The F1 Influencer Epidemic

Formula 1 has never been more popular, so why does the paddock increasingly feel as though it belongs to everyone except the real fans?

Formula 1 has spent the last decade opening its doors to a new, younger and more diverse generation of fans. In itself, this is a success that should be celebrated. But as influencers, celebrities and commercial guests occupy more of the sport’s most coveted spaces, there is a danger that F1 is starting to forget the difference between attracting an audience and building a community.

That distinction becomes particularly important when it comes to the paddock.

There was a time when getting into the Formula 1 paddock meant something. It was not merely a backdrop for a photograph or an extension of a hospitality suite; it was the beating heart of the sport, with mechanics moving between garages, engineers disappearing into debriefs, journalists chasing stories, drivers navigating the relentless demands of a race weekend and teams attempting, in the most pressurised environment imaginable, to extract the smallest possible advantage from their cars.

The paddock was exclusive because Formula 1 was exclusive.

The sport has quite rightly spent years dismantling some of the barriers that once made it inaccessible, but the scarcity of access gave the paddock an identity. To enter it was to move, even temporarily, from the position of spectator to the edge of the world in which the sport was actually being made.

That is why its changing character matters now more than ever.

Now, increasingly, it feels as though the paddock is being asked to serve another purpose…

It’s a content studio, a hospitality venue, a celebrity corridor, a showroom for brands and, increasingly,  a playground for influencers whose greatest qualification for being there isn’t their knowledge or passion for the sport, but the size of the audience they bring to the paddock with them.

Commercial relationships are fundamental to the economics of Formula 1, and the sport has always existed within a world of sponsorship, hospitality and celebrity. That is not controversial, nor should it be. Formula 1 is a professional sporting business, and commercial relationships sustain the enormous operation required to put a championship around the world.

But there are also moments when teams have discretion: a limited number of paddock invitations, a garage experience, hospitality places, merchandise, a few minutes with a driver, an opportunity to meet an engineer or simply the chance to see the inner workings of a team that most supporters will never encounter.

When that access is discretionary, why shouldn't genuine interest in the sport be one of the things that determines who receives it?

The problem isn't that famous people are present. It's what their presence increasingly represents.

There is something uncomfortable about seeing access to the most coveted spaces in Formula 1 increasingly distributed according to reach rather than relationship with the sport; about watching people who have shown little discernible interest in racing receive the kind of access that lifelong supporters could spend decades hoping for simply because they possess an audience that somebody would like to market to.

Formula 1 should absolutely be growing and attracting young people (especially women), and it should be reaching audiences that previously regarded motorsport as inaccessible or irrelevant. It should be embracing creators, storytellers and new forms of media.

But there is a difference between opening Formula 1 to new people and allowing commercial influence to determine who gets closest to it.

The former is growth. The latter is dilution.

Formula 1 needs to be careful that, in its determination to become bigger, it does not become less meaningful.

Formula 1's Extraordinary Position

According to the championship’s own 2025 figures, its global fanbase reached 827 million, a 12 per cent increase year-on-year and 63 per cent higher than in 2018. Forty-three per cent of that audience is now under 35, while women account for 42 per cent of the global fanbase, compared with 37 per cent in 2018.

Those numbers are not a problem to be solved. They represent a remarkable achievement.

The sport has become more culturally relevant in a way it has not been for decades, helped by the introduction of DTS, social media coverage, increasingly sophisticated digital content, a more deliberate approach to storytelling and a willingness to meet potential fans somewhere other than a television screen on a Sunday afternoon.

The 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey, based on more than 100,000 responses from self-identified, highly engaged fans across 186 countries, found that female fans accounted for three in four new fans in the survey. Ninety per cent of respondents said they were emotionally invested in race outcomes, while 61 per cent said they engage with F1 content daily.

That is evidence of fandom, not simply a superficial audience.

And it is precisely why the conversation around influencers needs more nuance than the familiar accusation that "older fans simply dislike newcomers".

