What Racing Drivers Should I be following on social media?

"zipfuel" (zipfuel)
09/04/2016 at 09:33 • Filed to: F1, Social Media, WEC

stoffel vandoorne shakes a hand

So the above image is a totally unremarkable photo of Mclaren backup driver Stoffel Vandoorne shaking hands with Ron Dennis after inking his F1 drive contract for next year. It’s interesting because the photo seals Jensen Button’s retirement.

It showed up on my Facebook Time line after one of my friends liked Stoffel Vandoorne’s post, which got me thinking: “who the hell follows Mclaren’s reserve driver on social media?”

Now he sounds like a talented racer but I’ll be honest it’s the first time I’ve heard of him.

There are thousands of drivers out there between the big league racers or those slogging through the feeder series and because this is 2016 they all have a social media footprint.

So my question is which ones are worth the time? Plenty seem to be just phoning it in to satisfy the sponsors or have accounts managed by some faceless PR drone.

I’ve heard good things about Jordan Taylor, Mark Webber, James Hinchcliffe and Taka Inoue but there must be many more.

Show me the hidden gems, the hilarious goofballs, the young future champions, the behind the scenes insights, the playboy pay drivers, the drama queens. Go!

DISCUSSION (8)

SnapUndersteer, Italian Spiderman > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 09:47

Andy Lally, Ryan Eversley, Felipe Massa, Lewis Hamilton, Mike Seen, Randy Pobst

smobgirl > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 10:20

Jordan Taylor and Andy Lally are hilarious. I like Massa as well. Webber can be good but there’s definitely some PR mixed in. Button is PR and lots of #dreamgarage posts but nothing exceptionally entertaining. I think a lot of the team social media accounts are better than the drivers themselves - Renault and Mercedes F1 have had some really funny Twitter battles.

Leon711 > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 10:41

Fernando Alonso is aight, but you never know if he’s gonna tweet in English or Spanish. Dario Franchitti is always up for banter with his EVO columnist friends.

AntiSpeed > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 12:47

Me! I’m building a Formula F (nee Formula Ford) which I occasionally stream on Twitch, and once it’s ready I’ve laid plans to become a motorsport YouTuber. I did a Formula 2000 race last year and this video is a sample of the kind of content I want to produce (it’s a little long, but watch a bit and you’ll get the idea):

But I also want to do features (like going in-depth on certain subjects like rain racing, setups, how we prepare for a new track, etc.) and travel and lifestyle vlogs which show what goes on off-track. I’ll start with SCCA club races this fall/winter, and hopefully scrape together enough money to do the F1600 Championship next year, along with a bunch of other cool events in Canada. Then the plan is to climb the ladder as my audience and budget grows. I raced professionally about 10 years ago so I’m confident that when I knock the rust off I can be competitive next year. After that who knows!

I’ve been taking pictures of the Formula Ford build on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/antispeed/

And I broadcast from the garage on twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/antispeedinc

zipfuel > AntiSpeed
09/04/2016 at 13:41

Very cool, I am genuinely curious how any drivers/teams in the lower levels of motorsport make a viable enterprise out of it. I assume there’s a lot of money hard-earned elsewhere being poured in because I can't see sponsors paying for you to race in front of three men and a dog...

AntiSpeed > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 17:57

The teams make viable businesses by telling rich, starry-eyed kids that they can help them become professional race car drivers. At the lower levels (and even lower teams in the top levels) drivers aren’t employees, they’re customers.

The drivers don’t make a viable business. Most of them are from rich families who pour money into it because that’s what their kid wants to do, but there are two exceptions that I know of.

One is that some F1 teams and auto manufacturers have driver development programs. Vettel came up through Red Bull’s, Hamilton through McLaren’s, I think Grosjean came up with Renault and there are a handful of programs in sports car racing.

The second is a bit more peculiar. An agent assembles a group of investors, then plucks a teenager out of some high-level karting championship. They then rush them through the junior formulae as fast as they can and the investors get a return when the driver is hired by a major team. It always seemed incredibly risky to me, I guess each agent bring on a lot of drivers to spread the risk out. A few drivers who made their careers this way are Jenson Button, Kimi Raikkonen, and Justin Wilson.

zipfuel > AntiSpeed
09/04/2016 at 18:53

Yup that’s pretty much how I suspected it worked.

Wonder if there’s a way to make it viable by building a massive PR machine first then worrying about the racing part. I mean to 90+% of the general population a formula ford looks effectively the same as an F1 or indy car.

AntiSpeed > zipfuel
09/04/2016 at 19:09

That’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Competing at the lowest possible level while I build a viewer base, then leverage that base to sign sponsors and then start a cycle of viewers>sponsors>money to race bigger and faster cars>viewers>sponsors>more money>etc.

A fun fact, when I was racing in Pro Mazda, Frankie Muniz was racing in Atlantics (which was the CART junior series at the time and one rank above mine). You’d think he could leverage his fame to sign sponsors but I think he just wanted to drive fast cars and party. He was hella slow too.