I didn’t even want to go to the movies that night. The weather was too nice, and despite my soreness from already hitting the driving range, I wanted to hone my fledgling golf swing.
Yet, as a sucker for summer blockbusters (one influence that led me to getting a film degree from Michigan in 2008), I couldn’t resist the urge to see Apple’s new movie F1, starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski.
I had no interest in Formula One racing. Less than zero. But I knew the combo of Kosinski and Pitt, and Apple was too much to pass up. The reviews were stellar. I could afford to spend two-and-a-half hours taking in a world I didn’t want to be a part of.
Then, at one point, about halfway through the film, I realized I was smiling uncontrollably. Giddy. Gleeful. This movie was filling me with joy in a way I hadn’t realized to be possible, especially given that this had been a difficult year for me. Yet, there I was, looking at my watch, only hoping to see the minutes roll backward rather than forward.
I could spend forever in this world. And little did I know how much my life would change, at least in the immediate aftermath.
F1 racing gets into your blood
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot of neurodivergent and ADHD tendencies. I must get to the bottom of things, how they work, why they’re popular. I get obsessed to a level that most people would consider to be, well … insane.
It took all of one day for me to book tickets (this time with my mom and grandma) to see the movie again on Thursday. I had the same reaction the second time around. Afterward, talking to my friend Michael, he shared that there was a Netflix documentary series, Drive to Survive, that I could check out. I hadn’t even heard of it — yet it had seven full seasons under its belt. I started it that night.
One week later, I had finished all seven seasons and 70 episodes of Drive to Survive, I’d also watched Netflix’s Senna miniseries, Brawn on Hulu, and I’d read New York Times bestselling book, The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg. I was glued to the TV on Sunday morning watching the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, now knowing most all of the principal characters. I’d started a community on X (formerly Twitter) called ‘Michigan fans of F1.’ I created graphics for the winners of the British Grand Prix to share to social media.
And now, I’m writing the inaugural post for mondayGP.
Somehow, I managed to get all of my typical work — writing and talking about Michigan football — done just fast enough to dive deeper into my new obsession. But why had it taken me over so?
A little bit of everything
The first thing that stood out to me watching F1 was just how sleek it was. You see, I was raised by a single mother who was a graphic designer during my formative years. So I’ve always taken an interest in good design. And, like I said, I have a film degree. But F1 wasn’t just beautiful, it was sleek. It was cool. The editing, by Ocean’s Eleven editor Stephen Mirrione, was thrilling. The Hans Zimmer soundtrack was pulsing through my core. But it was the design elements that piqued my interest — from the fonts used for the team logos to the car liveries to the sprawling (and gorgeous) McLaren HQ complex that stood in for the fictional APX GP headquarters in dreary England.
That piqued my interest, but the racing got my attention.
F1 is a marriage of sports, technology, innovation, design, strategy, thrill-seeking, business, luxury, and reality show that nothing else has — it truly has something for everyone.
I never cared for NASCAR or IndyCar. I never even gave a look at F1 racing. I knew of Lewis Hamilton — and that was about it. But once I was given a glimpse of what it looked like to take Copse corner, to hit the straightaway to finish Yas Marina, to wrestle with the aerodynamics once getting into the fully expecatble dogfights, I was hooked. The movie (and then series) giving more insight into the business side, the tech side — all of these different avenues that went into the two-hour-ish display that was expected to take place 20-plus times every year, they all painted a compelling picture of something I yearned to understand further.
I understand that I’m not alone in being drawn in this way. From The Formula:
The most remarkable thing about the sport’s surge in popularity through a highly bingeable TV show is that it expanded the definition of what it meant to be an F1 fan. There were devotees of the show who now needed to vacuum up as much content as they could and happily committed to hours of weekend race viewing–even if a two-hour Grand Prix still had a nasty habit of being technical and boring. Then there were those fans who couldn’t care less about tire strategy, or even who finished where. They wanted Toto and Christian spilling tea, Lewis modeling Parisian couture, shots of celebrities on yachts, and Danny Ric kidding around on Insta. (…)
Inside the Liberty F1 offices, they imagined all of their new fans inside a funnel–classic consultant-speak–with things like Drive to Survive and drivers’ social media at the lip, and the real business of racing at the bottom. The idea was to find ways to move people through it.
I fully get that not everyone will fall so precipitously through the funnel as quickly as I have. But the funnel is also what I love about F1 — it’s a marriage of sports, technology, innovation, design, strategy, thrill-seeking, business, luxury, and reality show that nothing else has. It truly has something for everyone.
Why this site?
I doubt I’m alone in the F1 movie raising awareness and a newfound passion for the sport. And while the barriers for entry into fandom are lower than my day job, football, because there’s something for everyone means not everyone is on the same page. And I kind of love that.
Since creating the X community, I’ve seen F1 fans discuss the liveries (and educating me that that’s the terminology), share their art, what they love about the sport, engage in theories of the innovation in engineering, the personalities, and more. In such a short amount of time, I didn’t just learn from various TV shows, books, and documentaries — I learned from people who had carved out their own niche of fandom with their own particular interest within F1.
Whether you’re an old oil-head who has been watching the races since time immemorial or you managed to catch the caboose leaving the station amid the Netflix launch at the beginning of COVID, Formula One is uniquely accessible. Given that I’ve learned so much from others, mondayGP is about digging in deeper, to whatever your level of interest — and paying that forward.
You’re obsessed with Adrian Newey and his design and technical prowess? Come tell us about it! The latest race had you buzzing because one team went with a one-stop tire strategy, and it ended up paying off? Tell us why! You want to predict where Christian Horner ends up after his somewhat shocking firing by Red Bull? Or do you think Alpine is poised for a massive comeback, given what they just unveiled prior to Spa? We should know more. You like the pretty colors, and the cars go vroom vroom? Fair enough, give us a cogent argument about it.
The world we live in now is one of user-generated content. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X — we are a culture now more entertained by peers than legacy media. Sometimes that’s a great thing and other times, not so much. But we would like this to be more than a forum. It could be your niche Medium or Substack, rife with people ready to hear your ideas as they pertain to Formula One. It could be your hobby, or it could be your launching pad. It could just be the place you come and hang out. Much like the social media networks, your level of involvement is up to you.
We haven’t worked out all of the details of how this will work, but know that this is the plan, the intention, and the trajectory. So come; educate me, talk with me, engage with me and others as we all embark upon this F1 journey. The sport has long languished in the United States (thanks, Bernie Ecclestone) but it’s starting to come alive. We may or may not grow the sport, but one thing we will do is have a blast getting into the weeds on every aspect it has to offer.
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