Sure, I thought. I could be a Ferrari fan.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m vaguely familiar with the funky, single-seat racing sport because I was unexpectedly enchanted by the gooey sentimentality<\/a> of 2025\u2019s F1: The Movie movie starring Brad Pitt. I was also aware of another well-known fact: A lot of F1 fans are women. As I headed into the desert for one of the highest stakes races of the year, I assumed that I\u2019d find some fellow travelers who were gentle and better informed than I, who would adopt me and show me the ropes. I was right \u2014 it began with Carol before I even landed in Vegas.<\/p>\n Fans attend an F1 race. (David Becker\/Formula 1 via Getty Images)<\/p>\n According to the 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey<\/a>, the sport\u2019s under-35 and female audiences have grown by over 50% in the last five years, powered by its growing popularity in the US and China. Since 2018, the percentage of women fans has jumped from 37% to 41%, and the fastest-growing audience is women ages 16 to 24. It\u2019s a model that other sports franchises, from the NFL to the MLS, are vying to replicate.<\/p>\n Most of the women I spoke with during race weekend said they fell in love with the sport because of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, which turns the athletes of F1 into reality TV personalities, showcasing their attitudes and relationships as well as their talent.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s always a new level to learn about \u2014 the engineering side, or the marketing side, or the glitz and glamour and petty drama of it all,\u201d Alexandra Zigrang, the founder of Off To The Races<\/a>, a travel company that organizes F1 trips, told me. \u201cYou can really decide how you want to engage with the fandom. That’s what really appealed to women \u2026 there’s no right or wrong way to be a fan. You can meet it on your own terms.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans gather around the track to watch an F1 race. (Mark Sutton\/Formula 1 via Getty Images)<\/p>\n It\u2019s OK if your gateway drug for F1 is a compelling driver, the outrageous fashion showcased by their wives and girlfriends or the theatrical television storylines. It\u2019s OK if you want to go to a race to see the city that surrounds it, to dine luxuriously or to try to spot Beyonc\u00e9, who set the internet ablaze when she made an appearance dripping in F1 swag<\/a> on race day. F1 is one of the first sports to thoroughly capitalize on female fandom, and it did it by recognizing that fierce athleticism and glamour can go hand-in-hand and by being unabashed in its embrace of both.<\/p>\n It\u2019s basically a reality show<\/p>\n After dropping off my bags at the Aria Resort & Casino, my first stop was a pop-up store where I spent an ungodly amount of money on a Ferrari coat that I prayed would keep me insulated in the unsettling, drizzly cold of November in the desert. I hadn\u2019t felt so profoundly that I had just declared my allegiance since pledging a sorority in college; I was now a Ferrari fan, and I\u2019d be rooting for Charles Leclerc because he looks a little like Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet (his legendary teammate, Hamilton, seemed too obvious).<\/p>\n Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc took the stage ahead of their final practice before the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Nov. 21. (Bryn Lennon\/Formula 1 via Getty Images)<\/p>\n As I mixed and mingled with more young female F1 fans, I wondered if being motivated by thirst was something to feel guilty about.<\/p>\n Katie Lockhart, a fellow journalist and content creator<\/a> who\u2019s been to many an F1 Grand Prix across the globe, assured me that I didn\u2019t have to tiptoe around my truth \u2014 everyone pretty much agrees that all the drivers are hot. She also explained to me, without an ounce of condescension, how the engineering of certain cars impacts the heat of their tires<\/a> and how that impacts their speed.<\/p>\n I was now a Ferrari fan, and I\u2019d be rooting for Charles Leclerc because he looks a little like Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet.<\/p>\n Another fan showed me dozens of photos of Fernando Alonso, a driver for Aston Martin, that she had curated on a Pinterest board. This led to a broader group conversation among a gaggle of women: Max Verstappen is an asshole, Lance Stroll is a nepo baby and Lando Norris\u2019 relationship status is a little too hard to decipher. The enthusiasm and relationship dynamics at play felt more like a debate about Vanderpump Rules than something on ESPN.