Okay, so a thing you should know about me is that I started watching Drive to Survive. I got really into F1, so I have gone like down the rabbit hole. I have exhaustively researched tire compounds and all kinds of other stuff that I never thought that I would be super interested in. This is the Culture Study Podcast and I'm Anne Helen Petersen. And I'm Nicole Washington that recovering sports addict and newly minted F1 obsessive.
The reason I asked you on is because you don't hide your F1 fandom. In fact, it is a major feature of your stories. And I feel like I have gleaned things about F1 just through exposure to your stories. So before we get to your story of F1, for me, who I will say, in preface that I have watched a couple of the drive to survive episodes during the pandemic, maybe at some point, that is about the extent of my knowledge. I've watched all of the seasons at least three times.
Good. Okay. Right. So we have the bonafides in place. Can you explain Drive to Survive really quickly? Because that's my access point. And I think a lot of other people listening, that's our access point. Sure. Drive to Survive is a series on Netflix. It has five seasons, I believe. Each season follows a racing season. The first couple of seasons are sort of designed around following one team over the course of the season. So like, well, and the first seasons don't have
the two of the bigger teams Ferrari and Mercedes. They show up a little bit later. I guess after they decided it was worth their while. But that's that's the general premise is that it's the season follows a racing season. Each episode is usually focused on one team all over the course of the season, although that changes a little bit as you go through the seasons. I will say just as a side note that this formula for a reality television show
has become incredibly popular. And I think, you know, the fact that F1 bought in to allowing this amount of access to their stars, unprecedented access, right? And as you point out, like that has to do with ownership switching. But like, there's one for golf, there's one for tennis, there's one for cycling, I believe, no. Yes, my F1 group chat became obsessed with the cycling one after we moved on from F1. So, yes. And F1 group chat is the room, room boys
and the cycling one are the bike boys. And they are, I think, remarkably effective in expanding the fan base of these somewhat niche sports interests, whatever you want to call them, and have done really well in Netflix. So that's just people, I think, have entered in different, like have started watching one and then they expand and they watch all
the other ones too. Yeah, it's general enough to give you sort of an overview of the sport and sort of how it operates, but also goes deep into a particular person or a team enough that you get like a real hook. What is F1 if someone has never heard of it? Formula 1 is a car racing championship. It's that simple. You can go a step further and say that they're actually two championships. There is one for the people who make the cars and
one for the people who drive the cars. That's it. It's really just that simple. And we're talking about like really nice, like all of the luxury brands that we've heard of, like those companies are making these cars. Sort of. So it is what I believe is referred to as open wheel racing because the actual part where they sit is open, like they don't have windows and windshield wipers or sort of like clunk down in a car. Think of it as
like a very fancy version of those little tikes race cars. Like that's what we're dealing with here. Not a lot of amenities for the driver. And there are a couple of constructors. So the championship for the people who make the cars is called the constructor championship. And the whole, the reason why it's called Formula 1 is because there is like a formula to building the car. There are all kinds of rules and regulations. Like how far you can
be off the ground? How much the car can weigh? How much the drivers can weigh? Like I'll just like everything that you can imagine there is a regulation around and they switch them up and make changes and stuff like that all the time to make the cars go faster, to make it more exciting, to make it in theory, more carbon neutral, but we'll come back to that. And also just to shake things up a little bit. But yes, so there are a couple
of constructors Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari are sort of like the three big ones. They have their own teams and then they also make components for other teams cars. The fancy sponsors or logos that you see, the Rolex, the Tag Heuer, I'm probably mispronounced to that and not a watch girl. Those are actually sponsors for the team. Got it. And there's a whole other series of kind of lore around F1 sponsors because there's like a lot of
things, a lot of corruption, a lot of weirdness. Also a lot of sponsors that like no one really knows what they do outside of sponsor F1. So it's totally consultants. That's like hedge funds, like something with groups at the end. And then do like compete as a team as individuals. Does it depend like the Olympics on where you were born or where your citizenship is? Like
how does that all work? So the way that the teams break down is that because F1 started in England, almost all of the teams have a presence somewhere in England, that sort of close to each other, even if they are like, say Red Bull, which is, I didn't know this until I started watching Drive Justify Red Bull is an Austrian company. I knew this. I knew this. They're like really, they're really big in Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Also Red Bull
is so disgusting that I just assumed it was American, but whatever. Mercedes is a German automaker, but they also have a presence in England. So it just sort of depends. There's a team called Haas that is in theory, the American team because it is owned by Jean Haas who also owns a NASCAR team. And so they have a headquarters in England, but also one in Canapalus, North Carolina. But their drivers are German and I don't remember what Kevin
Magnuson's nationality is, but he's Nordic of some sort. And then their team principal is a Austrian Italian named Gunther, who also has some really great, memeable moments. So it's sort of like a real big patchwork. The thing that I really love and where I think a lot of the drama of Real Housewives of Monaco, which is what I like to call F1, is that so the Constructorship and Ship is where the real money is. That's the top to their
10 teams, whoever places first gets a shit ton of money. And then it goes down the list. The drivers championships, so there are two drivers for each team. So there are 20 drivers in the drivers championship. That's like a whole separate thing. So you would think that if you are winning the Constructorship, you are also winning the drivers championships.
