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- Spotlight on: The 2025 Rookies
Spotlight on: The 2025 Rookies
How are the five new faces on the grid engaging with their fans?
Georgia Carroll
February 13, 2025
Hey friends!
We’re a month out from the first race of the 2025 season (where I’ll be in attendance - so give me a shout if you’ll also be around!), so I figured it’s time to start thinking about what’s in store for us in the world of fan engagement this year.
I thought a decent place to start would be looking at the five rookies hitting the grid to explore how each is building a fan community as they enter the world of Formula 1.
The new entrants making up one-quarter (!!!) of the total grid are Gabriel Bortoleto, Isack Hadjar, Jack Doohan, Kimi Antonelli and Ollie Bearman.
Perhaps controversially, I’m not counting Liam Lawson as a Rookie for the purposes of this post because even though it was only for six races, he technically had a seat in the 2024 season. While I’m sure I could look at the rule book for an official definition, in the fan engagement world, he’s had a significant headstart over the others, which impacts my analysis.
If you want to know more about who they are and their journeys to F1, the Formula 1 website has posted a rookie guide (which includes Liam), and F1TV has shared an in-depth documentary called Rookies (…which doesn’t).
But as you know, I’m here to chat fan engagement! So, let’s have a look at the rookies and see how they’re working to build their fan communities coming into the biggest year of their careers.
Jump to:
Recap: The importance of marketing drivers as celebrities
If you’ve been following me for a while, you would know that my biggest belief is that athletes should approach fan engagement in the same way as celebrities in other fields. Last season, I wrote about driver-centric fan engagement, exploring fan clubs and secondary social accounts. I also shared two mini-case studies looking at how Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon use the fan club model with varying degrees of engagement and success.
Even in a team sport, it’s so important for individual athletes to build their own fan communities. If you have fans, they’re already congregating and engaging without you. There’s a lot of power and value to be gained in capturing some of that attention through channels you own.
Rookies
When a rookie joins a sport, they’re immediately fighting for attention amongst existing Big Names.
Now, these drivers aren’t appearing from the ether: they’ve all had very strong careers in feeder series and as reserve drivers. They’ve clearly made enough of a mark to be promoted to one of just 20 seats in Formula 1, and that means they obviously already have fans.
However, not everyone watches feeder series or pays attention to upcoming drivers, so being promoted to Formula 1 means their spotlight immediately multiplies. And rookies need to be ready to make the most of that.
The thing about any sport - but especially Formula 1 - is that there’s no guarantee of how long your time will last (we’ve seen recently that contracts aren’t exactly airtight promises!). So, it’s important for rookies to start seriously devoting time and energy to connecting with their fans as quickly as possible. If a fan turns on their tv, sees you and thinks “huh, they seem kind of cool, I want to know more about them”, you need to have the infrastructure in place to capture their attention. It’s not enough to have an Instagram account through which your manager shares marketing photos: fans crave humanised connection and engagement. You also can’t just rely on the efforts of your F1 team. As we know, not all team fan engagement efforts are created equal. But even if your team is doing an awesome job at creating a fan community, what happens if tomorrow you’re dropped from the grid? You need to make sure you’re building a community for yourself that can outlive your 2025 seat.
So, what does the current fan engagement landscape look like for the rookies?
The 2025 Rookies
Any social media stats provided below are correct at the time of drafting (12 February 2025).
Gabriel Bortoleto (Stake F1 Kick Team Sauber)
Age: 20
Nationality: Brazilian
Social media accounts:
Website contains news, biography, media, and contact details. Available in both English and Portuguese. It hasn’t been updated to reflect his new position in Formula 1.
Fan Club account: N/A
Newsletter: N/A
Merch: N/A
Notes: Anyone who knows anything about Brazilian fan culture knows that they’re some of the most passionate and vocal fans in the world. “Come to Brazil” is such a common refrain it’s become a long-time meme.
As the only Brazilian driver on the grid (well, not counting Lewis Hamilton’s honorary citizenship), Gabriel has a built-in fanbase ready to go to great lengths to support him. It’s going to be interesting to see how he finds a way to connect with his wider audience as the year progresses, as right now, there’s not much there.
Isack Hadjar (Visa CashApp RB)
Age: 20
Nationality: French
Social media accounts:
Website: https://isackhadjar.com/
Website contains news, biography, endorsement quotes, and contact details.
