Fan Engagement at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix: Part Two

Hi friends!

I meant to get this out a while ago, but sometimes life gets in the way! I came down with a bad cold after the Grand Prix (standing in crowds and crazy weather will do that to you, I guess!), and then between work and marathon training (I know, I know), somehow, an entire month has passed. But better late than never!

So, last time, I dove into what fan engagement looked like off-track at the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, and now it’s time to turn our attention to what was going on inside the gates at Albert Park.

A reminder: my focus is not on overall amenities and features such as the food trucks and every single sponsor pop-up (although it was good to see a large increase in water stations and toilets around the track this year!). While those all enhance fan experience, I’m focusing on how teams, drivers, and the Grand Prix Corporation bring fans closer to their organisations and encourage community.

Jump to:

• Melbourne Walk

• Quad Lock OP Zone

• Fan Forum Stage

• Misc team initiatives

• Concluding thoughts

While I had a four-day General Admission ticket (Park Pass), with so much happening away from the track, I only ended up at the event itself for Friday-Sunday.

On the Friday, I arrived at the gates about half an hour before they opened, and noticed that the screens above the entrances were occasionally showing a QR code for a competition that would allow you to “upgrade your day” with Crown by winning an entry to their 330 Club hospitality. As you may know, I love entering competitions, so I happily handed over my details. And then, a few hours later, I received a phone call telling me I’d won. I shared a post on LinkedIn about the experience and how simple competitions can completely elevate the way a fan views your brand.

But while I had an excellent afternoon watching FP1 and FP2 from Crown’s hospitality, most of my weekend was deliberately spent exploring how the average fan is able to engage with their favourite teams and drivers. So, let’s dive in.

Melbourne Walk

I’m going to share a mini-case study report specifically on Melbourne Walk in the next week or two (if you’re reading this from the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, you can also hire me to help you improve it). If you have thoughts, I’m currently running a survey that I would love for you to contribute to.

For those of you who may not know, Melbourne Walk is one of the Australian Grand Prix’s big attractions. It’s a fan barricade set up along the road that the drivers and Team Principals use to enter the Paddock, and if you’re lucky, you’re able to get selfies and autographs as they come and go.

In theory, this is great. In reality…not so much. The issues I raised last year haven’t been improved upon, and I noticed far more backlash on social media this year than I have during previous Grands Prix.

I’ll expand a lot more in my upcoming post, but in its current state, it’s unfair, it’s unsafe, and it needs a massive overhaul.

Quad Lock OP Zone

When looking at fan engagement at the event, the Quad Lock OP Zone is the hands-down winner.

Quad Lock are an Australian brand who create phone cases and accessories for cycling and adventure sports. They’ve sponsored Oscar since 2022 and announced a partnership with McLaren to coincide with the Australian Grand Prix. In previous years, they’ve had a presence at the event, but 2025 saw them go all in and create an entire fan zone.

The highlight of their zone was an appearance from Oscar himself on Friday morning, and I knew I had to be there for it.

After walking straight from the entrance, I was probably at the Quad Lock area within twenty minutes of the gates opening. There was already a sizeable crowd there, and while I’m bad at guesstimating, I would say there would have easily been a couple of hundred fans in front of me. By the time Oscar hit the stage an hour and a half later, that crowd had (according to the Quad Lock team) surged to 7,500.

Oscar took part in three public Q&As across the Grand Prix week (the Fan Festival, the Fan Forum, and this event), and the Quad Lock chat was by far the best of them. The conversation felt far less stilted than the others, and it was a great chance to feel like you were seeing a “real” side of Oscar.

In addition to the appearance by Oscar, the zone also housed his official merch stand. While merchandise at the event is nothing new, it’s usually restricted to generic team and event products. By offering Oscar’s personal merchandise, fans could show their loyalty to him, above and beyond the limited range of products McLaren had in stock. There are a number of benefits to this, including:

1. Even though Oscar signed a contract extension days before the event, we all know that drivers are never truly safe at a team. Buying personal merch therefore serves the added bonus of being team-neutral, should the unexpected happen.

2. Not everyone looks good in Papaya! While last year McLaren themselves offered an Oscar home race collection in Aussie colours, this year the options were overpriced orange, orange, or more orange.

3. As it was his home race, a lot of people were fans of Oscar as an Aussie, but not necessarily fans of McLaren. Offering his own merch lets people rep their fave local driver without having to rep the merch of a team they may not support.

4. Buying in person allows you to avoid the most frustrating part of merch shopping: stupid shipping rates!

This stand also ended up saving me on Sunday, when silly Sydney-sider me thought a light windbreaker would be enough to handle the rain and cold that came with race day. Spoiler alert: I was so cold I was seriously considering going home before lights out, but thankfully, Oscar’s well-priced and well-stocked stand allowed me to grab a super warm hoodie and make it through the day. With hoodies at the team merch stands double the price of those being offered by Oscar, I was one of many underprepared fans snapping up some home race swag (I also grabbed a t-shirt on Friday!).