Right. But that's not necessarily true. And sometimes you will have drivers come into conflict because the team wants to manage the race and have them do a one-two finish or a two-three finish. And let's say number three driver actually wants to be number two. And so does something dumb during the race that ends up taking both of the drivers out or causes some other issues. So there's, they are a team. But they're not necessarily always working
as a team. And their drives survive had some pretty spectacular examples of that. Okay. So just to use my antiquated, very basic sports analogy here, it would be like Michael Jordan's MVP. He knows he's going to be the MVP. Maybe he's already been voted as an MVP. They get to the championships. And like, either he sabotages Scotty Pippen in some
way or Scotty Pippen sabotages him because they're in competition. It would be like if Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen are both on the bulls and the bulls are trying to win a championship. But the MVP race is still open. And so they're both fighting with each other to be the MVP. Got it. Okay. Got it. Got it. Got it. And they were like maybe
sabotaging each other. Yeah. There's something enough one called team orders, which is basically when orders come down from the team that are like, Hey, stay in this place or let your teammate buy or something like that. And so a lot of the conflict you see is when someone doesn't listen to team orders and it's like, then you get a lot of whining on the radio or like, No, I'm faster. I should get to go buy or like, No, he should let me buy. And
just it's a lot of a lot of like sort of very toddler-ass drama that I love. Okay. So let's backtrack. How did you get into our fun? I had a couple of friends who were watching it who were like, you should really watch this thing. It's funny. The two teammates in this episode keep taking each other out of the race. It's like, if you and I were racing against each other and I was like, I want to watch a bunch of white dudes minus Lewis Hamilton
and Alex Elvin. I want to watch a bunch of white dudes racing expensive cars and it doesn't appeal to me. And to be clear, we're talking about the Netflix series, right? Yes, we're talking about drive to survive the Netflix series. I was like, I don't know. It doesn't really. It's not curling over all the way for me. And I say that as someone who really loves sports, who gave up watching the NFL because I just morally for me, I couldn't do
it anymore. Also quit watching NCAA basketball, which I am contractually obligated to love being from North Carolina during the first wave of conference realignment. So like, I love sports. And I was just like, this doesn't really sound appealing to me. And I finally sat down and watched one episode and I was absolutely hooked. It like scratches all of the itches for me. It's interesting. It's fast. I love fast. I love cars. I love all of the
like internal drama and dynamics. And it's also very technical. So like, you can go on a very deep dive about almost any topic like from bricks to wheels to tire compounds to the history of how the tires happen to the history of the different tracks. And just like, there's so many little nuances and like bits and pieces. I just think it's fascinating. Is it like a lot of sports where you can be a casual fan or does it like really reward
intense fandom? I think it rewards either one. Like, you can be a casual fan and just like, maybe watch a race to see who wins and call it that. Or you can have not that I necessarily do this, but you could have several group chats and like subgroup chats where you are analyzing the nuances of what the drivers are wearing and whether or not their recent breakup is affecting their driving and talking about the rumors that you see on some sort of like
God for Saken deep cut F1 fan account on Instagram. You could do that if you wanted to. So this is good segue into my next question because I think part of it to me and part of the reason why the the series was so effective in turning people into fans is that they are very good celebrities as well. So who are our top like who are the people who are
the players? So I will say that now they are very good celebrities drives to survive happen when Formula One was sold to an American company called Liberina and because it's an American company, the drivers were allowed to do more on social media to like kind of be celebrities more before that when it was owned by Bernie Eiffelstone, there was like a the put the kibach on Lewis Hamilton used to get penalties for like posting like pictures
of him on snapchat with like his niece and nephew on like Christmas morning. Are you kidding? So yeah, they have like a very strict lockdown and they're a lot more accessible now and that has directly coincided with drive to survive, which is also directly coincided with like a the big jump and F1 fandom at least in the US. Yeah, yeah, basically the drivers were a celebrity by opening up their social media and also I mean the decision to do drive
to survive is part of that celebration. Okay, so who's your favorite? So the most important person that you need to know about is Lewis Hamilton in my opinion. He is the lead driver for the Mercedes Patronus Formula One team, which is hilarious if you watch drive to survive because he always forgets the full name of it. He is the only black driver on the grid and one
of two drivers of color on the grid, the other being Alex Alban, whose mother is Thai. He is an absolutely incredible racer both technically and he's also a very good celebrity in the sense that he's like very online but not in an annoying way. So like he's online just enough to give the fans what they want. He recently launched a non-alcoholic tequila and like dropped enough little breadcrumbs before the launch that like people were just frothing at the mouth to speculate
and try and figure out what it was. So like he knows how to play the game. Also his fashion sense is impeccable. He has a Rihanna like gift for wearing things that do not seem like they should be clothing that should be put on a human body and looking incredible in it. Just like also he has a bulldog named Roscoe that he is obsessed with and you know I love anyone that's obsessed with their dog. I'm just googling right now just to make sure that I'm... Yeah and so he's pretty young.
