#f1 journalism discourse

[valyrfia]

The Sainz Effect on Media: What the Hell is Going On?

Last weekend, Carlos Sainz Jr. won the 2024 Australian GP, and subsequently, almost every single F1 media outlet has seemingly lost their minds. From the aramco power rankings giving him a perfect score (despite Max not getting one for a grand slam last weekend), to motorsport.com acting like a fan account, everyone is tripping over themselves to sing his praises.

F1 is a complex sport, it requires several different aspects to even get a car moving, even more to make it competitive, and even more to enable a championship fight. From driver line-up, to aero, from international politics, to tyre deg. There's no other sport like it. To truly be an expert in Formula 1, you have to have knowledge of how a track works, an understanding of combustion engines and aerodynamics, a grasp of interpersonal and sports psychologies, and a sense of international relations. This is why, even more so than any other sport, good journalism is vital to the sport's ecosystem. No one person can be expected to be an expert in all these areas, you need a team of people who are willing to pool their knowledge and resources before coming up with conclusions to disseminate to their audience.

But media also likes narrative, and media likes an underdog, that is undeniable. And you can create an excellent underdog narrative with Carlos. From losing his seat despite his teammate keeping his, to him having to get his appendix out in Jeddah, the circumstances are there to set up an underdog narrative. But the crux of the issue is this: anyone with any sort of F1 wheel knowledge understands why Charles was kept over Carlos (a better driver even in a car built away from his driving style, who is revered almost as a messiah figure amongst the traditional fans of the team), why Sir Lewis Hamilton is a much more desirable asset to a top team than Carlos (7x world champion, who brings in a massive draw for talent that will far outlast his stint with Ferrari). So what do you do with these characters who don't match the narrative that you want to push?

Simple. You discredit them.

Make no mistake, this is what we're seeing across every major F1 news outlet in the past week. A plain journalistic choice to choose narrative over integrity. There's all sorts of rumours whizzing around as to why that could be: from possible covert payouts from Sainz Sr, to possible misogyny towards Leclerc fans to pundits simply not being bothered to do their research. But the why of it, although important, doesn't matter nearly as much as the fact that however you look at it, these journalists are failing the sport they claim to love. What's even worse, is that it takes a simple glance at numbers to tell us that these media outlets are digging themselves a hole, and are going to have to backtrack or try and excuse their belief in this narrative in the coming months.

Let's take a common line that Sky Sports like to use as an example, "Carlos Sainz is driving for himself. How incredible would it be if Carlos could compete for the championship this year." Max Verstappen will likely win the championship this year, there are no ifs and buts about it. Red Bull are still developmentally leaps ahead of their rivals, and even if Ferrari were to catch them, Max is still at the wheel. And if Ferrari were to catch them, why would Ferrari prioritise Carlos over Charles? The only driver who has been proven to be able to beat Max in his current form at Red Bull on pure pace is Charles Leclerc, which he achieved in Las Vegas last year, and would've gone on to take the win at that same race if not for the safety car. The most likely championship fight this year is Max Verstappen vs. Charles Leclerc, and that's hinging on Ferrari matching Red Bull development. This outcome is blindingly obvious to anyone who knows how this sport works, and yet the current media angle seems to not be to explain how the sport works to the general public, but rather to double down on narratives that are certainly going to be proven incorrect in a manner of months, if not weeks.

Let's look at another common angle the media seem to like to take, "You have to ask, did Ferrari make a mistake swapping out Carlos Sainz for Lewis Hamilton?". Now, if you've been even near a TV showing F1 in the past ten years, it's pretty obvious this answer is of course not. Lewis Hamilton is likely the greatest driver of all time, his name in a lot of cases outshines the sport itself. No other driver on this grid even comes close to his level of acclaim. This reason alone is enough for Ferrari to sign him. Ferrari has not won a championship in close to two decades, the best and brightest engineers want to be working where they know the results are going to come from, and right now, as a stellar engineer, Red Bull or Mercedes or even McLaren would be a choice over Ferrari, which has the added hurdle of moving to Maranello (considering nearly all the other teams are located in the Midlands in the United Kingdom). Acclaim aside, Lewis Hamilton is still a very impressive driver. P3 in the championship last year to a Red Bull 1-2 is not something to be taken lightly, considering his teammate finished in P8 in the same car with only one more retirement. It does make pure racing sense to sign him over Carlos, who finished in P7, especially since Ferrari have an up and coming talent in Ollie Bearman, and what they need is someone with experience to fill that gap until Ollie can make it to Ferrari, and will likely happily step aside when that time comes at some point in the next five years.

