism ever written about the sport of Formula 1, period.

So here’s the rub: The piece went up around 10am ET that day and was completely wiped from the site by 5pm ET. However, the internet is a funny place where nothing is ever really deleted, so it’s still available via internet archives. (Plus, since I'm a biddy who always keeps receipts, I downloaded a PDF and a backup PDF in case that remaining archive is ever somehow wiped by The Powers That Be. Beep boop!)

Honestly, my first reaction upon reading Wagner’s article that Friday was, “I CAN’T BELIEVE R&T HAD THE BALLS TO PUBLISH THIS???” I was then unsurprised when I went to send it to various group chats a few hours later and found it had been deleted from the site without a correction or other acknowledgement and wasn’t even being discussed on Twitter at the time. What’s even weirder is that this story was still largely only talked about in American media circles for several days, particularly niche media newsletters like New York’s Dinner Party and Today In Tabs. (The Media Twitterati at large only started really paying attention to it three days after it was published and removed.)

So, why did R&T take down the piece? Here's the very wild statement that Daniel Pund, who was just made editor-in-chief of the site in January, made to Defector (bless you, Patrick Redford) on Wednesday, March 6: "The story was taken down because I felt it was the wrong story for our publication. No one from the brands or organizations mentioned in the story put any sort of pressure on me or anyone else. In fact, I heard nothing at all from anyone on the story. No contact whatsoever. It was unfortunate and I can understand how people might jump to the conclusion that pressure of some sort was brought to bear. It wasn’t. Truth is, when the story was assigned, written and edited I was Executive Editor of Road & Track, not EIC. I was dealing almost exclusively with the print magazine. The story had been assigned and edited by the digital team. Had I been aware of the story I would have put a stop to it long before it ever posted. I’m afraid this is a much more mundane situation than you might have imagined."

I try not to speak about the actions of individual peers in this newsletter, but this excuse — even by my most generous interpretation — basically broke my bullshit detector. It simply didn't withstand the multiple levels of "for real???" I went through when reading. The idea that a story of this size would go through the pitching, writing, and editing phases before getting custom art treatments and being uploaded, scheduled, and published — only for a singular power to remove it after the fact for personal reasons hours later and not put up a correction, clarification, or other note — smells fishy to literally anyone who's ever worked in any form of actual media or journalism. (Also, kudos to Kate Wagner for remaining calm amid these shenanigans; I cannot say I'd be remotely chill if this happened to me.)

The other part of Daniel Pund's claim that's leading me to give it a big, ol' eyebrow raise is that when the story was taken down that Friday, I noticed that another article published by R&T on the same afternoon was swapped to lead the site's F1 page for several days titled "Max Verstappen Is Killing Formula 1." I question how this new piece — a short op-ed with almost no citations by a writer who hadn't, at any point in his existing R&T byline until then, ever covered Formula 1 for the site — is supposedly the "right" story for this publication, while Wagner's incredible feature isn't. I'm giving this whole situation one big HMMMMMMM with a few BEEP BOOPs and side-eyes for good measure. I doubt we'll ever know the real answer behind the removal (unless anyone wants to give me the goss...in which case, y'all know where to reach me, including anonymously), but this situation is deeply embarrassing. (I also feel for anyone else who worked hard on this story behind the scenes, including editors and visuals teams. And I hope Wagner got the full amount of money she was promised and not a measly kill fee.)

Back to the larger topic at hand: Despite all of these shenanigans across the board, I do not believe F1 journalism is completely Dead™. As has always been the case, great journalists have continued to persevere despite massive headwinds. For instance, The Cut recently launched a women’s sports vertical called Keep It Moving, and while I’m always cautious whenever verticals are brought into existence through external sponsorship (I’d add The Athletic’s F1 vertical to this list as well), it’s already produced some very solid work. (It also helps that folks like Emily Leibert, a formidable journalist who’s written extensively about F1 in addition to her other reporting, started working for the site.) I also think about other U.S.-based writers who happen to be F1 fans and have found ways to sporadically weave the sport into their reporting, like Associated Press’s music journalist Maria Sherman, Vox's Future Perfect deputy editor Izzie Ramirez, and NBC News’s senior national politics reporter Sahil Kapur. I know how much extra work and elbowing that can take with higher-ups — especially among these corporate outlets — and appreciate their efforts.

However, a few Very Good Journalists who work other beats but happen to occasionally cover the sport, as well as freelancers who are just trying to pay their bills and not get sued, don’t make for a thriving, diligent, and enthusiastic press corps. And given that F1 is starting to see certain signs of a plateau over here in the States, I fear there’ll be even less money and fewer assignments to go around covering the sport.
 

Women Stuff™

I have a very long piece on feminism in F1 with a whole discussion of the F1 Academy that I’ve been working on for basically forever. However, I felt it would be unfair to publish it and make a lot of judgments about the series this year without seeing how a few race weekends go, so I’m holding onto that a little longer.

Here's my comment for now: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Formula 1 as an institution doesn't really know what to do about anything regarding women. Whether that's consistently creating safe environments for female fans at every race, making female employees feel universally respected regardless of role, helping female journalists and commentators get the access they need, or putting concrete accountability systems in place when a woman is harmed, it feels like a whole lot of people are missing the mark on a daily — if not hourly — basis.