He is actually I believe close to 40. He's there's one of the he's not the oldest but he is one of the oldest drivers on the grid and he he's five nine. They're actually almost all very short kings because the shorter you are the easier it is to like fold up and get into that seat. You know what? Tell them and how they have a lot of possibilities about the things that they can do. So this is this is a great opportunity. So my question is like you don't like do F1 in college.
Like there's no like how do you get started? Like what do you do as like a team? It's starting very very young like seven eight years old doing go kart races and working your way up from there. Which is why most of the people that are in it are rich because that's a lot of time and a lot of money. Lewis Hamilton actually did not come from a super village background and he talks a lot about how his dad had like multiple jobs to try and keep him on the track and was like doing a lot of the work on
the go kart himself just because they couldn't afford it otherwise. There are a couple of other racers like that. I think Esteban O'Conn came from like a normal like middle class background but most of them come from wealthy backgrounds. A lot of them had parents who were racers. My memory from the few episodes of driver's survival that I watched was like they went to one of their like familial homes and it was like a palace. Yeah that I believe is the episode with Carlo
signs whose dad Carlo sign senior is a very famous very good rally car driver. Also I should confess that I thought I was like coming new to Formula One but I realized as I was watching it that number one I grew up going to the jackship a lot but I also used to be really into rally car racing and like my early teens I don't know why. Why why why why did you get away. I just thought it was
really cool. Fascinating you know like this is some one of those things. If it's around and you're kind of bored as a teen you get into it right like I got obsessed with baseball box scores when I was a kid because I was so bored in the summer and you could like collect them and cut them out
and put them in like I put them in like a photo album or I like I really liked going to the rodeo because there wasn't anything else going on and so some of it is just like oh this is a thing and so maybe for some people it's like this is what is on the TV when I'm growing up and then I get interested that way. I come from a car loving and a fast car in particular loving families
so I think that also probably had something to do with it. Totally. So I ask culture study readers to send in their questions about F1 and I've got a few that I want to ask you and several of those are about just this overarching like why why are people into it so what do you think just as like an overall you've said a little bit about this but I'd love to hear your grand theories.
