{"id":691512,"date":"2026-05-24T13:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T13:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691512\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T13:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T13:03:13","slug":"why-we-need-to-talk-about-social-media-in-f1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/691512\/","title":{"rendered":"Why we need to talk about social media in F1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perhaps it\u2019s just the years adding up, but one particular thing really got me going on social media a few weeks back: Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc<\/a> playing some sort of game (perhaps there\u2019s a name for it, but I don\u2019t even want to ask AI what it is) where you have to catch ping-pong balls with chopsticks. They throw balls at each other, they try to catch them, they fail, they laugh.<\/p>\n

Just something you\u2019d expect to see while scrolling, right?<\/p>\n

I guess it got a lot of likes \u2013 and probably impressions too \u2013 so Ferrari<\/a>\u2019s marketing department could report increased engagement numbers. Eyeballs, I think it\u2019s called \u2013 on a minute-long video (I didn\u2019t double-check, but it should be around that) with sponsor logos visible. That\u2019s how it works, right? But was it just me who felt irritated seeing a 41-year-old seven-time F1 world champion trying to catch ping-pong balls with chopsticks?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m about the same age as Hamilton, actually, and perhaps I\u2019m looking at it from the wrong perspective. But for me, falling in love with the world of\u00a0motorsport \u2013 and Formula 1 in particular \u2013 was closely tied to the aura of these gladiators driving incredible machines.\u00a0Perhaps we\u2019re far removed from the era when every time drivers started a race they knew there was a chance they might die \u2013 and that\u2019s a good thing \u2013 but aren\u2019t we stretching it a bit too far by making them look like kids?<\/p>\n

It could be that fortysomething-year-olds like me and Hamilton aren\u2019t the target audience anymore, but I\u2019d argue I don\u2019t really feel that way. I am \u2013 like Lewis, if you believe what he says \u2013 someone who doesn\u2019t really mind the \u2018yo-yo\u2019 racing, and even finds it more entertaining than races where there\u2019s just one \u2018yo\u2019, or nothing more than a hyphen. But this social media obsession with trying to make drivers look like teenagers still puzzles me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Is <\/p>\n

Is it WINblad or linBAD? Arvid puts viral TikTok hacks to the test on Racing Bulls\u2019 YouTube channel<\/p>\n

Photo by: Visa Cash App RB<\/p>\n

And yes, dear people at Ferrari, if you read this, it\u2019s not a dig at you \u2013 there\u2019s plenty of that kind of content from other teams too. Two years ago,\u00a0McLaren<\/a> had its drivers playing hide-and-seek in the Miami paddock \u2013 which turned into a seven-minute (yes, this time I did check) YouTube video and plenty of clips for other platforms. The same two drivers who would go on to fight each other in a title battle.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s plenty more like that. Team-mates trying to beat each other at rolling up toilet paper rolls was there, too. And if you look at what Racing Bulls is doing on social media<\/a> \u2013 \u2018our drivers having fun doing silly things\u2019 is essentially the core of their content strategy. Which, in their case \u2013 as a junior team \u2013 perhaps has some merit. But aren\u2019t we getting too far away from the hero image drivers used to have?<\/p>\n

And what about merging team-mates\u2019 names? All the \u2018Carlandos\u2019 of this strange world. Why on earth do all drivers sharing a garage in F1 have to be portrayed as friends \u2013 despite the fact that, in most cases, they are each other\u2019s biggest rivals? I\u2019m sure that if one day George Russell<\/a> and Max\u00a0Verstappen<\/a> end up sharing a garage, we\u2019ll see some creative individual come up with something like \u2018Verstassell\u2019 or \u2018Georax\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why on earth do all drivers sharing a garage in F1 have to be portrayed as friends \u2013 despite the fact that, in most cases, they are each other\u2019s biggest rivals?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong \u2013 I\u2019m not saying they should go out and film themselves throwing chilli sauce into each other\u2019s food instead of catching ping-pong balls with chopsticks. But a sport that built its history on great rivalries seems too obsessed with being polished and\u00a0light-hearted. Sorry, I just struggle to imagine Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost playing hide-and-seek for the sake of looking like buddies on social media.<\/p>\n

And when the current engine formula prompts comparisons with Mario Kart (amusingly, something F1 itself has pushed via its own channels), perhaps it could lead to a complete shift in how we perceive drivers \u2013 from gladiators just a few decades ago to a bunch of college kids.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I\u2019ll just borrow a quote from four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel<\/a> to finish it off\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

Honestly, what are we doing here? Racing or ping-pong?<\/p>\n

This article is one of many in the monthly Autosport magazine. For more premium content, take a look at the June 2026 issue and subscribe today<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Williams <\/p>\n

Williams team-mates Albon and Sainz got to play proper ping-pong in Shanghai rather than having to wield chopsticks<\/p>\n

Photo by: Wan Mikhail Roslan \/ NurPhoto via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Take our survey<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Perhaps it\u2019s just the years adding up, but one particular thing really got me going on social media…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":691513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85,337450],"class_list":["post-691512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports","tag-why-we-need-to-talk-about-social-media-in-f1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=691512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/691512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/691513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=691512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=691512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=691512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}