Tracking: Off-season changes to Formula 1 Team Fan Engagement

Hey friends!

Last year, I explored the Formula 1 team fan club landscape. In that post, I ran through the fan engagement efforts of the five teams who had named and structured fan clubs.

As a quick reminder, when I’m looking at team fan clubs, I’m not taking social media into consideration. How teams are - for example - increasingly using platform features such as Instagram and WhatsApp broadcast channels will be the subject of future posts.

As the cars get ready to hit the grid for 2025, let’s have a look at some of the movement I’ve spotted in the team fan engagement space.

Jump to...

• Changes for 2025

  • Alpine

  • VCARB

  • Mercedes

• Updates from existing programs

  • Williams

  • Haas

  • Others

Changes for 2025

In the lead-up to the official start of the 2025 season, I’ve noticed a couple of key changes to how three teams are approaching fan engagement. Let’s have a look at what’s been going on:

Alpine

Alpine had a very shaky start to fan engagement in 2024. It took until the mid-season mark for them to even offer a newsletter, let alone any other ways for fans to connect.

However, alongside a shiny new website, Alpine have (pre-)launched a new fan club called “RISE+”.

(As a side note, I have no idea why the word “plus” has these teams in such a stranglehold, but we now have Haas+, McLaren Plus, and Rise+. Come on guys, let’s find some creativity in our naming practices!).

The platform is yet to fully launch, but from what we can see, they seem to be following Red Bull’s school of point earning as fan engagement.

Now, if you’ve read what I’ve said about Red Bull’s fan engagement in the past, you would know that I personally don’t agree with their points and labour-led approach. While, yes, on the surface, “rewarding” fans for their participation makes sense, as I explored through my PhD research, it’s actually quite a shallow way to view fan engagement and can lead to you excluding many fans.

The wording currently used on the RISE+ platform is already equating “true” fandom with work, which ignores fans who may be unable to participate in certain ways for whatever reason (time, money, interest…the list goes on and on!).

I’ll refrain from further judgement until the full platform launches, but I hope I’m wrong and this is more than just another site where you’re told you can get “100XP for following us on TikTok”, “100XP for completing this quiz” and “100XP for sharing your race predictions” so that you can eventually cash in those points for…a thrilling digital download.

Speaking of downloads, I did complete my profile as requested in the above screenshot, and was greeted with the below promise of a “welcome bonus”.

I was intrigued by what the reward could be…and then was thoroughly underwhelmed. It was the below picture of Jack Doohan…which seems like something I could have found on Google Images. The registration process involved selecting your favourite Alpine driver, and as an Aussie, I obviously chose Jack. I assume that the download was then personalised based on that fact rather than being the default for everyone, but I haven’t tested the theory!

More to come on this one!

VCARB

In 2024, most of Visa Cash App Racing Bulls’ non-social media fan engagement was limited to their newsletter. However, they did also hold their first ever Garage Session party in Vegas last year. I bring that up, because on stage at the F175 launch event, VCARB CEO Peter Bayer had the following to say about the team’s approach to fan engagement in 2025:

Reading between the lines (and receiving the following targeted ad on Instagram), it seems like the team are going all-in on this party-led approach to connect with fans this year.

When Peter says they’ll “create a platform”, I do hope it’s a legitimate online space for fan engagement and not just a reference to their Creator Platform program. While the Creator Platform initiative is great at giving certain fans opportunities to build their portfolios, it isn’t fan engagement.

I’d also argue that running a competition for fans to attend a party in a Grand Prix city isn’t really fan engagement, either. Inviting fans to parties in a handful of cities around the world looks good on your social media pages, but it doesn’t actually build long-term relationships or encourage community and loyalty to your brand. It’s a tactic, for sure, but that tactic needs to be backed by a broader strategy…and right now while Peter is talking the talk, VCARB don’t seem to be walking the walk.

I’ve signed up to try to get tickets to the Melbourne Garage Sessions, so I’ll report back if I’m lucky enough to find a way through the door!

Mercedes

My biggest fan engagement frustration in 2024 was that Mercedes only shared sales newsletters with their fans.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I went to enter one of their competitions a few weeks ago and noticed that they had launched a whole new fan section of their website, complete with an updated registration form!

At the moment, content is pretty limited, but it seems like they’ll be following the lead of teams like McLaren who share a newsletter alongside some giveaways and downloadable assets. This may not be much, but for Mercedes, it’s a huge leap forward.

Let’s wait and see what comes of the changes!

Updates from existing programs

Williams

Williams are back with their grid-leading fan engagement for 2025, and I’m so excited to see how they continue to evolve.

While there’s nothing too different in terms of their overarching approach at this early stage, I do have to shout-out the way they’re encouraging fans to build the community around their new driver pairing.

It started in January with a vote to pick the nickname for Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz, which ended in a win for Carbon…before the drivers themselves decided it needed an extra O.

Once the pairing was officially labelled Carbono, Williams went a step further and invited fans to submit their designs for the Ultimate Carbono Logo (and then vote for their fave). Without getting into the murky ethical debates around the commercial use of fan labour (you can take the girl out of academia, and all that), these kinds of competitions are a great way to truly engage with your fans and make them feel like the community is something they’re not only a part of but are helping to shape.

Outside of Carbono, it’s good to see that Williams are sticking with their collectible badges for 2025.

I missed one race badge in 2024, and I’m still mad about my incomplete collection. 2025 will be the year I finally get the full set, dammit!

Haas

As I discussed last year, Haas’ fan club (Haas+) is…pretty much a newsletter. But I was very excited to wake up on Monday morning and see that they’ve made a commitment to 2025 being all about their fans.

I have no idea what this is going to look like in practice (the video makes pretty vague statements about connection and question answering), but I can’t wait to find out more.

Others

As far as I can tell, there’s been no movement on the fan club efforts of Red Bull (The Paddock), McLaren (McLaren Plus), or Aston Martin (I/AM), so I’m

With pre-season testing starting today and less than three weeks until the season-proper kicks off in Melbourne, F1 is well and truly underway for 2025. And that means I’ll be re-upping my research output for this project, and will be returning with my monthly tracking updates as well as my spotlight deep dives on things such as specific social media platform use, individual driver engagement efforts, and of course, an on-the-ground report from the race in Melbourne.

If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to subscribe!

‘Til next time!