Fan Club account: N/A
Newsletter: N/A
Merch: N/A
Notes: Isack is the rookie hitting the grid with the lowest social following, so it’s going to be interesting to see how that grows across the season. His online presence is pretty bare-bones in terms of ways for fans to engage, so I hope we’ll see him flesh that out and give fans something to actually connect with. Right now, I look at his channels and just think…who are you, and why should I stick around? And that’s not the response you want potential fans to have when encountering you for the first time.
Jack Doohan (Alpine)
Age: 22
Nationality: Australian
Social media accounts:
Website: https://jackdoohan.com/
Website contains news, biography, online store, contact details, and newsletter sign-up.
Fan Club account: DoohanOK
Jack’s “DoohanOK” fan club account has been around for a few years, however, it’s very under-used. That said, as an Aussie, I’m fully on board and have been repping his merch for two years.
A rare sighting of me, courtesy of the 2023 Melbourne Grand Prix
I hope we see it become more active in 2025, and for it to develop a more unique voice and purpose (team, if you need a fellow Aussie to help you flesh it out, hit me up!).
Newsletter: Yes
Jack gets additional points for being the only rookie to have a newsletter, and I’m hoping we’ll see it used as more than just a merchandise channel across the year.
Merch: Store
Looking at this screenshot just made me realise I’ve missed the pre-order date for this shirt…whoops.
Notes: Jack is a nepo baby (affectionate!) and is a lot more used to the spotlight than others on the grid. However, with rumours about his seat already swirling, he needs to take a flying start not just on the track, but with his fans. He has the infrastructure in place, but it’s not currently being used to its potential, and there are ways to deepen connections with his fans.
Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes)
Age: 18
Nationality: Italian
Social media accounts:
Website: N/A
Fan Club account: N/A
Merch: N/A
Notes: Kimi has some of the biggest shoes in the world to fill as he takes over the Mercedes seat from Lewis Hamilton. He has over a million followers on Instagram, but otherwise has a very limited online presence. At just barely eighteen, there are a lot more issues around brand safety and fandom than there would be for an older driver. However, I do hope we at least get a website from Kimi at some point this year, and his age actually makes him a perfect use case for a fan club account - outsource your connection to a trusted team!
Oliver Bearman (Haas)
Age: 19
Nationality: British
Social media accounts:
Website: https://www.olliebearman.com/
Website contains news, biography, online store, and contact details.
Fan Club account: TeamOB
TeamOB are already my favourite driver fan engagement team on the grid, and Ollie is yet to even take his first laps as a full-time driver. Not only are they the only fan club account who have taken on board my advice to add alt text to their images on social media, they have excellent branding, an authentic voice (not trying to lean too hard into a stereotypical “admin” persona), and are curating a genuine sense of community for Ollie’s fans on Threads and Instagram. I can’t wait to see what they do next!
Newsletter: N/A
Merch: Store
Notes: Ollie got a taste of F1 in the 2024 season when he scored points for Ferrari in Saudi Arabia, and then subbed in for Haas in Baku and Brazil. So, fate has given him a bit of a headstart, and his team has run with it. His branding is amazing (like Jack, it’s the perks of having an excellent surname!), and he’s giving fans multiple avenues to build and display their connection to him. I’d love to see a newsletter from Ollie at some point this year so that we can start hearing more about his journey in his own words.
Concluding thoughts
Five rookies are lining up on the grid, and they’re coming with five different approaches to fan engagement. Right now, only Jack and Ollie are truly giving fans a way to connect, but I’m hopeful that we’ll see some evolution from Gabriel, Isack and Kimi as the season progresses.
In 2025, a social media account is no longer enough to build an engaged and authentic fan community (especially when we look at the political state of social media right now!). You need to find ways to own your audiences, give them direct ways to connect, and most importantly, a reason to decide to follow you.
If you’re reading this and you work with a driver and/or a team and don’t know how to start this process, get in touch, and we can discuss how I can help!
I’m hoping to be back to a more regular posting schedule from now on, so stay tuned for some thoughts on pre-season fan engagement, the start of my 2025 season tracking, and a report from the ground of the season-opening weekend in Melbourne!
‘til next time!