Hello!

Welcome back for part two of my deep dive into the state of fan clubs on the 2026 Formula 1 grid.

If you missed it, I shared part one earlier in the week. It was a 3,500 word exploration of the five teams – Alpine, Aston Martin, Mercedes, Red Bull and Williams – who have established fan club infrastructure via platforms.

In part two, I’m examining the remaining six teams to see what they’re offering fans as a way to belong to their community and be kept in the loop. Spoiler alert: everyone loves a templated newsletter.

Length: 1,300 words
Reading time: 7 minutes.

What it says on the tin. Everything can be found in your inbox…to varying levels of success.

Cadillac are the new kids on the block. Joining as the eleventh team on the grid for 2026, there’s a lot of hype surrounding the American team. A whole lot of emphasis was placed on their Super Bowl livery launch, but to date, their direct fan messaging has been a lot less flashy.

They have had a newsletter sign-up on their website for the last little while, but nothing actually hit my inbox until about eight hours before the big unveiling on Super Bowl Sunday (or Monday, as it was here in Australia).

In addition to the above website link, the newsletter also spruiked their new merchandise collection.

I was expecting a second newsletter that actually showed the livery (or at least directed fans to where they could find it), but…nada. There also hasn’t been another newsletter since, even though Testing would have presented the perfect moment to continue sharing their story.

Ferrari have one of the most dedicated fanbases in all of sport with their Tifosi, which as we all know, is often described as being akin to a religion.

Ferrari are also unique in that they have the Scuderia Ferrari Club, a worldwide network of official (paid) membership-based clubs.

I’m not discussing these clubs today for a few reasons:

So, when looking at the fan engagement specifically from the team, we have a newsletter.

Fans receive updates from both the Ferrari store and the team. During the season it’s typically closer to a 50/50 split, but it’s definitely been more sales-heavy while the cars have been away from the track.

Ferrari encourage fans to download their app to engage further with the team (much like McLaren, as we’ll shortly see). In many ways, this app is a much more fully-fledged fan club platform than anything on their website or in their newsletter. However - bizarrely - there’s no information about it on their website (that I could find after a decent hunt, anyway!), and other than the newsletters having a CTA for the app, there’s no feeling of cohesion across their touchpoints.

It’s so important for each form of communication to feel like it’s part of the same journey for fans. A CTA in a newsletter isn’t enough - each product needs to feel as though it has a purpose and is building on a bigger story. If you’re putting significant effort into one but copying and pasting the other, fans will notice the difference and start to wonder if giving you their data is worth the exchange.

Haas technically have a named fan club program with Haas+, however, despite having a log-in section on their website, everything is actually found through their emails.

As one of the smallest teams on the grid I always give Haas a bit of leeway in terms of the manpower they have to devote to their fan engagement. However, I was a bit disappointed last season when their fan mandate didn’t turn into much.

Their membership offers a 5% merch discount, regular giveaways, and a monthly message from Ayao Komatsu, their team principal, but there’s not much happening to make fans feel as though they belong to something.

I would love to see them branch out into building something more for their fans, away from just the comment sections on social media.

Until early February, McLaren’s fan program was known as McLaren Plus. However, they have (very!) recently re-branded as the McLaren Racing Club.

At the time of writing, the rebrand has been live for less than a week but so far it just seems to be a new name. As you can see in the screenshots below, the member benefits are basically identical, with a bit of updated copy and design.

They’ve split “racing news and updates” from the McLaren Plus benefits into “Content” and “Commentary” under the McLaren Racing Club, but as access to commentary and driver radio feeds is an existing feature through the McLaren app, it’s just some rebranded formatting rather than anything particularly new. At this stage, at least!

I was hopeful that the McLaren Racing Club would come with a more interactive place for fans to engage, like what we’ve seen with the teams I explored in part one. However, it seems like it will remain (for the time being, at least) a newsletter with a merch discount.

As mentioned, McLaren do also have their app where a lot of fan content lives, but unlike Williams (and like Ferrari), there’s no direct integration with their membership program (clicking the button to log into your profile even takes you out of the app completely), so the two feel like siblings rather than a united approach to fan connection. Again, it is so important for all of these touchpoints to feel cohesive, and I really hope that a better integration between the two is coming as part of this rebranding.

VCARB feel like they’re still finding their feet on the fan engagement front. Their newsletter features the standard “exclusive” news, competitions and merch, but they seem to spend most of their energy in the reply section on social media rather than building an owned community.

In recent seasons, they’ve gone all-in on their creator programs. Which is really great to see and definitely sets them apart from other teams on the grid, but it’s not fan engagement.

VCARB have clearly invested a lot of time and energy into establishing their presence on social media, but as we all know it’s borrowed land. As the team with the youngest-feel and most fandom-forward vibes on the grid, I would love to see the team understand there’s more power in building platforms for belonging than in hosting the occasional DJ-fronted party. Or at least understand the value of putting the two together!

The teams with sign-up forms…but no content (yet).

The team formerly known as Stake F1 Kick Team Sauber have re-branded and for the first time in recent years have a newsletter! Or, at least, a newsletter sign-up box on their website because I’m yet to actually receive anything from them.

You would think that a livery launch or pre-season testing would be the perfect moment to start sharing your story with your fans, but so far…crickets.

Even though Audi aren’t a completely new team in the way Cadillac are, there’s still a lot of work they need to do in terms of identity and brand building, and to connect with their fans. A newsletter is the first step in doing this, and I really hope we see something from the team before the lights go out in Melbourne.

There we have it! Eleven teams. Six fan club names. Five platforms. Five newsletters. One form. 4,700 words. This is just a starting point for the season, and I’ll be watching each team closely as the year progresses to see how each team evolves, maintains, or regresses.

If you have an area of fan engagement you’d love me to look into this season, please let me know. I’m planning on fortnightly newsletters across the year, and am always open to suggestions.

‘til next time!

Georgia

ps. If you enjoy my work, you can help keep me caffeinated by shouting me a coffee