So I made a rule pretty early on after watching Dr. Survive and starting to follow like very social media accounts and stuff that I was only going to get my F1 podcast my news my information my analysis from women and that has made a big difference for me so there are so many great
female fan focused podcasts and not to leave anyone out but I'm just going to focus specifically on women because I am a cisgender woman and this is a part of sports fandom that I have always struggled with because there is nothing as cis man loves more to be like oh you like this sport
please name these 16 esoteric foxes or you're not a real fan there is none of that in this universe there are these incredible creators like Lily Herman who writes a really great newsletter and has incredible analysis on her Instagram stories there's two girls one formula there's fan behavior so
that has made it feels really welcoming to me going so far as there's a place here in New Orleans where I always go to watch F1 and it's a pretty female dominated space the group of people that show up and it just is like it's very welcoming as a female sports fan in a way that I have not found
any other fandom to be so that is a big part of why I like it so much also I like I mentioned I just really love all of the like weird technical aspects of it and how many teeny tiny things can shift in a race so there are things like you start the race with all of the fuel that your car will
need for the race which means that it's heavier at the start of the race lighter and therefore faster towards the end also as you were going around the racetrack the tires are all leaving rubber so the track gets grippier as you go on and they're just all these different variables and so I think
that there's something for everyone if you want to be really technical you can be really technical if you want to just like look at the group room boys go fast and various sort of circle shapes fine you could do that if you just want to be interested in like the wags they have gotten like
you know they're very social media savvy so it's got it's got something for everyone all right our first take slash question is from Emily my husband has been into F1 racing for a while and recently I was asking him about it why he likes it what even is it etc I found it interesting
to learn about because every time we discussed it he mostly talked about drama between crews staff or racers I'm not into sports but I am in a rich people gossip so is F1 basically just real housewives for cis men why do I love rich people gossip so much and why is it such a cultural
phenomenon yes the answer is yes it is 100% real housewives of Monaco that's what I call it 100% I mean I think about this a lot in terms of like the ways in which celebrity gossip is always feminized but somehow sports gossip is masculinized right when it's about the same thing
it's oftentimes there's a whole shoot about trafic and Taylor here that I'm not even going to get into right and I think that maybe F1 gives an opportunity to map some of those more fun components on to like it's more seamlessly integrated into the sport because I'm
excited what do you think here I think that is correct and I think that part of it is that a big part of the sport is whining it's whiting on the radio it is whiting to try to play the rest to say hey the rest that's not what they're called they're called the stewards but going to the stewards
to say hey we got flagged for this but this other team didn't get flagged for this or this looks suspicious you might want to go to like there's a whole lot of tattling and like that kind of interpersonal drama and conflict is baked into actually the way that you run the team and
how you're always looking for every advantage and it's I think a lot more visible than it is in other sports and so you get you get more access to it this I think highlights my ignorance but how long has it been around uh I'm sure there's some dude on the internet
waiting to well actually me but uh generally speaking it started right after world war two because there were a bunch of abandoned air bases and so naturally someone was like you know what we should do drive some cars really fast around them and that's how it started and so I wonder how much
two is part and I see this a lot in golf which I'm more familiar with is like how you have these structures that have been in place that have at least historically really favored people with money or access to money or like this is something that people with money do and then part of the
narrative that I think particularly Americans like is what happens when we like new people and whether that's people of color that's people who didn't grow up in those incredibly high echelons of power like intro the sport and then that becomes a narrative what do you think about that?
yeah like this year Logan Sgt who is literally a Florida man is the first American racer on the grid which is a way of saying he is the first American racer competing amongst the 20 drivers on the 10 teams and many many years and so there's been like a whole lot of talk around that about
him being an American also about him being a rookie how that relates to this like historically like a bit of me of British racing team that he is on Williams so yeah I think that you were absolutely spot on with that so the part of the question where she says why do I like
rich people gossip so much I mean it's just for me it's that like oh even when they have all of their other needs met there's still drama like there's always going to be drama yes I don't know how to answer that other than to say that I also enjoy rich people gossip because I really
enjoy drama that does not involve me and I think the thing with rich people is that because they have all of their other needs met most of the time a drama is like incredibly low stakes so like you're watching it thinking how am I gonna pay my rent and like Kim and Courtney are arguing over who
copied who's like Italian Dolce and Gabbano wedding like it's the absolute and utter just ridiculousness of the things that some of these folks are actually worried about compared to the grand scheme of things and the fact that they don't like I worry about stupid things all the
time but I am fully aware that like no one cares what color the hand towels in my bathroom are except for me like I know that that's a ridiculous thing to worry about Kim and Courtney to use an example or out here fighting about who copied who's wedding like the future of the universe depends
