The 23-Year-Old Law Student Making FIA Documents Trendy

Faith Thiam wants you to know everything about Formula 1, without the legalese.

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Most law students unwind in a sticky bar or sprawled across the campus lawn in the rare moments slotted between lectures and late-night library visits. But not Faith Thiam. The 23-year-old finds her time away from the fine print best spent cracking open the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile’s (FIA) rule book. 

Thiam, a student at Birmingham City University’s satellite campus in Singapore, calls herself an “(un)serious fan” of Formula 1 in her Instagram bio, @faithlovesf1. Just beneath the descriptor, she walks the tightrope between “serious” and “fangirl” particularly well: taking a hot pink highlighter and gemstones to the bright white parchment printed straight from the race stewards’ office. 

Photos courtesy of @faithlovesf1

During a Formula 1 race weekend, the ruling body’s stewards, like referees, hand out penalties in the form of grid places, time sentences or monetary fines. A quiet weekend of well-behaved drivers still means dozens of emails: documents ensuring all 20 cars meet the pre and post-race procedures and PDFs detailing infringements of everything from skirting off-track to touching a competitor’s car. A busy weekend could mean over 100 rulings to sort through. The documents are a cross between a legal statement and a press release and often end up in the email inboxes of Formula 1 teams and media, meaning a casual Formula 1 fan isn’t likely to know they exist. Thiam didn’t until last December, three months after her first taste of Formula 1 while working on a cryptocurrency sponsor’s trackside yacht during the Singapore Grand Prix. 

“I saw someone post [an FIA document] on Instagram, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a lot of good information that people would probably not gather from just the race itself,’” Thiam recalled, sitting at a desk across the world. An anime-style Carlos Sainz poster engulfed the bedroom wall behind her.

“Every race, I go through the entire list of documents to see what kind of information I might have missed,” she said.

Rather than confine the information to her bedroom, Thiam realized there was a gap in the Formula 1 content creator market for translating the FIA’s legalese into social media-speak. 

“I figured that most people wouldn't know where to find these documents or what to do with them,” she said. “There's a lot of information. A lot of the text is redundant. Just looking at it, it looks overwhelming, and I didn't want them to miss all the information just because of that. I thought, ‘I’ll just simplify it a little bit and edit it.’”

Photos courtesy of @faithlovesf1

Editing is a simple way of putting it. Thiam designs a bedazzled cover with a “guest check” graphic, promising her nearly 11,000 followers a short and sweet summary of on-track action. She then tackles the documents from the sport’s ruling body. Armed with a handful of highlighters, Thiam zeros in on the important parts and distills pages of technical language into one, jargon-free sentence. During the Italian Grand Prix, the FIA released a document stating that Oscar Piastri allegedly impeded Daniel Ricciardo during Saturday’s third free practice session. The eight paragraphs detailing the violation threw out rule book references, like Article 15 of the FIA International Sporting Code and Chapter Four of the FIA Judicial and Disciplinary Rules, and conjured a hazy image of the investigated racing move. But Thiam summed it up in one statement: “Both Charles [Leclerc] and Oscar [Piastri] wanted to move aside to let Daniel [Ricciardo] pass, but both predicted the other person’s actions wrongly and ended up clashing.” She then illustrated the different possible on-track scenarios.

Thiam’s other content defines the sport’s general rules and terminology that newer fans may not be exposed to or feel comfortable asking about, like what a racing line is or what downforce means. Other than a few argumentative direct messages, the posts are well-received. Followers gushing “Love how u make it easier for us to understand” and “This is an amazing dissemination of info actually” flood her comment section.

“I made so many weird deep-dive research notes. I went to post them because I figured it was difficult for me to know where to get started, so maybe someone else could benefit from them as well,” she said. ”I think [my followers] are mostly excited about the new information because a lot of the drama actually goes down in the stewards’ office.” 

Thiam is just one of the growing number of female Formula 1 fans entering the sport. At the 2024 Australian Grand Prix, female spectators in attendance reached record-breaking numbers, marking the most attended Formula 1 event by women across the globe. Nearly half of the fans onsite were women, according to the Herald Sun. While Netflix’s docuseries “Drive to Survive” was credited with the sport’s surge stateside, social media content creators like Thiam have sustained its popularity. Whether it's through racing romance novels, TikTok driver edits, on-track action or the sport’s technical rule book, young girls and women are entering Formula 1 at record speed. But there’s often a stigma around what they know.

“I've seen so many girls labeled as ‘Drive to Survive’ fans. What's wrong with being a ‘Drive to Survive’ fan?” Thiam asked. “It's nice for them to be able to have somewhere where they can genuinely learn about the sport. It's not a very welcoming community most of the time.”

Now carrying a year’s worth of Formula 1 knowledge and inching closer to a law degree, Thiam has carved out her own corner of the internet dedicated to unabashed learning. 

“It’s okay to like something you don’t yet fully understand,” is the message she aims to spread. “I may not yet be the most qualified person to make F1 guides, but I hope that by sharing my content as I, myself, learn about the sport, I am able to make it easier for others to understand and enjoy the sport as well.”