Formula 1 | By committing to diversity, F1 is also expanding its audience

In taking over F1, Liberty Media had three audiences to target to further grow F1: the United States, women and young people. Three areas where F1 had a lot of potential – that is, a lot behind.

Let’s talk about young people then: the arrival of the Netflix series, as well as the renewal of the set with young drivers who regularly climb on the podiums (Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, etc.), are likely to attract a new audience. . Similarly, F1’s commitment to social and environmental issues echoes the commitment of younger generations.

“Netflix has been a huge contributor to this growth” begins by noticing Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing.

“If you look at the fanbase they’ve brought in, it’s a lot of female fans, a lot of young people. It’s about making incremental gains in all of these areas. So we need to keep exposing our great sport to people who don’t yet know it, and then let the sport work its magic on everyone, as it has for many years. »

Given all of Mercedes F1’s commitment to these topics, it is more about the social responsibility of F1 teams that Toto Wolff is emphasizing.

“As teams, we try to be more inclusive and more diverse. We all have our own initiatives, we have something called Accelerate 25, where over the next few years we want to hire at least 25% members of underrepresented groups on our team. Because what we need are role models, not only concerning the top driver, obviously, who is the biggest role model than the sport [Lewis Hamilton]. But we all need it, we gotta change this room [la salle de la conférence de presse]there must be more people of diversity in Formula 1.”

Laurent Rossi, for Alpine, also specifies that his team has launched a program aimed at more inclusion. By pointing out France’s shortcomings on this more global issue.

“There is no magic recipe. It’s simple contamination, if you will, there’s no barrier to entry for anyone. I take the example of women. Nothing prevents women from being represented, but there is probably no model to follow. We don’t really help people believe it’s doable. It’s like, no, we think it’s not for women, but it’s not true. And so we have all our programs, we try to push for inclusion, not just of women, of everyone, especially in France, because we also have under-representation in all areas. »

“The idea is that it’s based on meritocracy. It’s not based on who you are, where you’re from, whatever your beliefs, and we’ve tried to push that and say, look, it’s not a sport for just engineers who come from this region. »

“It’s for everyone. There is no barrier, really not. So it’s fine, you hear, tell all the people, no matter who, and they’ll come, they’ll share the show with us, they want to make it their job and we’ll work with them. »