on it so the analog there is the very high stakes retiree gossip on next door which as you point out their other needs are met in many other ways and so what they are doing with their spare time is they are fighting with each other there was a huge fight last year about a woman who kept putting out food for the deer and so they have a lot of time to think about this and as an observer I have to use next door because it's the place where like all the news about our the island that I
live on that's where it lives but I couldn't get enough of it I was like oh my gosh that person came in and like they said this and vote and like researching them the way that I would research celebrity it's like home owners association yes also I would like to point out that I am aggressively
anti-deer they're just walking disease vectors but that's neither here nor there yeah don't feed the fucking there okay so okay we have a question from Megan about the world of racing and what sets at phone apart thoughts on how formula one is the cool new sport but NASCAR is still largely seen
as far as I know as quote unquote white trash culture as someone who doesn't watch either they seem similar is it that formula one has more expensive cars that it's global or is it about drivers and vans cannot wait to hear your answer to this Nicole um so this is actually really interesting
question for me because as I hope many of you know but if you don't NASCAR stands for the National Association of stock car are everything yeah but it started out as bootlegging and it started out like in the south in the carolina is like you got to build a really fancy car based off of
or really fast car out of whatever parts you have around so that when someone discovers your room shine still you can get away but that's that is the I did not know that origins yeah that's the origins of NASCAR so I actually grew up because I was in North Carolina like being around NASCAR
a lot my mom went to NASCAR races I watched my friends brother like go to drag races so I'm not sure if I'm the best person to ask this just because I I don't think that NASCAR is way trash because I am not white and I and a lot of my family have been not necessarily involved in NASCAR but in
things that are sort of like related to it so like motorcycle racing and like that kind of thing I think the appeal of formula one over NASCAR is that it's perceived as being fancier because it's like European right like right I took a trip to Italy this summer slash fall and I have been
doing in my best like annoying girl that came back from study abroad voice like oh my god the honey there was just so much better than it is here like that's it's it's it's it's just that it's from somewhere else and so that makes it seem cooler than whatever it is that we have here yeah
that's a large part of it at least that's all I can figure because there there aren't really a lot of differences there's also a racing circuit called IndyCar that I don't know as much about that it's kind of like partially between formula one and NASCAR in terms of like rules and
setup and stuff like that I do want to get more into IndyCar but I don't know if I have time it might be one focus schedule you know I grew up where I grew up there was a lot of demolition derbies which are essentially you take old cars that you've kind of made like cool and then you
smash them into each other in usually at like a rodeo grounds they're pretty great but they also like there's something about the whole whole structure of the event that is meant for mischief right like there are just there's a lot going on and you know I think that what I really appreciate
the point that you make about how NASCAR maybe signifies to people outside of the south in particular as something that is white trash culture and quotes but it's almost like how evangelical has become this shorthand for a certain type of politics which completely excludes like an entire population
of evangelicals right especially when we're talking about race so yeah I think that you're right I think that it that one thing is that it's global and that I don't even think it's that it's global I think it's that it's European like it is European and origin and then why it might be global now
right I think that people think of it as like oh this is our dumb American racing and this is the fancy European racing like right right right I think if there's the divide that's that's the way that folks are thinking of it you were right in pointing out however that it is global like the race
this weekend is in Brazil which interestingly is basically like a home race for Lewis Hamilton Brazil has like claimed him as their own which is kind of cool to see someone asks this question they're like how is that working how is it that he's like is he secretly Brazilian that we don't
know about or is it just that Brazil has claimed him I think it's that Brazil has claimed them I think it's probably because he's black and it's nice to see someone who looks like the people in your country there's also a fascinating backstory here which is that Max Verstappen who is the
world champion and lead driver for Red Bull is dating this woman named Kelly P.K. Kelly P.K.'s father and brother Nelson and Nelson Jr. were both formula one racers and also race in some other series they're both sonaros supporters Nelson P.K. senior has made some vile racist comments about
Lewis Hamilton that Kelly has like not really ignored or spoken on so my formula one group chat has done a lot of speculating about how mad the P.K. family must be that they are and this is an important part I left out they're all actually Brazilian like born in Brazil we've been talking about
how mad they must be that like Lewis comes to town and everyone is just like he's home and just like completely innocent how much of the fandom this is a good follow-up question has developed since the Netflix series and is there a divide in the fandom of like oh well I was a fan before
drive to survive yes there is it breaks down a lot of long gender lines a lot along like some of the drivers have even made comments about how the upswing and fandom particularly in female fandom is just because they want to look at the hot guys and they don't care about anything else
also hilariously in my opinion the driver that said this is not one of the most attractive on the grid if we're really gonna start talking about things like that so like I don't know what you mean sir so yes there is a divide there is always a divide in sports because we've touched on
