Pole Position in the Creator Era: How F1 Mastered Storytelling at Scale

Formula 1 has always traded in glamour. When you picture the culture that surrounds the sport, it’s hard not to see Monaco’s yacht-lined harbour and runways lined with private jets. For decades, this world felt sealed off, something aspirational and distant. It arrived by traditional broadcast, with the technicalities and data-heavy aspects, the central tenets of the sport. Historically, Formula 1 relied on this distance to maintain its prestige. The velvet rope wasn't incidental - it was load-bearing.

Since Liberty Media’s acquisition of Formula 1 in 2017, that equation has shifted. Modern prestige no longer depends on concealment, but rather on circulation. Luxury, for both sport and the brands orbiting it, is no longer diminished by exposure but amplified by it.

Central to that was Ellie Norman. As F1's CMO from 2017 to 2022, she steered the championship toward something more digital-first & culture-conscious - less broadcast, less velvet rope.

Most will now be familiar with Formula 1: Drive to Survive. The Netflix series turned a technical sport into a character-driven drama, and brought an entirely new audience with it. But while Drive to Survive opened the door, it was the creator economy that arguably kept it open.

The creator shift

What creators have done, fundamentally, is translate an exclusive sport into something accessible for digitally native audiences. Social platforms transformed the paddock from an inaccessible arena into a continuous stream of personal perspectives. TikTok edits, Instagram posts and YouTube vlogs now carry the story of the sport far beyond Sunday's race. What changed wasn't physical access - most fans are still not trackside - but access to the narrative itself.

Drivers such as Charles Leclerc, Alex Albon and George Russell are now followed for their off-track personalities as much as their lap times. Leclerc recently shared images of his intimate legal ceremony on Instagram, drawing 7 million likes in a single day. Echoing football's WAG era, embodied by Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole, figures in the wider orbit - Rebecca Donaldson, Alexandra Saint Mleux and others - form part of the same cultural ecosystem. The paddock has evolved into a hybrid of sporting arena and cultural runway.

As Susie Wolff observed, it resembles a catwalk - not merely because of fashion, but because of its cultural mechanics. It is participatory, character-driven and perpetually documented.

What has also blossomed is how creators have opened up the audience entirely. Female creators in particular have brought a wave of new eyeballs into the sport. Lissie Mackintosh's entry point is telling: in October 2021, living in New York after college, she posted a single F1 video on TikTok and woke up to 70,000 views overnight. She had spotted a gap - nobody was really talking about Formula 1 online, especially not in a way that felt fun and accessible - and built an entire career from that instinct. Now a lead paddock presenter since 2022, she has conducted interviews with drivers including Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and George Russell, amassing nearly 800,000 followers and 17 million likes on TikTok alone. Her content - driver challenges, behind-the-scenes paddock access, news roundups delivered without the usual gatekeeping - deliberately bridges the gap between the sport and the fan. She also hosts Going Purple, a podcast where she connects directly with her audience and engages fans new and old on topics well beyond the race result.

The significance isn't just reach. Mackintosh has been vocal that Drive to Survive gets too much credit - the show comes out once a year, while creators are keeping fans engaged and building community every single day. For a generation of younger women who looked at F1's all-male grid and never saw a way in, creators like Mackintosh represent something different: Forbes 30 Under 30, Sports Creator of the Year 2025 - proof that the space exists, and that it was always theirs to take.

It's a logic that F1 itself has leaned into. The sport's partnership with Amelia Dimoldenberg - creator of Chicken Shop Date and one of the most distinctive voices in digital culture - resulted in Passenger Princess, a four-part YouTube original series in which she learns to drive with the help of four F1 drivers. Filmed at the 2025 Belgian Grand Prix, the series blends Dimoldenberg's signature off-beat humour with the fast-paced world of F1 - comedy, candid conversation, and paddock access all at once. It's a significant move: rather than simply inviting creators to the race weekend, F1 is now handing them the creative brief entirely. Brands have been quick to follow the same logic. When companies such as Hugo Boss invite creators like Tara Yummy or Vinnie Hacker to the Miami Grand Prix, the goal is visibility and storytelling both - extending the race weekend into a content cycle that lives across feeds, vlogs and comment sections long after the podium celebrations end.

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The numbers reflect the shift

YouGov reported that 43% of Formula 1's global fanbase is now under 35, a soaring 30% increase since 2018. The female fanbase tells an even sharper story: from just 8% in 2017 to over 40% in key markets by 2025.

These are not incremental gains - they represent a structural change in who the sport belongs to, driven in large part by the narrative that social media has been able to amplify.

Formula 1 has not abandoned its technical foundations. The metrics still matter and the engineering still defines victory. But culturally, the centre of gravity has shifted toward character, community and content.

What could be next?

Elsewhere, the playbook is already evolving. Ellie Norman's subsequent move to Formula E as CMO signals that F1's digital strategy is not an isolated case but part of a broader industry evolution. Formula E's EVO Sessions invite creators and celebrities to compete head-to-head in Gen3 EVO cars - a direct attempt to shift a traditionally exclusive realm into the mainstream. The logic is simple: if Gen Z and Millennials live natively on YouTube and creator channels, the sport has to meet them there.

And the results speak for themselves. Working with creators reached 92% new accounts to Formula E - audiences that conventional broadcast would never have touched.

It’s a strategy that reflects the public’s desire for relatable, intimate and meaningful content - content that transcends arbitrary paid collaboration posts and instead centers the creator as the creative director.