Another stand-out activation within the zone was their fan selfie mosaic wall. If you purchased merch from Oscar’s stand or Quad Lock products, you received a token (or multiple, depending on the amount spent) that you could exchange for a selfie at their branded wall. This selfie was then printed out as a sticker with a random number to stick on their wall, and entered you into a giveaway to win a pair of Oscar’s signed racing boots. The random number also doubled as an additional prize draw, with certain squares giving fans merch, signed caps, or Quad Lock products.

While I didn’t win any of the prizes, this is one of the most well-thought-out activations I’ve seen at an event. The giveaway could have easily been run through a website or app, but by turning it into a real-world experience, it added an additional layer for fans to participate in and created a physical representation of fan passion for Oscar.

Fan Forum Stage

The Fan Forum Stage is not unique to Melbourne. It features at every Grand Prix as the primary opportunity for fans to see the drivers outside of the cars.

When I think about the Fan Forum stage, the first word that comes to mind is…cringe. The drivers appear in 10-minute slots filled with random activities (pastry taste tests! painting with small children! quizzes! more quizzes!) and it’s always more chaotic than enjoyable.

A few of the drivers jokingly pointed out their displeasure at the activities they were being asked to do, and it was extremely clear that most of them did not want to be there.

And I get that it’s hard - the drivers are bored with being asked the same questions day in and day out by the media, and they probably don’t particularly want to add another generic Q&A to their schedule. But there has to be a format where fans can see the drivers without also feeling like the whole thing is a bit of a waste of time for everyone involved.

After my years as a publicist at fan events, I am very much against open, random audience Q&A opportunities (ask me about some of my horror stories!), but there is still a lot of opportunity in pre-screened fan question sessions. All they would need to do would be to put a call out via their email list and on social media for fans to ask questions and then pick a handful. You could even get the selected fans to record mini videos for the drivers to play on the big screens, or if they have tickets for that day, be pre-chosen to come and ask the questions on stage. You reduce the risk of inappropriate questions and odd fan behaviour (and make it fairer to the fans who aren’t right up the front near the stage) and actually make the whole process feel like it’s a fan forum.

As I mentioned earlier, this was my fourth year attending the event, and there has been exponential growth in the crowd size at the fan forums. I think this growth is partially due to the growth of the sport and the event but also because the vast majority of fans have nothing to do but sit around and wait for a lot of the day. So if something is actually happening, they’re going to jump on it. It was good to see an increase in big screens for fans who couldn't get near the stage this year (and that they had a sign language interpreter for most of the sessions!), but the crowd control (like the crowd control at a lot of the event) still feels lacking. Yes, fans who get there early should be able to be on the barrier, but they should also offer other fans opportunities through random ballots and surprise and delight giveaways to get access to a reserved zone. Not everyone can get there before the gates open to queue for a barrier spot (for a wide range of reasons!), but that doesn’t mean they should miss out on an opportunity to get close to the drivers because the organisers can’t think creatively.

Misc team initiatives

Last year, Aston Martin had customised packets of Tim Tams to hand out to fans who were wearing their merch, and they’ve continued the tradition this year with customised jars of Vegemite. I was so glad to see they were out and about again rewarding fans, and I love the effort they go to to go above and beyond with their local treats.

I’ve previously discussed the fact that areas like Melbourne Walk are frequently overlooked by Teams for easy fan engagement wins, so I was pleased to see Alpine share that they were giving away mini-helmets to fans who were waiting to meet their drivers. While this particular giveaway was still restricted to fans who were already at the front of the barriers, it’s a small step in the right direction. Maybe next year we’ll see some more effort given to engaging with fans who aren’t already in prime position for an interaction.

Concluding thoughts

If we take Quad Lock out of the equation, fan engagement at the Australian Grand Prix left a lot to be desired. My overall issue with the event is that it feels like absolutely no effort is being made. They know the tickets will sell out and know people are going to camp and sprint and go to extreme lengths to see the drivers, so they just…don’t put any more thought into anything. I’m getting to the point where I’m ready to start calling them lazy.

I saw a lot more negativity on social media this year than I have in years gone by. There’s only so long fans will put up with a lack of effort and being expected to be grateful for the scraps they’re given. There are so many easy ways the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, Formula 1, and the teams could improve fan engagement for non-VIPs, but I have little faith that they will actually ever make changes.

It doesn’t have to be like this, and it’s such a shame that general fan experience is so consistently being deprioritised.

A reminder that I have two surveys currently open, and if you haven’t already shared your thoughts, I’d love to hear them:

• F1 Team Social Media Survey

• Melbourne Walk Survey

I promise it won’t be another month before my next newsletter, and I’ll be back soon with my first deep dive into digital team fan engagement for the year!

‘Til next time!