However, has there been a single major F1 news outlet calmly and rationally explaining this thought process for those who may enjoy the sport but are not experts? No. Instead, what we get is Sainz sensationalism, and bias so explicit it tips right over into unprofessional. From The Race saying that a Sainz/Leclerc civil war is Leclerc fan hysteria, despite their own outlet running an article just months ago about tensions in Ferrari, to motorsport.com creating a CV for Carlos, and then proceeding to harass fans who ask why they are so keen to ignore facts. Every single F1 outlet seems to have lost their minds.

The sad thing is this will only backfire massively on Carlos himself. Charles will outperform Carlos, every metric from the past year indicates so. Ferrari may be in the running for the WCC by the midpoint of the season, but Carlos's win will fade into distant memory long before we reach Spa, and the average enjoyer will look back on all this crazy media hype and go "hm, well he didn't live up to expectations did he? He was massively overrated." And this too, will be the fault of F1 media.

In conclusion, F1 media sensationalism has failed Charles, Lewis, and Max, it will fail Carlos in the coming months, but most of all, it has failed the fans of the sport, by choosing to focus on far-fetched narratives, rather than deliver proper journalism and build equally compelling narratives out of the data on the table. It highlights a lack of skill and awareness, which threatens the entire ecosystem of the sport that we all know and love.

[mecachrome]

for an incredibly new f1 follower, what would you recommend for getting up to date with teams and racers and performances and history? apart from dts lol

oh that is a good question!!! i don't think i'm even the best person to answer this but honestly i think it all comes naturally if you pick a specific thing/team/person you're interested in and set out to learn more about that topic, because everything is so connected and with time you can fill in those knowledge gaps pretty quickly :') more under the cut:

dts is imo perfectly acceptable for learning names and faces for the first time and basically creating a vague outline of a given subject (i've said it's like using duolingo for learning a new language lol), so if you watch it and are like oh—i'm interested in charles or mercedes or learning more about technical regulations or whatever, then you can just dive deeper into that via wiki / youtube / podcasts + published media + old race archives and build up from there!

otherwise i think the main thing is just to start watching the actual races when the season gets underway, and in order to properly appreciate them then also read up on + watch videos about the technical/strategy side of the sport as well. back in the day i used to really like chain bear and i still always recommend it to anyone who asks! after that i would just seek out like... a community/server/place where other people are discussing news real-time; this could be meeting people on tumblr and twitter, but personally i'm subscribed to r/formula1 because it's the most active composite source of f1 news and Discourse. if you're reddit-averse i also just keep a big list on twitter with a bunch of random data accounts, official driver/team accounts, journalists, etc. that helps me keep up with the season in a tidy fashion—though honestly f1 journalism is so unserious that you don't really need to do that because most journos regurgitate the same three quotes in slightly different formats, so if you want to follow One Guy who won't disseminate bs info i'd recommend chris medland. or just general sport publications like autosport, motosport.com, the athletic if you're already subscribed to it (pretty lacking for f1 though since it's american lol), etc... some sites like the-race are very contentious though so i'd say just tread with caution!!! on the data side i personally enjoy fdatanalysis and f1telemetrydata (i've also used f1-tempo to do my own telemetry analysis but idk if that's useful). but again i'd highly recommend the subreddit since it keeps everything i just mentioned in one place anyway 😭

other media recs:

f1tv, if it's available in your area, has pretty much everything you need to follow f1 in its entirety. i hate to shill for paid media but i genuinely think it's good; you can watch every f1, f2, f3 session real-time, as well as go to the archives and revisit old races for each series from most seasons. it also has technical shows and a whole host of minidocs with bite-sized info that are probably less sensationalized than dts. if you don't have f1tv though then a lot of decent content is cross-posted to the f1 youtube so honestly the official channels are all pretty good for keeping up with the sport.

podcasts: if you're an auditory person then podcasts are a great way to deepdive into f1 history. personally i believe that 80% of men running f1 podcasts should be legally barred from ever having an opinion on motorsport, so i don't listen to that many, but i do enjoy the official f1 podcast beyond the grid (i listen to it on spotify but you can also find full transcripts on the f1 site) since, you know, they get official personnel on and i appreciate the wide range of personalities interviewed—from drivers to tps to various types of engineers. i've also heard good things about shift+f1, the race, and engine braking, but i haven't checked them out so i'd recommend just looking podcasts up yourself and seeing what vibes with you! though some podcasts are just like... I'll eat this because you're interviewing my guy but i would never watch/listen to you otherwise. (cough pit stop...)

books & autobiographies: again if you want to dive more into old f1, then you can always read a book!! i read jenson's autobiography life to the limit earlier and was very endeared, it's a super breezy but charming read ❤️ adrian newey's memoir is also a decent overview of a clearly brilliant and accomplished mind, i enjoyed the technical details and found his early career path especially interesting.