<\/p>\n McLaren’s Lando Norris practices ahead of the Las Vegas Grand Prix on Nov. 21. (Wu Xiaoling\/Xinhua via Getty Images)<\/p>\n With other sports, fandom is inherited from family members or picked up from college affiliation or geographical proximity. F1 is global \u2014 teams are largely based in the UK and Italy, and teams are owned by globally-known brands like Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull. You have to find your own way in.<\/p>\n But once you\u2019re in, it\u2019s easy to go all the way. There are only 10 teams that each have 2 drivers, so there are only 20 faces and stories to learn. It really is more like the cast of a TV show, which makes it easy to get attached to your favorites. I myself have opened Leclerc\u2019s Wikipedia page 48 times in three days.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the height of luxury<\/p>\n Over her six years of fandom, Zigrang gleaned that the sport\u2019s female enthusiasts were driving its popularity online on TikTok, Instagram and Tumblr, but most of the women she saw at races were there with men. She wanted to see more female-centric communities, so she founded Off to the Races<\/a>, which organizes group trips for race weekends, catering primarily to women.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018Where are all the women?\u2019\u201d Zigrang remembers thinking. \u201cOn one hand, the bathroom lines are short…I know they are fans, but why isn’t this translating to in-person attendance?\u201d<\/p>\n When Zigrang planned her own trips to races at glamorous vacation destinations like Las Vegas, Miami, Abu Dhabi and Monaco, she filled her itinerary with trendy restaurants, cultural hotpots and wellness indulgences. OTTR follows the same model and 90% of the people who take part are solo travelers. She sets them all up in a WhatsApp group several weeks in advance so they can get to know each other before the big cocktail dinner, where they immediately \u201cstart yapping like they’ve known each other 5,000 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Fans watch F1 drivers practice from the Bellagio Fountain Club. (Jeff Speer\/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Indeed, decadence is part of the F1 experience. For my time at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, I was a guest of Bellagio Fountain Club<\/a>, a swanky structure temporarily set up for race weekend between the gorgeous fountain in front of one of the city\u2019s finest hotels and the main straightaway of the track. Some of the most famous chefs in the world craft gourmet dishes served there, and guests can devour them at linen-clad tables inside or overlooking the track outside.<\/p>\n Over the course of 72 hours, I discovered that I didn\u2019t even have the frame of reference from my 31 years of existence to imagine how fancy something could be.<\/p>\n The many chefs who crafted gourmet meals for the Bellagio Fountain Club’s Culinary Experience at the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix gather for a photo on Nov. 22. (Denise Truscello\/Getty Images for MGM Resorts)<\/p>\n \u201cCaviar again?\u201d I let slip to a fellow dinner patron before swelling with self-hatred. To be fair, I\u2019d already eaten a tiny taco filled with it, slathered it on a lobster croquette and a potato croissant, and licked it from the back of my own hand over the course of 24 hours.<\/p>\n Still, in the kitsch capital of the world, you can pay thousands of dollars for the best F1 seat humanly possible and still find your skin glowing green from an ad for Monster Energy.<\/p>\n My camera roll holds a smorgasbord of some of the blurriest photos of the fanciest foods ever crafted, thanks to an itinerary designed specifically by the fine folks at the Bellagio to pack my weekend with the finer things. I slurped wasabi scallops that were prepared by Top Chef winner Brooke Williamson at Michael Mina\u2019s Bellagio restaurant, ate lobster ramen at Momofuku before gossiping with David Chang about his podcast, had peking duck off Versace plates at Jasmine and bit out of a fancy dessert shaped like a Ferrari under the big top at Ristorante Cavallino\u2019s takeover at Le Cirque, surrounded by portraits of clowns.<\/p>\n Still, in the kitsch capital of the world, you can pay thousands of dollars for the best F1 seat humanly possible and still find your skin glowing green from an ad for Monster Energy. That\u2019s part of the appeal, of course \u2014 what\u2019s better than caviar paired with a Red Bull-branded margarita, all intermingled with the smell of burnt rubber?