Forget a festival of racing, F1 is a carnival of cash

There is perhaps no neater summation of modern Formula One. After all, the series so technical it is named after its own rulebook has reimagined and reinvented itself by learning to love the noise, by understanding and prioritising humanity’s base desires, by accepting drivers are far more interesting off the grid. Writers Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg dubbed it “post-sport sport”. Maybe it isn’t sport at all. Maybe that doesn’t matter.

But before the noise, before the sound and fury of shrieking engines and tyres and fans, the first thing that hits you about Silverstone on Grand Prix weekend is the smell. The stench of acrid rubber hangs over the track like a shawl. Vape smoke and petrol fumes haunt the air. But most of all, it stinks of money. Forget a festival of racing, this is a carnival of cash.

Every element of the grand prix experience, of the F1 experience, has been painstakingly monetised. A surface unbranded is a surface wasted. The majority of teams only exist to bolster an external brand, be that an energy drinks company or the largest machine tool-builder west of Suez. In turn, every team have their own roster of sponsors – 20 or so, on average. This used to be the reserve of Big Tobacco, but now it’s for anyone with a dream and a few billion dollars.

The Las Vegas GP is advertised across the finish line, overlooking adverts for F1: The Movie and a collaboration with Disney next year. Actor Tobias Menzies namedrops Drive to Survive in the film, while the premiere will undoubtedly feature heavily on next season. Even the livery of the fictional team APX GP includes an advert for the F1 25 video game.

This self-serving, self-sustaining circularity, this adception, is ubiquitous. There’s sponcon for everyone. Beneath all the noise, just as F1: The Movie is an advert masquerading as a film, as Drive to Survive is an advert masquerading as a documentary, Formula One is an advert masquerading as a sport.

The Paddock – the teams’ tarmac oasis – is the epicentre of F1’s noisy opulence. Once a collection of crumbling motorhomes, every team now ferries sleek palaces from race to race. There are more roof terraces than Soho. Aston Martin’s glass frontage is adorned by manicured trees. The F1 base serves fresh gelato on the patio. Was that José Mourinho? Ferrari disseminate drinks called “Fantasy Vibe” and “Cosmic Wave”. If you need a quick trim, Qatar Airways operate a complimentary salon.

Everywhere you look are beautiful, marketable, Instagram people. There are faces for which launching a thousand ships would seem wholly inadequate. Even the drivers are a titivated boyband of hairstyles and jawlines and eyes you forget yourself in. Model good looks are not an official prerequisite to operate an F1 car, but it clearly doesn’t hurt.

Opposite the pit lane, a BMX rider flicks and flitters through a fully functional half-pipe on the Red Bull hospitality balcony. The extremes of depth and superficiality, indulgence and vanity, reality and artifice, are intoxicating. You cannot help but imagine what it would be to belong here. F1 understands this and, of course, knows how to monetise it. The Paddock doubles as a human zoo. People pay thousands to be near their heroes, shepherded by harassed guides. You’re allowed close, but never actually inside. The more you pay, the closer you can get to the Have Yachts, and yet the further away you realise you are.

At one of countless merch stands, I inquire whether there’s been a labelling error, but a dull grey Pirelli cap really does cost £95. “It’s special edition,” I’m told, as if that explains everything. Bernie Ecclestone believed young fans were not a market worth targeting because they “don’t buy Rolexes”. That might be true, but they certainly buy merch.

Between 2018 and 2023, online sales of F1 merchandise rose 1,084%, underpinned by increased partisanship and an intimate understanding of the commercial power of parasocial relationships. You might never really know your idols, but you can dress like them. Imitation is the sincerest, and most commercially beneficial, form of flattery.

In Thursday’s press conferences, Russell (in a £110 Mercedes hoody himself) complimented Yuki Tsunoda on his Red Bull rugby shirt (£80), a relative steal when you consider Charles Leclerc was sat in a standard Ferrari T-shirt costing £81. “You haven’t got any merchandise on!” a glossy presenter goaded a child no older than 12 before the first practice session. “You need to get down to the shop.” The overwhelming colour of the weekend was McLaren papaya, because orange is not sexy enough.

Every driver is now a superbrand in themselves, only ever referred to by their first names, walking, grinning catalogues. The five most popular drivers – Lewis Hamilton, Leclerc, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris – have more Instagram followers than the 10 teams combined. Even Hamilton’s dog has 1.2m followers, more than two of the lesser-known drivers. And so the weekend is dominated by easily comprehensible pyschodramas, featuring easily comprehensible characters, Love Island on wheels. Verstappen – the God-given talent who just won’t play ball – has reportedly had his head turned by Mercedes, who appear his type on paper. Mercedes’s Russell, the clean-cut face of English middle-classness, at risk of being dumped from the villa, says he’s “loyal”. Over at McLaren, Norris – the effortlessly charming son of a Rich List father whose greatest flaw might be being too nice – prepares to overcome the odds to drive the undisputed fastest car, while enjoying overwhelming support and adoration from a home crowd. Oh, the humanity.

Norris and Hamilton both have dedicated stores stuffed with signed and Silverstone editions. Norris’s is plastered in faux graffiti, just in front of the Landostand, renamed in his honour despite him never winning the British GP, and still being 25. There are specific stalls for each major team separately, all the teams combined, Brand F1 and Silverstone itself. If you’re mildly interested in anything F1-adjacent, there’s someone here to sell you something.

Part of me wants to hate this – and a lot of me does – but there is no denying it works. Other sports are desperately attempting to steal or replicate part of the model, with limited success. F1’s global fanbase is estimated at about 826 million, up 90 million year on year according to Nielsen Sports.

Just shy of 500,000 people will pass through Silverstone between Thursday and today. Amid the Mercedes dominance of the mid-2010s, ex-Silverstone managing director Patrick Allen once told Ecclestone: “I can’t sell tickets for a shit product”. Yet F1 has now successfully future-proofed itself from its inevitable swathes of dominance and inaction by shifting focus away from racing. Sam Fender played on Thursday, Fatboy Slim yesterday. Surveys suggest as many people are here to just be close to their heroes as are for the racing. A significant proportion of fans will admit they cannot even sit through a race. They buy merch just the same.

For drivers who spend their years in Bahrain and Vegas, much is made of Silverstone’s history. Hamilton says “there’s always magic here”, while there are constant references to “F1’s spiritual home”. The first F1 grand prix was held here in 1950. F1 is still a British enterprise to a fascinating extent. When Cadillac become the 11th team next year, 10 will have major operational bases in the UK. F1 contributes £12 billion to the economy annually. A quarter of the drivers are either British or British-born. If the sport has a soul, it’s somewhere within this converted RAF airfield in a sedate village.

And yet it’s hard to look past that soul being world-dominating, empire-building greed. F1 earns an estimated £320million annually from their nine primary sponsors alone, spanning state-owned Saudi oil to crypto. There’s an almost admirable shamelessness to the naked willingness to take money from anywhere so long as the cheque clears. Cadillac’s inclusion is the latest attempt to entrap American eyeballs, after casting Pitt as the tentpole of your tentpole movie. You get the sense F1 is so terrified of irrelevance that it will only be satisfied when everyone is engaging. Actually watching is not the only way to play. Love the drivers, watch the movie, follow Hamilton’s dog. Here’s more access, another part of ourselves we’ve sacrificed on the altar of engagement. None of it matters so long as you pay.

The only thing as loud as the money is people telling you just how well it’s doing. “It’s one of the most loved sports at the moment,” Norris explained. “And still growing.” Does anything else matter? Probably not. It’s all just noise.

Photograph by Mark Sutton/Getty Images