From 'Get Ready With Me's to the Grand Prix

Forget Nobu, Erewhon and Equinox, F1 is the new influencer playground.

Last Friday, my already F1-filled social media feed was jam-packed with Miami content, fueling my race weekend FOMO. However, unlike the previous race in Azerbaijan or even the first race of the season in Bahrain, everyone seemed to be there.

Vin Diesel was keeping the Fast and Furious franchise alive while awkwardly hugging Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the McLaren garage.

A$AP Rocky poked around the Ferrari team premises and posed with drivers, team principals and presenters alike.

Jeff Bezos listened to comms from the pit wall and Elon Musk carried his AI-named child with one hand while the other shook Christian Horner’s.

Shakira was in the pit lane, Tom Cruise was caught on camera and will.i.am guest starred as a commentator. All clad in engulfing earmuff-like headsets.

This all added to the spectacle, as well as the flood of posts I had to endure when opening any app.

But actors, rappers and tech tycoons weren’t the only celebrities marketing F1 as mainstream.

Micro-influencers, celebrities lower down the pop culture food chain, swarmed team hospitality suites, yacht decks and Carbone’s dining rooms.

Tarte Cosmetics, a makeup and skincare brand known for taking content creators on all-expenses-paid trips in exchange for social media posts, was one of many companies that added Miami to its itinerary. Suddenly, the same people who were flaunting $20 Erewhon smoothies, filming Coachella “Get Ready With Me” reels and sitting front row at New York Fashion Week were posting from the Miami circuit.

Ultimately, with millions of followers on a platform made to promote, influencers could add to the third wave of F1 fandom in the Americas.

It’s a genius marketing strategy on F1’s part, as teams invited a host of TikTok and Instagram famous figures. The TikTok For You Page spewed out clips of the party that was the Miami GP, heightening the hype stateside.

But not everyone shared the same enthusiasm for the company’s plans forward.

There was a mix of reactions from F1 fans: some fueled the heated gatekeeping that followed the release of “Drive to Survive.” Others welcomed the new additions into the pearly gates of F1 with a smile albeit skeptical.

Major criticism came from F1 content creators. A handful were sent PR packages from F1-associated brands but invites to the main event seemed far and few between within the F1 community.

@alex.martini_, a car builder and content creator, was initially invited before his ticket was revoked.

“F1 Miami has more influencers than ever before, and it made people angry,” he said on TikTok. “People who make F1 content daily weren’t invited while others were. I was one of those people initially invited, then I got ghosted. I was rejected last minute.”

The brands themselves came under fire as Tarte failed to research the race weekend and thought each day featured a standalone race. Content creators were split into three groups for each day, causing upset as practice session and qualifying goers weren’t guaranteed a ticket come Sunday.

Two Girls One Formula (TG1F), an F1 podcast with a pop culture twist, pointed out that some fan responses to influencers attending the race were tinted with misogyny. While echoing the same concerns about a lack of F1 content creator turnout, the two hosts also argued that influencers are paid to show up to events and promote brands, whether they like or know anything about the brand itself.

Men, and women, fled to TikTok, Instagram and Twitter to shout about influencers needing to prove their F1 knowledge.

One user said, “Not be a jealous bitch or anything, but every influencer who’s going to F1 Miami for free, or any F1 race in general, should have to name five drivers before they get their pass. Sincerely, an F1 fan who can’t afford to go.”

Ticket prices were steep, with entry fees costing as much as $5,000 and premium packages racking up to $200,000. As Las Vegas prices exceed Miami, it’s becoming clear that U.S. fans may have to travel abroad just to afford grandstand tickets.

However, the sentiment of the video matched a regular and exhaustive battle female fans face. Several fans blamed the influencers for perpetuating the stereotypes around women in motorsports—which sees female fans accused of being more interested in the drivers’ looks than the sport itself.

Women’s interest in sports being minimized to hysterical and juvenile fangirling isn’t a new phenomenon, not in F1 nor across motorsports.

For women, specifically, there seems to be little room to grow in the sport without criticism. You either must have the knowledge of an engineer or risk being labeled an air-headed paddock groupie.

Lissie Mackintosh, an F1 content creator, podcaster and presenter, took to TikTok in 2022 after Horner, the Red Bull team principal, said that the Netflix series was “bringing in a lot of young girls because [of] all these great-looking young drivers.”  

“Dear Christian Horner…Women can actually be more than one thing at once. Women can find a driver good-looking, but also be totally engrossed at the overtake in lap 32. Equally, some women are only interested in the engineering side of the sport,” Mackintosh said. “Equally, some women do really watch the sport because they find the drivers good-looking, and if you are one of those women, hello, you are very very welcome here.”

While Mackintosh acknowledged women who are interested in the sport because of their attraction to the drivers, she went on to warn Horner of generalizing fans.  

“But, Mr. Horner, please don’t reduce every single female fan of F1 to only watching the sport because, in your opinion, 20 men are good-looking.”  

Mackintosh was also recently interviewed by the hosts of the Pitstop and Screaming Meals podcasts, the latter a podcast hosted by IndyCar driver Marcus Armstrong and Formula 2 driver Clément Novalak, where she was asked to name the hottest F1 driver. She quickly called out the casual double standard by responding, “Do you ask all your guests that?”

TG1F explained Miami brought this discourse to the surface.