gendered sports fandom and how dumb it is but there's been a lot of talk around what F1 is going to do with this upswing in American fandom because they tend to see other non-American like leagues and teams and sports tend to see the US as a cash cow because they can make a lot of money here
and there's some talk about this in the context of the race schedule so there for a while was one F1 race in the US it's held in Austin it's circled to the Americas which is a purpose built track it is built for racing they added a second one they run in Miami which is has a reputation
for being like a place to see and be seen and not really being for like actual fans and this year in a couple of weeks they will be writing a race in Vegas that actually goes down the Vegas strip and has caused all kinds of drama in Las Vegas there is no place to watch the race for free even
though they will be going down the strip they're putting up barriers so that you can't actually see if you're just walking along like you have to pay to watch the race there's nowhere really to catch a glimpse of it otherwise the people in the city of Las Vegas are pissed about this because
they're essentially would be like if a race was happening on your street and all of a sudden they blocked it off and we're like hey you got to pay us $150 to look outside your window and see anything right it's made like a traffic nightmare it's been a construction nightmare I've actually
seen a little bit of it because I have family in Vegas so I've been there twice this year but it's a money grab because the tickets are expensive the packages you can imagine like being in Vegas with the big hotels are expensive so it makes F1 a lot of money and so there's a real tension between
trying to actually cultivate an American fan base that like is very online and loves beams love merch like that kind of thing and just using it as like a cash grab okay so next question is from Hannah and it's about the ethics of being an F1 fan so I'm again excited to your response
this is an F1 question but also a question about ethical consumption as a fan in general I've been a long time fan girl of many things one of them being Formula One it has brought me so many lovely things including a community cheering while rich dudes driving circles really does bring
me joy but there are some times when I grapple with being a fan of a sport with mixed morals to put it lightly you know racing in places with dubious human rights records impact on the climate etc I was wondering if there is a civic duty aspect of being a fan or should there be and how can
we wield nuances fans of the things we love oh it's just like asking about how to be a person in the world what is your answer to that I have a lot of thoughts on this as someone who gave up her two favorite sports fandoms the NFL and NCAA basketball over what I felt were moral grounds
you can quibble on conference realignment but that was just a money grab so I feel like it was kind of immoral and then we could talk about college athletes and all the money and blah blah anyways uh yeah cheering for a bunch of mostly white rich dudes to win a race that is using up
countless resources does that feel great no but without being too dismissive like all of our faves are problematic way like I just I feel very strongly that you got to get your joy where you can find it and there are ways to be an ethical fan it's funny that you should get this question
there's actually a driver who was no longer on the grid world champion very famous Sebastian Vettel who quit and retired from f1 last year in part because of the environmental concerns he had about it he stopped doing like private jets he would always like bike to races stuff like that
um and was actually along with the was Hamilton sort of uh two of the most vocally progressive drivers in the sport and f1 has made some commitments towards being more sustainable but I don't think it's any more immoral than watching any other sport right like you can argue about
the place that sport in general deserves in our lives but you could be doing something else something more productive for humanity arguably with those resources but so what like we need sports we need play we need those sorts of things and so I don't know I think that by being conscious of how
sort of weird it is in field you're already a step ahead of most people um and I think just sort of like do what you can like for instance there are a lot of great creators on Etsy and other places who make really cool merch um that is not like officially f1 sanction also most of the official
merch is not that great anyway so like if you want to buy something buy from them like support your local coffee shop when they're showing the races or asking to do it they're like there are ways to sort of nibble around the edges but like well and I don't think that like condemning f1 is going
to condemn car culture in the United States do you know what I mean no like it's one of those things it's similar to oh you should be being incredibly mindful about sorting your recycling and like rinse closely every single item because that is the only way that you prevent climate change
it puts the impetus for change solely on the individual right and on on the power of your individual fandom I do think I agree with you I don't watch football anymore either because I also reached a point where I was like there's something fucked up about the way that we are incentivizing yeah this pipe here for the hits over the middle anymore right right to a point where I was like oh you're not going to remember your kids in five years because of that like yeah I can't
I can't watch this or even the tension for me that's it's difficult is like I want to watch football but I would never let my kid play football what does that say whereas I think that most people watching everyone be like I mean if I had a billion dollars and could get my kids started doing
it's driving me I'm often thought like maybe it's a too late for a career for me yeah okay I got to get one of my friends kids into it like I'll back roll limits fine one of your time is also a dangerous sport just to be cleared no one has died in a formula one race but there are sort of
lower levels like formula two and three and people have died in those races there have been some really serious injuries I mean these cars are going you know 200 miles an hour around like a very foot-of-a-ray track like there it is still a dangerous sport absolutely also
it makes me mad that people who say that they're not athletes because to be able to drive a car at that speed just the like actual physical forces that you are subjected to like right it's very similar in a lot of ways to golf in so much as you are using your musculature and your reflexes