The problem is not that people are discovering Formula 1 through Netflix or social media.

Nor is it that somebody has become a fan because of a driver rather than a constructor.

And it’s certainly not that women are entering a community which historically did not always make them feel welcome.

The problem begins when commercial reach becomes a more valuable qualification for access than genuine engagement with the sport itself.

New Fans Aren't The Enemy

There is an uncomfortable irony in some of the criticism directed towards Formula 1’s newer audience.

A sport cannot spend years complaining that it needs to attract younger fans, diversify its audience and find relevance with a new generation, only to sneer when that generation actually arrives.

New fans don’t need to have watched Mika Häkkinen in real time, or know every single technical regulation of the new season. They don’t need to have endured the Schumacher years, the Toyota era, the V10 generation or even how many Red Bull driver switches we’ve had to earn the right to call themselves supporters.

Everyone who discovers a sport has to start somewhere.

Some people inherit this interest from their parents, some encounter it at a kart track, and some even watch a Grand Prix by accident.

None of those routes makes someone more or less legitimate as a fan.

The point is not to decide who is a “real fan”.

The point is to ask what Formula 1 chooses to reward once someone has become one.

A person who discovered Formula 1 six months ago and is now obsessed with it is a fan. A person who has followed Formula 1 for 25 years and never posts about it online is a fan. A person who watches every race but has never attended one is a fan.

An influencer who has never demonstrated an interest in Formula 1 but is invited primarily because their audience is commercially attractive may be valuable to the sport, but that doesn't make them a fan. Sure, they may become one or genuinely enjoy the experience, and they may even eventually become an excellent ambassador for the sport.

But being valuable to a marketing department and being part of a sporting community are not the same thing.

The Reward For Reach

This is where Formula 1’s current approach is beginning to frustrate many fans.

No, celebrity access is not new, nor is corporate hospitality.

Formula 1 has always been a glamorous sport, and famous faces have always found their way into its inner sanctum. What has changed is the scale and sophistication of the modern influencer economy, and the way it has transformed access into a form of currency.

An individual no longer needs to be a traditional celebrity to possess enormous commercial value. A creator can have millions of followers, a highly engaged audience and considerable influence without having any meaningful connection to the sport they are suddenly being positioned alongside.

It is understandable how brands can recognise that value, and how sponsors can want to invite creators into its hospitality suite, or teams want to collaborate with influencers.

But the paddock should be different.

It is a finite space, a working environment and one of the most symbolically important places in the sport…

One that is becoming increasingly crowded.

Formula 1 photographer and social-media personality Kym Illman recently described the change in the paddock since he entered F1 in 2017, noting that the environment has become considerably more populated and that it can now be difficult to obtain clean photographs of drivers because of the number of people seeking selfies and autographs.

That observation is revealing because it points towards the core issue beneath the influencer debate.

Fans can feel that sense of injustice when they see what happens to a sporting environment as access expands without a corresponding consideration of why that access exists.

If a team has ten places available for a paddock experience, why should those places automatically be allocated to people with the largest public profiles?

Why not invite the supporter who has followed the team through years of failure as well as success? Why not the young person who dreams of becoming an engineer? Why not an aspiring journalist or photographer who has spent years trying to establish themselves in motorsport? Why not grassroots racers, karting competitors, fan-club members, young mechanics or students hoping to build careers in the sport? Why not the person who has never been inside the paddock but has spent thousands of hours watching Formula 1 from the other side of the barrier?

Fandom Cannot Be Bought

Formula 1 can buy advertising. It can sell hospitality. A team can sign a sponsorship agreement worth millions. A brand can place its name on a car, send a celebrity an expensive gift or pay for access to a race weekend.

But none of those things can manufacture the feeling of a fan waking up early to watch qualifying, travelling hundreds of miles for a Grand Prix, arguing with friends about a strategy call, remembering where they were when your favourite driver won their first race or continuing to support a team through years in which it gave you very little reason to do so *cough cough Ferrari*.

