grilledbythegrid

[grilledbythegrid]

i wonder if franco is just as susceptible to jinxing as oscar because on all the weekends when i wear my franco shirt he flops but today i didn’t because i had work and he made q2 and outperformed a merc, a red bull, and his teammate

[grilledbythegrid]

with franco i realized how much i might be missing from the non-english/spanish speaker's drivers.

like, i think i know a lot more about franco and what's up with him because the latam and spanish media does 90% of his coverage and they ask him interesting things about his struggles, the pressure, the car, the team, etc. while the english media focus on rumours they made up against him, so in the few interviews he does for them, he comes off dull or like he’s always measuring his words, just properly media trained.

i wonder if japanese, french, portuguese or german speakers know more about their drivers that we don't, just because they get to hear them speak freely in their own language.

[grilledbythegrid]

hello my credentials are i was physically AT the hungarian gp this year with a franco t shirt on saturday and sunday. saturday p13 in practice and best ever quali position with alpine okay great he’s feeling the aura radiating from my t-shirt great.

i wear it on sunday. 11.1s pit stop and 7.2s pit stop and p18. the aura somehow diminished.

evidence is inconclusive

i wonder if franco is just as susceptible to jinxing as oscar because on all the weekends when i wear my franco shirt he flops but today i didn’t because i had work and he made q2 and outperformed a merc, a red bull, and his teammate

[grilledbythegrid]

arg f1 twt is delivering the best post race memes because alpine gave franco an 11 second pit stop and followed it up with a 7.2 one. these are my faves:

we (franco included) are past the angry phrase we're just laughing at our miseries

[grilledbythegrid]

oh this is. this is gore.

On board of Franco's 10+s pit stop from hell (taken from reddit)

[grilledbythegrid]

2025 rookies are living such different lives, man. like isack is a thriving influencer who is meeting his celebrity crush every weekend. gabi is in an age gap romcom. ollie is experiencing being a younger brother for the first time in his life. kimi is living out a shakesperean tragedy about the pitfalls of being the chosen one.

[grilledbythegrid]

Franco Colapinto WIP ⚠️ ^_^

[grilledbythegrid]

relatable

[grilledbythegrid]

Franco Colapinto’s default sleeping pose reminds me of that glue trap meme™️ 💤

[grilledbythegrid]

me when it’s missing tío james hours and this video comes up ok why not just shoot me

feel like pure shit i just want tío james BACK

[grilledbythegrid]

wimbledon 2025

[grilledbythegrid]

franco sketches~

[grilledbythegrid]

colapookie 🙊

[grilledbythegrid]

[grilledbythegrid]

been chewing on a tag I saw @gayferrari type... "wags are the new grid girls"

so what was the point of grid girls - to associate glamour and sex to an otherwise all male sport. too much penis, even the cars are shaped like phalluses they needed that yonic energy. it was a marketing tactic, a ploy to associate F1 with their playboy, drive cars get money bitches pussy aspiration. It was being marketed to men -- hence grid girls, not even women, dressed in the driver's insignia but more scantily clad, to be beside him for the unspoken implication that the driver can have her after winning the race.

it took until 2018 to phase out grid girls and was replaced by grid kids (and many of our presently woke feminist drivers then wanted grid girls to stay), with a growing cultural backlash and feminist criticism to the sexualisation of women as props in sports in an era where f1 was rapidly losing viewership and relevancy.

after the drive to survive netflix blow-up, FOM, Liberty Media started explicitly marketing to a lesser tapped market which is the female demographic. anything that wants to be relevant in the social media age needs stans, and nothing encourages that like parasocial relationships. now we have social media admins engaging specifically in fan spaces, using their language, referencing ships, doing fanservice and moving away from the solely male centric marketing.

now wags have always existed as long as drivers have been heterosexual but it wasn't until victoria beckham peak spice girls fame sitting courtside for david beckham made being a wife and girlfriend look glamorous, the outfits she wore and the face she served. the princess story for the new age, where the prince is a handsome famous athlete and you're the prize, the one he's blowing a kiss before shooting the hoop. it's why we still have nicole from pussy cat dolls and lewis hamilton winning world title edits in the year of 2025. it's that camera panning on her, with her gorgeous brown waves and teary eyes as she did the sign of the cross and ran to lewis, kissing him over his helmet -- the fireworks of yas marina in the background.

if grid girls tapped into a purely male heterosexual fantasy, wags tapped into a heterosexual female fantasy.

we can see this with the meteoric rise in social media following of the new age wags. f1 drivers have always dated models and beautiful women, but now those women become famous and build a following off the men they're seen with. what used to be limited to paparazzi and the daily mail, now has hundreds and thousands of independent gossip pages who follow their every move, meticulously detail every outfit and brand they've worn, track their social media activity, even their personal relationships. f1 wags are now bigger than ever, they're parasocially obsessed over and hated on more than ever, every move watched and criticised or smothered in affection just for existing. I'm not here to moralize on celebrity worship culture idgaf, but all this online attention is currency and it is profitable. hence wags build their own careers off the curated, aspirational image of being a wag. of travelling all over the world to beautiful places, wearing beautiful outfits, having a (up to debate) beautiful man by your side -- and brands have certainly taken notice. hence the sponsorships, beauty and fashion brands and self care sponsors all vying to work with them from your rhode lipgloss to your alo matching set

now Liberty Media has seen the shift -- no longer reliant on their official female mascots of grid girls, it's the meticulously dressed, savvy, skinny, gorgeous wives and girlfriends who are the aspirational women on the grid. it's important to note hundreds of women have always worked at f1 races, on the grid as marshals, in hospitality, as team personnel, as engineers and strategists. but YAWN 🥱 bo-ring! everyone knows the most important people on the grid are the drivers and therefore the most important women are the ones at his side. and so Liberty Media pans the cameras on these women and their doe eyed worry/elation as their guy crosses the finish line. it's more frequent, more lingering, and voyeuristic in a way that invites you to inhabit their place in your mind -- what would that be like? after all, you viewer at home are similarly biting your nails watching your guy cross the finish line. in that moment she represents you.

it's ofc misogynistic to imply the aspiration of wags is just for women — the idea of the Hero taking his helmet off and kissing the swooning damsel is literally in bond movies and appeals to the conqueror/winner male fantasy.

but from a purely marketing standpoint, FOM benefits from putting these women in official unofficial spaces as part of the drivers' (and thus F1's new more sanitized, "inclusive" brand image). When the wags are invited to F1 Academy events to promote them, when they're invited to the official F1 movie that's just for the drivers' viewing as the plus one, when they're shown on DTS beside the drivers in their private lives, or a whole segment that's about Ginger Spice riding horses with her sex pest team principal husband, when they're in hospitality and the camera cuts to them every so often signalling to the you, the audience, are supposed to care about this story they're selling you. it's no longer the scantily clad 'girls' by the drivers' side to be ogled, it's the official dowager titled Wives and Girlfriends selling you the aspirational, western, heterosexual, wealthy, conventionally attractive family unit.

not here to cast any moral judgments on wag culture -- I enjoy looking at beautiful women who live such fundamentally different lives too, but rather looking critically at why the larger media complex behind f1 wants to sell you their personal relationships in the era where your attention is currency~

[grilledbythegrid]

[grilledbythegrid]

Esteban taking his girlfriend to Cannes whilst Pierre takes uh *checks notes* Franco Colapinto