“What the Formula 1 does that mean?” asks Lissie Mackintosh, breaking down the intricacies of pre-season testing to her 400,000 TikTok followers in a recent F1 news round-up. Four years have passed since the 25-year-old British content creator and presenter began sharing her F1 analysis, interviews and behind-the-scenes style and beauty.
Posting content was her way of bringing attention to the sport on social media among Gen Z — one of the first creators to do so. “I became someone that I had wanted to see, growing up on TikTok and talking about sport,” Mackintosh says.
She has amassed 23.1mn likes on TikTok — where 77 per cent of her viewers are women and 70 per cent Gen Z — along with more than 335,000 Instagram followers, 57 per cent of whom are aged 18 to 24. Mackintosh’s online presence has seen her work with brands, such as Charlotte Tilbury, F1 Academy’s partner, and her motorsport podcast, Going Purple has become a hallmark of motorsport’s social coverage.
With their multimillion-reaching short-form videos on TikTok and YouTube, Instagram posts and podcasts, female influencers have become role models for women trying to access the sport — and increasingly important to F1 teams and brands wanting to boost their online presence.
Influencers now form a bridge between drivers and fans. The often short-form, visceral nature of F1 creator content has brought hype and unique access to fans, only 1 per cent of whom will ever see a live Grand Prix, according to software specialist Salesforce.
Susie Wolff, the pioneering managing director of F1 Academy — the Formula Four level motorsport series for women under 25 — says social media acts as a crucial boost to drivers’ visibility. In just two seasons, the Scot has seen an “F1 Academy effect”, coined to explain their wide reach and impact on the rising participation of women in karting.
Wolff wants the Academy’s TV and social channels to act as a vehicle for young girls to “instantly know that there is a place for them in our sport, and that they are welcome here”.
Additionally, an upcoming F1 Academy documentary with actor Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company, set for release on Netflix later this year, “will no doubt be a defining moment”, adds Wolff.
Female influencers are expanding the world of F1 beyond traditional media, appealing to drivers, presenters and brands alike. They see the lucrative opportunity of about half of F1’s 750mn global fans engaging at least occasionally with creators online, according to the sports and entertainment agency Octagon UK.
Tech and F1 commentator Toni Cowan-Brown traded a career in policy to make F1 content in 2021. The founder of cultural platform Sunday Fangirls and host of two motorsport and tech podcasts, Cowan-Brown has built a TikTok community of more than 113,000 and garnered more than 40,000 Instagram followers.
Women make up 42 per cent of Formula 1 fans — but Cowan-Brown argues F1’s marketing overall has “done little to cater to that audience”.
Her background means she attracts audiences from both ends of the tech-F1 spectrum. “I bring Gen Z to the boardroom and I bring boardroom to Gen Z,” explains Cowan-Brown.
Despite her career and life-long involvement in the sport — her first time at the track was at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium as a child in 1991 — Cowan-Brown still finds herself justifying her authority to speak on it. No matter their motorsport record, Cowan-Brown found the experience of women sharing work online as “brutal — it’s not even a question of thick skin”.
For the former champion driver turned Sky Sports F1 presenter and analyst Naomi Schiff, making a career shift brought online criticism and racial abuse, about which record-breaking race driver Lewis Hamilton has also remonstrated. “Those comments can almost paralyse you,” says Schiff.
Longtime lover of motorsports, Schiff is focused on inspiring future generations and addressing diversity, which is “obviously still lacking” in F1.
For fans barred by the Sky paywall, social media provides another platform for Schiff’s storytelling — and an opportunity for other online influencers to entice the sport’s changing fan base.
A recurring theme in the motorsport industry — and particularly in content creation — Cowan-Brown says, is that “men hate when women make money on their own time, on their own dime, and there’s no middleman profiting”.
Maria Kivimaa, head of planning at Octagon, notes that brands working with F1 should not focus merely on tokenised targeting of women, but actively include them in collaborations, with the hopes of an inclusive and “culturally more relevant space”.
Brand collaborations are equally vital to drivers, crucially supplying them with the finances to fund racing, training and equipment. GB3 driver Bianca Bustamante, also known to her 1.4mn Instagram followers as Racer Bia, has learnt the value of social media to “make a living out of yourself”.
Now 20 years old, the young driver documents the highs and lows of her career for her fans online — in a bid to make her sport a viable career path for fellow young Filipinos. Bustamante was set to race in the now defunct W series, the all-female single seater racing series that went into administration in 2022.
“Being able to afford to test, to train and to practise is the name of the game,” says Bustamante, who was signed to the McLaren development programme for her second F1 Academy season.
Looking to the future of F1 content, Cowan-Brown stresses the need to “stop creating on rented land” — encouraging influencers to expand their portfolios across events, newsletters and podcasts so that the social media platforms themselves are not the primary beneficiaries of their work.
Seeing more women zipping up their race suits or working on cars, Wolff adds, has the power to inspire the next generation. “This isn’t a man’s world any more — and we want our audience to know that.”