and your mental game and so we can think of that as a sport so and also all of those fights like what is it for why does it matter yeah what are the stakes yeah if we're talking about skill yes there is absolutely skill there all right so we have a couple of questions now that I'm going to be
honest I don't even know if I know exactly what they mean so can you translate them for me and tell me what you think so this first one is from Camille I've been following formula one since getting hooked with drive to survive my favorite driver is land on or is but putting more thought
into it and it starts to feel gross is the FIA corrupt why were Hamilton and Leclerc disqualified after the race in Austin a part on the underside of the car was out of specification tolerances help me understand the nuances oh we understand the new house all right uh yes the FIA is corrupt
in the same way that every major governing body of sports is corrupt that goes without saying I think it is it's just it's what happens when you give a bunch of people mostly men a lot of power to regulate something that makes a whole lot of money so yes it's my answer to that question
why were Lewis and Charles disqualified so this goes into the technical aspects of F1 but like I mentioned before there is a formula and there are very specific regulations for every single part of the car my understanding is that they were disqualified because there is like a plate on the car
that scrapes along the bottom of the racetrack and if it wears too thin you can get disqualified because if it wears too thin that means your car is sitting too low which means you have an unfair advantage in being able to grip the track and stay on it better than the other cars got it
that's like it's like an indicator that something in your formula is off all right it is an indicator yes that something in your formulas off and whether that is intentional or not is a whole separate thing uh I think a lot of the drama around that particular disqualification was that the FIA does
random I'm using air quotes here spot checks and they just happen to check those two cars and so there's some like conspiracy theories about that what are the conspiracy theories I just like because so there's a whole lot of stuff between Max who is racing for Red Bull Red Bull has seen a lot of
dominance following a period of Lewis and Mercedes dominating Charles LeClaire races for Ferrari which is the other of like the big three teams so there's just let's it's also I should have mentioned this earlier the conspiracy theories in Formula One are both Wacadoodle and also accurate
in a way that is really entertaining there was a whole conspiracy theory about Ferrari cheating that actually turned out to be true that involved tangentially Lewis and another yes there's a lot of great lore as one of my cousins who is into now Formula One thanks to me calls it there's just
so much backstory behind everything I mean the great thing about conspiracy theories is that for a lot of things that as you say are controlled by men and make a lot of money there is conspiracy going on right like they are conspiring to do things absolutely and so when you come up with theories of
conspiracy they some of them are off but some of them are probably on right there is there is conspiring happening in the background yes all right this next person wants to remain anonymous so Melody's gonna read their question was the controversy at the end of the 2021 season and the fight
for the championship due to simple human error was it to maximize drama was it just to have a new champion because Hamilton's domination was getting boring a win would have Hamilton the first and so far only black f1 driver surpassing shoe mucker for most world drivers championships did racism play
apart in the decision and why does nobody seem to even be asking that okay so back up here what is the controversy at the end of the 2021 season oh man this is where I put on my tin foil hat because I have some theories about this yeah the controversy at the end of the 2021 season is that
the championship came down to max and Lewis and erase an Abu Dhabi and because I'm extremely oversimplifying this but it came down between max and Lewis and Abu Dhabi whoever won was going to win the world championship the drivers world championship and because of a decision made by one of the stewards who were like the referees that not necessarily favored max but definitely disadvantaged Lewis max won the championship that is a extremely simplified version of it people have been fighting
about it basically since it happened I am in the team Lewis camp I think it was absolute horsesheat uh the steward that made the call the steward that made the call I'm not laughing that he got death threats but he got like death threats stuff like that there is a very well-known part of drive
to survive where total wolf the incredibly attractive uh team principal for Mercedes yells in his like Austrian accent no no Michael that is not right that has become like a meme in the f1 world yeah that's what I was laughing about but uh I actually don't think that racism
played a part in it I can't believe that I am saying that because I almost always does I also don't think it was human error though I think that okay I'm speculating wildly this is me and my tenfoil hat right now yeah I think that it was not human error I think that Michael wanted
to make something happen whether that was for Red Bull to win or for Lewis to lose or just to make something exciting happen I think that he made a call in order to do that and it kind of backfired that is my personal belief you can find speculation about every single part of this race
about every single part of the call about it's like that beam the guy with like the red strings everywhere about like Michael Massey who is the the student that made the call relates to Lewis and the toto and the and just but yeah it's I think it was a bullshit call and it was a bullshit
call that essentially threw a race and made a huge huge difference um I think that I mean maybe it is racism that folks didn't want to see Lewis Hamilton break Michael Schumacher's record Michael Schumacher is a very very very famous race car driver he has been we think in a comma
for many years now his son Mick is actually a reserve driver for Mercedes for Lewis Hamilton's team maybe it was racism maybe it was just not wanting that record to be broken period um yeah it's speaking of all the rich texts and formula one that one race like someone is going to