“[We] saw comments like, ‘See this is why women don’t like F1, because they don’t know anything about it and they’re just going for the Instagram photos,’” TG1F said on their weekly podcast following the race. “We’ve been working so hard against this narrative and now it is front and center again.”

The fight against the frenzied and feverish fangirl stereotype has gained recognition, even catching the attention of New York Magazine’s The Cut, where they ran an article defending F1 fangirls in early March.

In Miami, many influencers were transparent about their lack of F1 knowledge and expressed how they were grateful for the experience.

“Yes, maybe those women who went don’t understand F1, but they’re excited about going and maybe after, they’re going to be interested in it, for one reason or another, who knows,” TG1F said. “The problem here is not the people who were invited, it was who did the inviting.”

Madeleine White, a fashion content creator and F1 fan, was invited by Alfa Romeo to both last weekend’s race and the United States Grand Prix in Texas last October. Known for her styling TikToks, White’s Miami Grand Prix “Get Ready With Me” content received comments of support, unlike the posts of many influencers attending. One user said, "The only influencer we are proud to have there.”

Who knows, come next year, Sunday’s attendees could be super-fans.

The resistance to F1’s mainstream appeal isn’t new either.

Opposition has been simmering with internet-famous celebs and designer fashion collections featuring race-related styles as the theme for the season. Chanel’s 2023 Resort collection featured models strutting down the streets of Monte Carlo in race suits and checkered flags. Instagram “It Girls” can be seen pairing a motorsport jacket with just about anything.

Just take a trip to your social media platform or fast-fashion store of choice and you’re likely to find distinctly F1-inspired garments (without any concern for team or historical accuracy, of course). But have no fear, racing’s short stint on the runway will likely pass soon thanks to TikTok’s 15-second trend cycle.

Needless to say, the Miami guest list was the cherry on top for an, understandably, territorial fanbase.

But can fans storm after influencer culture in hopes of banishing it from the sport when the athletes themselves are dipping a toe into fitness-influencer spon-con?

Charles Leclerc regularly posts diamond-encrusted gummy-bear jewelry ads for the brand APM Monaco and sponsored content for his additional top brands: Riva Yacht and Richard Mille. Carlos Sainz gave step-by-step vlog-style instructions on how to beat jet lag, even sticking with the unrealistic standards associated with an influencer lifestyle — flying first-class with a whiskey in hand isn’t exactly relatable.  

Scuderia Ferrari’s Instagram has also fully leaned into the internet hype around the two drivers, constantly posting shirtless ice bath edits. F1’s official social media and YouTube accounts shoot out driver challenge and get-to-know-me videos at the speed of a factory line.

Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas is the co-founder of a gin company, along with a gluten-free pizzeria, and Red Bull reserve driver Daniel Ricciardo now has his own wine brand and seems to be the team’s primary digital marketing tactic. In Miami, Sergio “Checo” Perez took photos with influencers that were reminiscent of Magcon meet-and-greets and Chipotle teased fans with giveaways if the Haas drivers scored points.

Miami was a tick on the long list of concerns fans have about the left turn the Formula One Group is taking into the pop culture zeitgeist.

@brakehard, a motorsport-focused TikTok account and blog, compared F1’s recent expansion and race weekend alterations to NASCAR.

“F1 is making the same mistake NASCAR made 15 years ago. NASCAR boomed in the early-to-mid 2000s, and at one point they had 20 million people tuning into the Daytona 500,” the TikToker said. “But NASCAR got greedy and so they started to chase that casual fan and, at the same time, they abandoned their core fan base.”

The user pointed to parallels between NASCAR and F1 drivers chatting with late-night talk show hosts, walking down red carpets (like Ricciardo at the Met Gala earlier this month) and racking up sponsorships from Fortune 500 companies. Just as the American racing series changed race formats, rules, car setups and historic locations to appeal to a wider audience, F1 is making similar entertainment-motivated adjustments.

“[In NASCAR,] traditional fans started to look elsewhere.”

F1 is teetering into the same dangerous territory,

BrakeHard

(@brakehard) warned.

The distaste is already beginning to build. “As a[n] F1 fan since 2004, F1 has died for me,” commented one user.

However, as fans reject the new shift, it’s necessary to take a trip down memory lane.

While F1 has never had more sponsors than now, with American sponsorship doubling since the change in F1 ownership, it has always been backed by sponsors. From the days of cigarette branding to the contemporary era of vapes, brands have signed drivers’ checks and ensured their Monaco homes are pristine since the dawn of time (or, rather, 1950).

It has also always aimed to be a spectacle off-track. The 1997 launch of the McLaren MP4/12 was accompanied by a Spice Girls performance and the 24 hours of Le Mans has resembled a lawless Woodstock meets Glastonbury Festival meets carnival for the past few decades.

The use of pretty women to advertise the sport isn’t novel either. Just six years ago grid girls, often scantily clad women representing a specific sponsor, were banned from the paddock as Liberty Media took over. They had the same purpose as boxing ring girls: to be ogled at while selling a product.

Influencers aren’t the new grid girls, but fans’ eagerness to find fault in their presence and blame them for not having an arsenal of race terminology at their disposal should be examined.

The fault, instead, lies in the higher-ups’ priorities.

F1 is adapting to a time of brand partnerships, race runways and driver stardom, but the sport must not forget existing fans while chasing after new ones — beauty gurus and all.