Formula 1 has spent a ton of time, money, and effort recently bringing women into every facet of the sport's general ecosystem, whether as spectators, personnel, commentators, content creators, or drivers. More than any other year I've covered F1, it feels like 2024 is the one where many folks have woken up to the fact that sexism is a feature and not a bug here, and it's going to take a whole lot more than just a few girlbossy Instagram posts and a beauty sponsorship or two in order to really achieve a more equal and equitable sport.

And much as I've liked many aspects of this year's F1 Academy rollout and racing thus far (it has the superior opening titles, for one), a single well-executed women-centric motorsports series can't fix a mountain of larger problems on its own. F1A will always have to contend with the fact that it exists mainly due to the outrage surrounding Formula 1's lack of institutional buy-in in the W Series, among the plethora of issues that led to it going kaput. A controversial origin story doesn't have to mean all things are bad, but it does require a lot more activation energy to right those wrongs.

Plus, as plenty of folks have pointed out, there's a lot of discourse to mine around the sponsorships we're seeing this season in F1 Academy and the pros and cons of having fashion and beauty brands, like Tommy Hilfiger and Charlotte Tilbury, front and center. If you're feeling many conflicting things about this stuff, you're definitely not alone!

And of course, there's much to say about the drivers themselves, both in terms of the pressure we put on them to be role models (when some of them, as certain disheartening social media posts have shown, probably shouldn't be) and also who gets paid the most attention, despite the actual race results.

But we'll get to all of that in due time. Instead, let's talk about one aspect of this "women in F1" puzzle that I certainly believe will see some big shifts in 2024...
 

Fangirl Discourse Shenanigans

A confession: I’m growing sick of the word girl in our general societal lexicon as it pertains to adult women's behavior and spending. I’m tired of discussing girlhood, girl dinners, girl bows, girl's girls, all of it. Like most discussions of identity, community, and upbringing originally rooted in substance, much of this era's ~girlhood~ moment has devolved into a corporate cash-grab capitalizing on making grown-ass women yearn for a fantastical version of childhood and adolescence that never actually existed for almost anyone to begin with and would be a lot more complicated in reality even if it did. (Btw, Terry Nguyen has an excellent essay on the fact that conversations around femininity and actual girls and women have disintegrated into a repetitive sphere of nothingness at this point.)

To zero on in how this Girl™ schtick pertains to Formula 1 in 2024: Back when I wrote about the sexualization of drivers debate in June 2023, I mentioned that we were seeing a massive uptick in the number of articles written about ~Formula 1 fangirls~. This has turned into a full-blown editorial subgenre that's continued to the present day, with Business Insider publishing something as recently as last month.

But before we get into the problems I've noticed, there are major positives that have come from this latest wave of mainstream fangirl recognition — across many fandoms, not just F1:

• Empowerment isn't the be-all, end-all of social progress, but it can add an extra boost in situations where you might otherwise feel alone or demoralized. Related to this, these more frequent discussions about ways to empower female fans in so many different spaces have helped lots of people feel less ashamed of their interests and less embarrassed about how they choose to partake in fandom.

• Many women have been able to find communities that they wouldn't have known existed otherwise. In F1, I’ve talked to plenty of folks over the years who said Formula 1 fandom was a lonely existence for them for a long time, and now they’re finally meeting people who just get it.

• While I take issue with Girlhood™ as a capitalist trend, I do believe in the importance of play and feeling a connection to the silliness, carefree nature, and limitless curiosity that many of us had in our youth but lost along the way, often for reasons outside of our control. I don't personally need to rebrand my nightly charcuterie board as ~girl dinner~ on Instagram to do that, but I do enjoy a lil' whimsy and am glad that we as a society are taking more of a "do you" approach.

• I've had some fruitful conversations with certain male fans in the sport who've said that all of this heightened awareness has helped them realize how they can better support female fans. That doesn't mean we need to center men in this, nor do we need to break out the balloons and cake and throw some dudes a party over realizing that women are people (gasp!), but hey, we have to start somewhere.

However, this growing number of articles focusing on Formula 1 fangirls points to one tiny piece of a much larger problem in how we describe women's interests — and what we both intentionally and unintentionally erase. (And before we dive too deeply into this: I’m not here to call out specific journalists, people who were quoted, or others who are deep in the fangirl discussion; in addition to the fact that I myself am quoted in some of these pieces, I care much more about ~patterns~ and ~trends~.)

To start, these types of articles are often describing only a very specific type of female F1 fan or group of female F1 fans, and a great deal of these writers are interviewing the same small number of sources about the phenomenon (to the point where I personally started taking myself out of the running if I was emailed and gave suggestions for who to talk to instead). Given the way most of these articles and the discourse at large is framed, there are few-to-no mentions of intersections of identity or thoughtful critiques of how prejudice and marginalization are often baked into how our culture organizes, categorizes, and prioritizes different people's fandom.