write a book about it and I'm gonna buy it and read it over and over again what are your favorite places besides your group chats for F1 gossip speculation conversation discourse I really love Reddit I don't ever post but I do like to read yeah I listen to I love podcasts I listen to a lot
of podcasts and that is where I get a lot of my information speculation stuff like that I'm gonna run down a list of my favorites again noting that I try really hard to only get my formula one information from women just because I like how welcoming that fandom is so there's uh fan
behavior which is a formula one podcast there's four F1R for get it for the girls uh which is a formula one podcast and if I remember correctly they have a pretty active discord where you can find a lot of really cool information uh there's two girls one formula there is DRS the donut racing
show and then there is also lily herman's podcast which I think is only for like patreon subscribers called spare parts but it is fantastic she uh one of my friends turned me on to her I also I think we might have talked about this before I'm an avid romance reader and lily is like lives at the
intersection of like pop culture romance formula one and many other things so her Instagram stories are brilliant they're perfect she always gives a lot of recommendations and has some really great analysis so I follow her and we spend a lot of time dissecting her Instagram posts in my various
group chats where's the joy for you uh the fast cars really like it's just I have been accused of being a fast driver which I am uh in another life I absolutely would have loved to have been some sort of race car driver so like via adrenaline rush that I get from just like watching it
and thinking about what it must feel like to like drive her out all these corners and these curves and like all the things that you have to do to like like I take a lot of road trips and I'm like cut how exhausting would it be to have to drive around the same circuit at 200 plus miles an hour
with all of these other people who are actively trying to get in front of you or like maybe push you what like ah so that's that's yeah I just I think it is absolutely fascinating like they're just so many little things like the wind can shift in a different direction and that can totally change
the race it's wild to me like football is kind of like a game of chance yeah but it also is sort of like if you know who is lining up against who you can kind of figure out what will happen in almost every race there is something just totally unaccounted for that like make something
crazy happen do you think that drive to survive is the best entry point if someone wants to get into it oh yeah absolutely okay I thought that it's a very low stakes entry point and it's a very entertaining one and for our last question I want to know what your most unpopular opinion is
about F1 um I mean it's not as unpopular as it was but when I first started saying it it was unpopular and that is that Carlos is a better driver than Charles he deserves to be the lead driver I'm gonna pretend like I know everything that you just said it's not in like yeah that's great
so that's one fans know what I mean exactly this has been a total pleasure I feel like I actually understand some things now um yeah what I need you to do is to start rewatching Dr. Sivai and I need you to text me and I will like talk you through every I will like it I'm ready for
all of your melody you to just like text me I'm ready to answer all of the questions and go into exhaustive detail about things that you do not actually want to know that much about because you know I watched the golf one with my partner who's a golfer and he like it's like the little
you know the little bird being like and this guy is a douche and he's about to go do this you know like and this guy actually is shit like so that's a great idea they're two incredibly important plotlines that are just left out of the last season and drive to survive entirely why I don't know
like they didn't want that drama out near you watch the season you watch all the little races and then you watch the Netflix series that comes out that re-gap so I season yes that you are exactly what I do so last season this is a 2023 season so the 2022 season was the first time
I started watching the actual races yeah only watched about half of the season this season will be the first one that I have watched all of the races all the way through um but because I am a maniac I also bought myself a subscription to f1 tv so I've been going back starting and I think it started
in 2017 for some arbitrary reason and I've been watching all of the races because I'm a maniac and so then then you have to sit through the show it'd be like why did they leave this out because you also watch it happen in real time it's like it's like me watching the Britney documentary so like
eight part documentary and be like how do they not talk about this right like this particular narrative that was happening because I live through it if I'm gonna be interested in something I'm gonna hyperfix it otherwise what's the point okay if people want to know more about your f1 opinions
where can they find you on the internet uh they can find me on the internet I quit the platform formally known as Twitter because it's just kind of a cesspool so the best place to find me and my f1 opinions on the internet is probably on Instagram and I am in the in Nola all right it sounds like
we reached the end of our dog's tolerance for us recording on a Friday afternoon Nicole thank you so much for joining me and listeners if you're a paid subscriber stick around for advice time because Melody and I are going to answer a question about a sticky friendship situation
thanks for listening to the Culture Study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts we have so many great episodes in the works and I promise you don't want to miss any of them if you want to suggest a topic ask a question about the culture that surrounds you or submit a
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advice time segment weekly discussion threads for each episode and a link to a special google form so that your questions go to the front of the link and the knowledge that you're making this show sustainable the Culture Study podcast is produced by me Ann Helen Peterson and Melody Raul our music is by pottington bear you can find me on Instagram at Ann Helen Peterson and this show at Culture Studypod thanks again for listening and we'll talk again soon