docus, movies, tv: there's also plenty of f1 media outside of f1tv, so you can always check those out; f1 movies aren't necessarily that accurate or frankly good but sometimes it's fun just for the Vibes and the love of the sport. for ex rush (2013) covers james hunt & niki lauda's rivalry, netflix has a schumacher (2021) doc, the brawn gp miniseries ft. jense came out last november, just things like that... some current individual drivers also have their own random miniseries so you can always seek those out, for ex i watched maxv's anatomy of a champion the other day just for the fun of it LOL.

i don't know whether any of this is helpful... but maybe other people can reply with their own recommendations!!!

also if you're interested in f2, f3, etc. then honestly just follow feeder series on whatever platform since they cover everything pretty well; feeder_series on twitter, r/f1feederseries, plus they do interview podcasts on youtube/spotify so i like watching those to keep up with young drivers. you can also watch chasing the dream for succinct f2 narratives; it used to only be on f1tv but it gets uploaded on youtube now so it's fairly accessible. lmk if you have any other questions or something specific you'd like more info about!!!

[slow-button-off]

independent from the current charles discourse: tbh, and speaking as a woman myself, i have very mixed feelings about the way certain women in f1 media and adjacent (like podcasts) have framed female participation in fannish activity in f1. there's a certain pop culture bent where it's obvious that the speaker is coming from the celebrity gossip sphere and extrapolating from their previous area of coverage. and that's fine and fun and i do enjoy it when performance is otherwise disappointing & i think there's always been an element of gossip in f1 and f1 not being a part of pop culture is more about f1 losing relevancy than anything else. but i really take issue with elevating that kind of coverage (esp when it comes to the wags) to serious journalism or making it a "female fans in f1" issue. like, it's just fun (when it doesn't overstep)! it doesn't have to be any deeper than that! it's frustrating because a lot of the people peddling this are women and i don't want to play the "here's how a good female fan in f1 should behave" game but it is annoying TO ME.

So much of it just kinda end up being pitting women against eachother and it pisses me off.

[brakingpoint]

next season im not engaging with any f1 discourse f1 journalism or anything of the like. im gonna turn up watch the races make jokes reblog pictures of the drivers looking sexy and then im gonna log off and pretend the sport doesnt exist until next time

[valyrfia]

Lawrence Barretto is either being paid off for these takes or he’s a terrible journalist. At this point there’s simply no other way he churns out these takes. Everyone who watched that race knew that Charles vs. Carlos was not a strategic battle, but the result of the two drivers running completely different races.

It’s embarrassing this incompetent man has a platform, never mind the fact that he’s providing race journalism for F1 the organisation itself.

[valyrfia]

A quick PSA: Charles finished +10 seconds ahead of Carlos, but Charles pitted under a VSC and saved about 8 seconds compared to Carlos by doing so. So actually the gap is around +2 seconds. I’m lecfosi, but let’s not fight reductionist sensationalism with more reductionist sensationalism. Charles and Carlos were more equal on pace today than might appear. Carlos did burn out his tyres quicker in the first stint (which is why he pitted before the VSC), and that’s the stat we should be focusing on-tyre management, rather than the +10s at finish.

[valyrfia]

why is charles always facing misogyny from journalists

Charles is a man and therefore can’t face misogyny in the same way. However, he can feel the repercussions of misogyny levied at his vocal and majority female online fanbase. It’s quite wild to see us make excellently thought out takes on twitter and tumblr, all of which make perfect sense and have a logical progression to them, only to be labelled as “hysterical Leclerc fangirls” by men who haven’t bothered to understand how Charles’s pole to win ratio is actually an incredible thing on his part and a damning indictment of the state of Ferrari for the past few years, or by mainstream journalists themselves who like to call us delusional for saying the Sainzes cause toxicity, when there is LITERAL evidence of that provided back to 2015.

I would go far enough to say that this lecfosi hate that’s become trendy amongst everyone is a reactionary pushback against women in F1 spaces because we can cite numbers and statistics in Charles’s favour all we want, and still get hit with “lol Leclerc fan girl who doesn’t know wheel”. I notice that when I make posts favouring Charles on other platforms where I don’t indicate my gender, and use certain speech patterns that men would tend to use over women (ie. Leclerc and Verstappen rather than Charles and Max), my opinion is taken to have higher value and is at the very least, respected. It sucks because misogyny sucks, and make no mistake this is misogyny. Charles feels the repercussions of it because we comprise his fanbase, and women can’t POSSIBLY support a driver because they know enough wheel to consider him generational, it must only be because he’s hot!