That emotional investment cannot be purchased because it is precisely what makes the commercial side of sport possible.

Sponsors do not invest in Formula 1 because sponsorship itself has intrinsic meaning. They invest because millions of people care about what happens on track — and are emotionally invested in it.

The commercial machine sits on top of fandom; it does not create it.

And this is why the sport should be careful about allowing commercial visibility to determine who gets closest to it.

There is a broader principle here, too, and it concerns what Formula 1 means as a community:

Sport is different from ordinary entertainment because people do not merely consume it...

They belong to it.

A television programme has viewers, a film has an audience. A sporting team has supporters.

People build friendships around sport. Families pass it between generations. Fans travel, argue, celebrate, suffer and return. Over time, races become woven into their lives.

Formula 1 is inarguably the pinnacle for motorsport fans.

Our community is not defined by who has the most followers, who appears most frequently in the paddock or who has the greatest proximity to its stars. It is defined by those of us who actually care about what happens when the lights go out.

For too long, female supporters especially have been treated as though our presence requires an explanation, with our knowledge being questioned in ways that male fans rarely experience. Our interest is usually reduced to the appearance of drivers, our credibility is usually tested through arbitrary examinations of how long we have followed the sport or how much technical knowledge we possess.

It's absurd.

A woman does not need to have watched Formula 1 for twenty years to belong. She does not need to know every regulation, every constructor or every historical championship. She does not need to prove that she understands tyre degradation before her passion becomes legitimate.

Equally, she should not have to become an influencer before that passion is considered valuable.

Formula 1 should be proud of the fact that more women now see themselves within its world, but that progress should mean giving women genuine opportunities to participate in the culture and future of motorsport — as fans, competitors, engineers, journalists, photographers and professionals — rather than simply recognising their commercial value.

The same principle applies to every new generation coming into Formula 1.

The answer is not to build the old barriers again.

It is to make sure that we break down old barriers and allow the people who walk through them to not be pushed to the back of the queue by those who happen to be more marketable.

The Heart Of The Influencer Question

It is not an argument that influencers have no place in Formula 1...some are genuine fans and have done excellent work around the sport.

But influence on social media should not automatically confer importance within the sport.

A large audience tells you that people are listening, but it does not tell you that the person speaking cares or knows more about Formula 1 than somebody else.

Formula 1 has always and will always attract famous people. The influencer economy has created an enormous incentive to turn access itself into a commodity: being seen in the garage, beside the car or alongside a driver becomes content in its own right. Proximity to the sport becomes something to display.

That is where the line becomes blurred.

The sport begins to risk becoming something people visit rather than something they belong to.

If Formula 1 becomes too focused on who can promote it, it risks forgetting who gives it meaning.

The supporter who has never received a paddock invitation, the fan who has never met a driver, the person watching from home, travelling to one race a year when they can afford it, buying a cap when they have some spare money and following the championship with genuine passion.

They are the sport.

So perhaps for the 2027 season that is where teams could be more imaginative.

If they have scarce access to give away, they could use some of it to recognise the people whose passion sustains the sport: long-term supporters, grassroots racers, fan clubs, young engineers, aspiring journalists, students, photographers and children discovering motorsport for the first time.

They could make the fan the VIP.

Not because fans are entitled to access, and not because every invitation should become a reward for longevity, but because there is something uniquely powerful about giving a meaningful sporting experience to somebody who will actually appreciate and understand its meaning.

The objective of Formula 1 should not simply be to create an impressive photograph. It should be to create a memory and strengthen a community.

For the sport, social growth cannot be the only measure of success.

Formula 1 has spent the last decade making the world fall in love with the sport. It now has a responsibility to make the people who already love it feel that they matter just as much as the people who can make it look good.

Because the future of Formula 1 should not be measured only by how many people it can attract, but by how many people it can make feel that they belong.