“You’re just mad someone insulted your baby”: Why F1’s competition problem is more than just money

“I have a theory why women like racing drivers… It’s not because they respect what we do, driving round and round in circles… It’s our closeness to death. You see, the closer you are to death the more alive you feel, the more alive you are.”

The biographical racing movie Rush depicts the 1976 season rivalry of Formula One drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, with Hunt espousing this particular sentiment about why women seem to be falling over themselves to be with him. The film does not hide the race car drivers’ tendency for frequent promiscuous outings with gorgeous models and celebrities, drowning themselves in champagne at parties — fitting the mold of the perfect F1 driver. There is attraction to this dangerous dance with death on a race track.

While in a less forward, blatant tone, the 1966 film Grand Prix depicts drivers gracing the streets of historic tracks like Monaco, dealing with on-track battles and off-track squabbles with women who fall in and out of love with them. The allure of money and luxury is intertwined with divisive rivalries and tenuous relationships.

These ideas are not new. While Nascar’s origins rest among the lowly moonshine runners during America’s prohibition era, Formula One’s founders were anything but humble. There is nothing casual, nothing cheap, nothing half-hearted about the energy F1 has created for itself since its inception. It is a sport that stands proudly on the pedestal of its roots, crowning its historic existence with grand gestures of glamour and excess and money dripping from its mouth.

Where Formula One’s money lives, so does its heart.

F1 has chosen for its existence to be contingent on its habits and past practices, fervently arguing with shaking fists that, “this is the way things have worked, and this is the way they will continue to work”. But it is 2020 and it may have worked that way in the past, but it isn’t working that way now. Even ardent, diligent fans like myself are finding it ever more difficult to pry our eyes open to watch a predictable, uncompetitive race at the crack of dawn (5 or 6am wake-up times on a Sunday, anyone?) While the Italian Grand Prix at Monza this month was an anomaly, it was a powerful reminder of what a competitive grid looks like, and the spectacular results it could produce if there wasn’t a single dominant team.

If there are solutions to F1’s banal races, why haven’t they been implemented?

If you were to take a hammer to the glittering walls of Formula One’s palace, you’d uncover specific building blocks: speed, danger, money, glamour, and a healthy dose of sexism and misogyny. And they have remained largely unchanged since the sport’s founding. It’s about the sound of a forest-burning, earth-shattering, ear-drum-warping engine firing up, about the stomach-twisting wait for the lights to go out at each start, about your ribcage near exploding and heart growing a thousand miles outside of you as the tension mounts and laps dwindle. Not so much about whether things are ‘fair’.

Four time World Champion Sebastian Vettel has stated, “I think the cars need to smell…to be loud. It needs to be something you can’t forget.” Vettel’s comment is well-meaning — he adores the sport as much as the fans, and firmly believes in the beautiful ferocity of these mechanical wonders. He delineates the human element to such an inhuman, mechanical sport: he, like every driver on the grid, sees the souls and the hearts that inhabit each race car.

But when these comments get twisted and molded to help purposely place motorsport on some unreachable, infallible throne, more hurt than help is accomplished. It effects how change is approached, and either welcomed or warded off by the sport’s leaders. The refusal to acknowledge the scale of the problems, the failure of short-term solutions implemented only after glacial debates, and the usage of the age-old excuse of “it’s part of the sport” all serve to exacerbate what is happening. Fans would prefer to remember each race with fondness, but when nearly every race delivers a similar result, many would rather choose to forget.

The sport is largely gate-kept by two groups: first, an army of sexist Twitter soldiers berating me (a woman) for any opinion or telling me I’m only watching F1 because I think the drivers are physically attractive; and second: a boys-only-club of leaders functioning in a consumer-driven, politically-saturate environment. In this world, decisions are decidedly biased and conversations are shut down.

All that emphasis on masculinity and testosterone, on speed over safety, and on finding the edge of danger is worn like a mantle around the necks of leaders, who seem petrified of admitting their failures or the debilitating need for change in the current environment.

Earlier this season, I made a social media post expressing my confusion over why a specific driver, Ferrari racer Charles Leclerc, was being given massive clout and credit for an unimpressive race. One must understand that young and talented Leclerc has been heralded as the savior of the floundering Ferrari team, even when his teammate is Sebastian Vettel, one of the best drivers ever to exist. But since Vettel has struggled with a vastly unsupportive team structure and uncompetitive car, Leclerc fans have been quick to use this as a reason the German should retire and is undeserving of his wins — neither of which are true. Within minutes of posting my commentary, I received several venomous messages accusing me of being sour as the driver I support, Vettel, wasn’t racing well, and that I was taking out my anger on someone who didn’t deserve it. I responded to one message (perhaps my first mistake), explaining that I simply didn’t feel Leclerc deserved the praise he was being lavished, when he had largely done nothing spectacular that race, and was only in a good position due to problems from the leading cars. It was nothing personal against him, or his fans.

In response to that message, an anonymous user jumped down my throat, saying, “You’re just mad someone insulted your baby (meaning, Vettel)! Stop insulting Charles [Leclerc] because your driver sucks!” The person’s obvious usage of the word ‘baby’ to assume some maternal/feminine kinship or relationship I may feel with the driver and belittle my interest in the sport is a clear example of how the fan community of F1 itself facilitates specific attitudes and modes of thought that are on display to industry leaders and policy-makers. They look to us, as fans, as we look to them as leaders.

This energy, coupled with the ‘man-to-man’, cutthroat competition stereotype is, if anything, outdated, sexist, and exclusionary. Both internal and external stubbornness contribute to the problem. This works in conjunction with how the sport has become stagnant competition-wise, and fuels the perpetuation of what leaders and fans place their value on. It ultimately affects how money and funds are thus allocated to maintain a certain status quo.

In discussion of prize money payouts and bonus money, it’s vital to understand the problem is deeper than dollar signs on paper. The perspective with which leadership views its fans, communities, and drivers directly relates to how they choose to go about developing and growing their sport. Aged ideas continue to fester in F1’s open wounds, strengthening this infection of heralding money and masculine competition as the end-all, be-all. Yet the reality stands that it is 2020, and that the sport has actual, visible issues that are in need of change.

And they start at F1’s roots. It starts at the foundation, the cracking concrete below the floor — whatever you want to call it.

But it needs to be more than just acknowledged, it needs to be addressed.