I've also noticed that too much of the discussion around women's fandoms, regardless of the community, tends to center their financial output as the most important singular thing they can offer, often without more deeply questioning what else is out there and what's potentially wrong with that angle in the long run. This framing is unsurprising given that an enterprise like F1 is entirely centered on money, but it's still concerning for the health of the sport and women's place in it.

Moreover, having talked to many women across the Formula 1 fandom, I've found that this dynamic has brought numerous simmering tensions that have long been present to the forefront. A growing number of female F1 fans have started opening up about not feeling fully represented — or about how there can be pressure to act a certain way to be legitimized in the sport or in its women-centric pockets, even if they seemingly tout the opposite. This has given way to a mounting problem where a few people are tasked with defining what this entire era of Formula 1 racing means for all female fans. (How stressful!)

For me, the question at the heart of the matter is this: What would happen if we all thought about female fandom in more expansive and intentional terms, pushed others to evolve their mindset, and stopped relying on euphemisms and monoliths to talk about an incredibly large portion of a sport’s fandom?

All of this friction doesn’t have to spell disaster. 2024 could be a year where we see women continue to branch off to find spaces and groups that most interest them. I certainly do not think every fandom space can do everything for everyone at the drop of a hat; that's a lot of pressure to put on any singular group, and often the onus falls on a small number of organizers to make that happen instead of all community members really working to create the space they really want to see. Diversity, equity, inclusion, equality, and thoughtful differences can take shape in so many forms, and it's up to folks to figure out what makes the most sense for them and their needs.

Instead, it can be really affirming when people have the option to join different groups as they see fit and look for a variety of commonalities. For example, there’ve been rumblings of folks trying to start more intentional F1 fan communities for women of color and queer folks, who don’t always feel the most welcome or fully themselves in existing spaces, however friendly they may be; this might finally be the year those groups are formally solidified. I’ve also long said that there should be more spaces for female F1 fans in their thirties, forties, fifties, and beyond, as I've talked to many women who feel like they’ve “aged out” of existing fan communities, especially digital ones. I have tremendous respect for the work that teen girls and 20-something women have historically done for fandoms everywhere — after all, I’ve been part of their enthusiastic ranks in the past — and I also understand as I get older that we're all constantly moving into new life phases. I've noticed a shift in how I relate to fandom compared to how I felt five or 10 years ago, and it’s nice to interact with people traversing a similar plane.

That's what I'm keeping an eye on this year: How do we move away from this simplified idea of The F1 Fangirl™ and enter a more complex world of girls and women being able to express fandom however they want?
 

The New (and Very Beige) Era of WAGdom

I predicted last year that we’d see a WAGs grid shakeup, and whew, HAVE WE EVER. 

I won’t go too in-depth since we've discussed this ad nauseam, but to recap: We went through a big period of transition with the F1 WAGs from April of last year through the end of 2023, and we're finally starting to get a sense of how many/which WAGs will descend upon any given race.

My general thesis on the situation: Much as commentators and assholes don't want to admit it, a thriving WAGs grid can be a key part of a growing sport. At its best, that grid gives dimension, context, accessibility, and entertainment to new and existing fans. Fandoms aren't built solely on canon (or in the case of F1, what's happening on the track); the side quests, niche subplots, and secondary characters we find along the way are what give it texture. WAGs are as crucial to the world-building of the sport as  anything else is.

So, why do I say this era will be very beige, and why am I sad about it? First, in the literal sense, these young women wear a lot of neutrals. (I mean, see the image above.) To return to something I've talked about previously, many of these women are fashionable, but almost none of them have honest-to-God original taste. I never thought I’d miss the chaotic fits from the WAGs of yesteryear like we saw from Sara Pagliaroli or Elena Berri, but here we are. And even paddock/WAG mainstays like Kelly Piquet and Carmen Montero Mundt aren’t taking as many sartorial risks as they once did. (Much of this likely has to do with Kelly needing to take a breather as far as her internet commentary is concerned, and CMM has gone full corporate influencer as of late.)

And second, many of the new WAGs saw everything their predecessors went through — the cyberbullying, the not-so-fun attention, the scrutiny (a little of it warranted, much of it not) — and decided to be more private this go-around. Some of them, like Pierre Gasly’s girlfriend Kika Gomes, were already influencers before their current relationships, but even they aren’t the most forthcoming (or simply…interesting) online.

It's incredibly understandable why many of these women would choose to log off a little more. I'd like to believe that a lot of them aren't simply in these relationships for clout and that they want to protect not just themselves but their partners, friends, and family. I do think there's a middle ground that can be reached for anyone who wants to put themselves out there a little more — like what Carmen and Lily He do, to name two of the biggest WAGs — but I get why folks decide to opt out entirely.

As far as if we're doomed to a boring WAGs grid forever, only time will tell. I don't think we'll really see as bonkers of a lineup as we did circa 2020-2023 for a while though, especially given how stagnant the F1 grid itself is. Such is life!

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Today’s question: You’re tasked with choosing one current Formula 1 driver to appear on the next season of The Traitors. (It can be any country’s edition of the show!) Pick a driver and explain your rationale for why he should go on and how he’d fare in separate scenarios as a Traitor and a Faithful.

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