<\/p>\n Female fans show their love for F1. (Mark Sutton\/Formula 1 via Getty Images, Bryn Lennon\/Formula 1 via Getty Images)<\/p>\n During the three race events I attended \u2014 practice, a qualifying round and the grand prix itself \u2014 I opted out of the Red Bull-branded headphones, deciding instead to take in every \u201cnyoom\u201d sound blasted into my ears. For the record, the women\u2019s bathroom line was very long.<\/p>\n This is part of the appeal of F1 for many people \u2014 you go to a city with immense amounts of swag, and you indulge until it\u2019s time to watch cars go really fast in a lap 50ish times. You mingle with influencers, celebrities and WAGs dripping in luxury fashion, whose mere appearances make headlines the following day. (My non-F1 friends who heard I was at the race all had the same question: Did I see Beyonc\u00e9? No, but I did see DJ Pauly D from Jersey Shore.)<\/p>\n True representation and the future of the fandom<\/p>\n There are plenty of social media posts lamenting the presence of influencers at<\/a> F1 events, who are accused of taking up spaces that should go to true fans. But influencers are now at every high-wattage cultural event, from Coachella<\/a> to film festivals<\/a>, and they\u2019re serving as walking billboards for a sport that\u2019s actively growing. By showing up and posting up a storm, they\u2019re influencing perception of what an F1 fan can look like, broadening the reach of the sport and introducing wider audiences to the joy of fandom.<\/p>\n Former Canadian tennis player Ayan Broomfield, who is also the girlfriend of American tennis star Frances Tiafoe, has long been an advocate for creating spaces for women of color in tennis, and over the weekend, she brought that initiative, Ayan\u2019s Aces<\/a>, to F1.<\/p>\n \u201cAny sport that has a high percentage of female fans is a great thing, but I wanted to make sure that we were not only giving women a platform, but women of color. What\u2019s what Ayan\u2019s Aces is all about,\u201d she tells Yahoo. \u201cIf I can help bring girls to these events and really show out, I\u2019m going to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n Marissa Tandon<\/a>, a Los Angeles-based content creator, has been an F1 fan since middle school, though she\u2019s long followed all sorts of sports. She posts educational and personal stories on her Instagram and TikTok that help people connect to F1 \u201cin a way that doesn\u2019t feel intimidating,\u201d she tells Yahoo. I wanted to know why F1\u2019s female fanbase seemed so much more talked-about than other sports<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the female fanbase is there for every sport, and always has been \u2014 the Formula 1 female fanbase is just becoming very visible on a global scale as it becomes a bit more integrated into pop culture,\u201d she says. \u201cSocial media has been a huge part of that, as has Drive to Survive, and teams really starting to open up to working with creators.\u201d<\/p>\n Tandon still feels pushback as a female fan online sometimes, but that just inspires her to keep trying to change public perception. She\u2019d love to see more people \u2014 especially within the institution of F1 \u2014 talking about F1 Academy, which is a female-only racing championship.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we could see more of the crossover of support from the NBA to the WNBA, from the NHL to the PWHL, MLS to NWSL, and from the MLB to the new WPBL next year, that would make a huge difference,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re not just saying we want women to watch our league, you\u2019re saying that women belong in this space, both playing and in the stands.\u201d<\/p>\n Terry Crews drives Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and George Russell to the podium in a Lego pink Cadillac during the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix. (Hector Vivas\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n In the final moments of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, I joined a handful of other journalists at the window to capture precious, close-up footage of whichever three drivers took the top three spots at the race as they arrived in a pink Lego Cadillac. As we clung to the exclusive spot, a gaggle of teenagers lined up to my right. They pushed the most diminutive of them \u2014 a teenage girl \u2014 to the front next to me.<\/p>\n![\"Fans](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/a7bd65c1-caee-11f0-ad7b-dbe79101e73a.jpeg\"\/)
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