[valyrfia]

I have to way I'm a bit surprised by all the hate charles gets and all the support carlos gets

I used to think charles was more popular

I guess when it comes to Fandom he does have a bigger one, but I think general audiences seems to support carlos more

Maybe it's underdog narrative idk. Like charles is constantly called spoiled, brat, whiny etc whenever he says ANYTHING that isn't super nice, while carlos can bitch as much as he want and barely gets called out

Fandom is always a bubble. I'd say the top two drivers in fandom are probably Charles, Max, and Lando because they're the ones that are popular with younger audiences. It's certainly not true outside. Sure, there's an RPF to fandom, but I think it's also worth noting as well if you're in F1 fandom, you're probably a more avid viewer of the sport than most casual fans, so things like Max's current domination are made more interesting by knowing the ins and outs of his journey, and it's easier to reject anti-Charles viewpoints because when you watch a drive like Suzuka in real time and look at the data afterwards, you understand why the past four WDCs think him generational, and why Carlos is a GOOD driver, indisputably, but has a deficit of skill in comparison to Charles which is masked with luck.

Also ultimately, it's a difference in what type of PR sells to different generations as well. Charles has carefully cultivated quite a strong parasocial relationship with a very loyal fanbase mainly comprising of the countries of Italy and Monaco and younger fans–he does this through playing into inside jokes online with his fans, making us feel like we have a 'special' understanding with him by liking certain tweets, or using certain emojis, or using pictures for his instagram that sneakily reflect a piece of online discourse that happened on a race weekend. Carlos has gone for the more traditional media approach of an underdog narrative to gain sympathy, but he doesn't have the same legion of loyal fans as Charles and makes no effort to build the same fan backchannels that Charles does, which is why I think that Charles, ultimately, will win the PR game. The support of traditional media is fickle, but the lecfosi would follow Charles into hell if asked. It's why Charles knows ventures like LEC or his music will succeed, wheras can the same be said for Carlos outside of Spain?

[valyrfia]

because everyone knows subconsciously, even if they don’t admit it, that charles is better. if you expect a driver (leclerc) to get p1, but they end up getting p2, it’s disappointing. meanwhile if you expect a driver (sainz) to get p3-p4, but they end up getting p2, it’s impressive.

deep down these double standards just prove that charles is THAT GUY and sainz is NOT that guy 🤷‍♀️

Anon, you're inspired. Everyone knows that Charles is generational, even the Sainz ride or dies, deep down they know what Charles is capable of. Which makes it so easy for them to smear him when Charles has not finished a race outside the top 5 for nine months, but unable to find a way past Max's Red Bull. Whereas, deep down, we don't expect anything game-changing from Carlos, which is why it's so easy to spin a narrative of pleasant surprise when he gets a win when Max's Red Bull is out of commission.

Charles is il predestinato, the golden son, the prince that was promised, the Ferrari heir. Carlos is...a good racing driver at a top team, and that's all.

[valyrfia]

f1 tv commentator just compared carlos’s accident to max having a spin and correcting it… the difference is max doesn’t spin into the barrier, he corrects it. what the fuck is this guy goin on about

Can’t relate I’m listening to Nico Rosberg on Sky AKA lecfosi extraordinaire

Although Karun on Sky also just said that it’s like Charles crashing in sprint qualifying yesterday…..when it started raining super heavy and no one could keep it on track. Journalists are reductionist and sensationalist nowadays, they refuse to participate in nuance.

[valyrfia]

F1 journalism is honestly dead because how are you propping one driver to be underrated while simultaneously rating him the highest for doing any good driver would do in his place? Feeling very braindead since a couple of days just by being on twitter 🙃

Someone needs to investigate how tf Carlos has managed to have these web of narratives spun around for him

I find it fascinating how every single group of fans with the exception of the die-hard 55ers are now pushing back against major F1 journalism for overrating Carlos. It shows there's a massive disconnect between the media and what the fans are actually thinking. Makes you wonder what could've caused that disconnect though....

[valyrfia]

Carlos Sainz, same car, same strategy, finished 10s behind his teammate. Who from journalists gonna comment on it? Right, no one…

Tbf, Charles pitted under VSC, Carlos didn’t. So the difference if we take that into account is more like +2 seconds.

But you’re right, journalists will likely lambast Charles for not being able to get a podium. Sigh.

[valyrfia]

also the hype about this win is totally insane 😭 it’s almost like the best driver dnfed, it’s not like he beat him

Agree. I understand the underdog narrative but the media are not doing themselves nor Carlos any favours by trying to pretend he could fight for a championship. Max was out by lap 3, and his car was literally on fire. Let's keep it real.