The rise of the female F1 content creator and fangirl

There’s no denying that F1 has experienced an immense surge in popularity in recent years.

With this trend, we've not only seen the fanbase increase but also a rise in people creating F1-related content on social media.

As a result, this has led to Aston Martin Aramco Formula One® Team organising a UK-wide talent search run in collaboration with TikTok, who have been official partners since 2021 and today (January 27) the winners of the competition have been announced, Indy100 can exclusively reveal – a scheme has been a long-time coming.

“It has evolved into now this idea of a group, but originally years ago when we first partnered with TikTok we wanted to hire a chief TikTok officer,” Kate Dalton, Head of Brand Marketing at Aston Martin exclusively told Indy100 about how the concept first came about.

The programme’s purpose is to “give people access into a sport they wouldn't have had without this” as the competition winners will receive mentorship from Aston Martin Aramco’s expert in-house creative team, unprecedented access to create engaging, audience-focused content, and attendance to exclusive events and community initiatives across the 2025 season.

The winners of Creative Collective competition haveAston Martin

"The idea is to use this partnership as a vehicle for creator growth on the platform and by giving creators access to the sport like never before,” Aoife Moran, Sports Marketing in Europe for TikTok explained. “At the end of the day, the core of this partnership is fans first and how can we serve them the best”.

It’s fair to say the competition was highly competitive as over 40 million views across the platform were delivered by the submissions and content from the team. “You can just see the time and effort that people have put into this and it's so rewarding to see the enthusiasm,” Moran noted.

This reflects just how engaged truly F1 fans and creators are on TikTok. According to data from the app, over 2m pieces of content were created on TikTok last year using the Formula 1 hashtag which has a whopping 34B billion views while the Official F1 account on TikTok has almost 10m followers.

From maths to food, the five competition winners Alicia Hullott (@alicespaddock), Chelsea Tucker (@mathschelsea), Rheanna Mazzaschi (@rhetms44), Catherine Bruce (@cathbruce), and Ella Welch (@ellasimpsforbooks) all demonstrate the sheer variation of content that’s out there for fans to engage with outside of watching on race day.

“The market of content creation can be saturated. But the amazing thing about all of us in the Creator Collective is that we have a different and unique perspective to offer and we’re all telling stories in different ways,” said Rheanna Mazzaschi, Creator Collective winner.

The Creator Collective is the latest initiative that demonstrates how female content creators and burgeoning audience are shaping how the sport is being consumed.

But how did we get here?

Let’s rewind to 2020 when the world came to a standstill due to the Covid pandemic. Stuck at home during lockdown, we were all trying to keep ourselves entertained and that’s when viewers came across Netflix show Drive To Survive (DTS) that provided an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the Formula World Championship – which for the historic and notoriously complex sport this was unprecedented.

Alongside the two seasons of the show being available to binge-watch, at the same time TikTok was also taking off, as people were longing for human connection, community and to express their creativity – a winning combination which San Francisco-based tech and Formula 1 commentator Toni Cowan Brown described as the “perfect storm” for the sport.

As a longtime F1 fan, it was during this time she decided to post her first F1 TikTok video and has since grown a platform of over 113,000 followers where she creates informative content on how the areas of tech, politics, and internet culture crossover into a sport in where both the regulation and conversation is “constantly changing”.

YouTube/Netflix

“We were all desperate for live sporting events, live entertainment, live anything. We had the rise of the creator economy and we had the rise of TikTok and it truly is all of those pieces together meant people were desperate for content and desperate for sports and desperate for good entertaining stories and discovered Drive to Survive,” she told Indy100. Viewers then “created content about it and TikTok all of a sudden came about [which] was able to spread messages further than ever before”.

This echoes duo Manon and Maia's (@maniaonboard) path to becoming motorsport creators as DTS was where their F1 interest was sparked in 2021. Two years later, the pair decided to become content creators, with Manon using her experience as a video editor and decided to post on TikTok one day which “blew up” and ultimately motivated her to continue posting more content.

“Eventually, we got a bit braver and posted videos of ourselves and our opinions,” Maia explained to Indy100. Now the two have over 21,000 TikTok followers and 4.7m likes where they post a range of content from “If F1 cars could talk” comedy skits, to breaking down the maths and science, race day vlogs, and use their platform to promote diversity and LGBTQ+ representation within sport.

The rise and impact of female F1 fans and creators

Previously, F1 was always associated with having a majority male fanbase but between DTS and TikTok, a wider audience became interested in the sport. As of 2022, 40 per cent of global F1 fans are female as stated by the sport’s CEO Stefano Domenicali, and consequently, this increased demographic has also been reflected in the social media landscape with a rise in female F1 content creators.

A quick F1 search on the app and this shift in fandom is apparent with the rise of prominent F1 female content creators such as Toni Cowan Brown (as previously mentioned), Lissie Mackintosh, Tasia Johnson, Mikaela Kostaras (She Loves Vrooms), Kimerah Ramnath (f1kimiz) and Devyani (formula_dev).

(Left) Lissie Mackintosh and (right) Toni Cowan BrownPhoto by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images and Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for amfAR

As a result, more varied content also arose, everything from reviewing the latest F1 BookTok recommendations, rating driver’s paddock looks, sharing travel vlogs about the various race tracks, understanding the “lore” of F1’s long history, breaking down the technical components of a race in a digestible explainer or creating fan edits of the drivers using the latest viral song – if you have a specific interest related to F1 such as the "One Direction to F1 pipeline," chances are you'll find content and discourse on the app.

“These really niche communities that can find themselves on TikTok and find a place to belong,” Moran explained, with there being “more interest from a female perspective” and “not just the things that are mainstream or broadcast”.

Cowan Brown credits Aston Martin in particular for having its finger on the pulse to respond to this creator inflow - “Kudos to Aston Martin for taking a chance, they were the first to work with content creators before anyone else”. When speaking back in July last year, she also accurately predicted that “we're going to start seeing the likes of Formula 1 work more with content creators and that they figure out what a good creator programme could look like,” and in 2025, we now have the Aston Martin and TikTok Creator Collective.

Meanwhile, Dalton credited Aston Martin’s social success (with 2.2m followers and 48.7m likes) to having “a young, interested, creative talent within our team” who was given the creative license and “just went for it”.

“The brand is 113 years old at this point. But then with a brand like ours, we have scope to constantly reinvent, and we are obviously in a new space.”

Some of Aston Martin’s best videos are when they’re reactive to viral pop culture moments such as when the Wicked “holding space” meme was making the rounds, the admins hilariously got drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll to hold a piece of paper with the words “SPACE” written on there, which received over 1.1m views as viewers described as “iconic”.

Then there’s the Taylor Swift side of it all, as the pop star mentioned Aston Martin in her song ‘Imgonnagetyouback’ from her recent album The Tortured Poets Department, and the team made a video of Alonso looking at a screen and as this particular lyric played, he looked up and shushed the camera, much to the fans delight as the video has been viewed 6.1M times.

He may be the oldest driver on the grid at 43 years old, but Alonso has become somewhat of a TikTok icon as he has been one of the most active drivers on the platform. “He is very engaged with his audience and his social following. He wants to keep on top of trends and he likes to have fun and he's cheeky as well, so enjoys a lot of it,” Dalton said.

“Lance has this kind of alternative role as the admin on TikTok. I'm not sure if he knows but he's been really up for it, doing different things to feed into it and people love it.”

The challenges female F1 creators and fans face

With this new influx of female fans and content creators entering what was previously a male-dominated space, too many have sadly faced hostility.

An example of this is in 2022, when female fans reported they experienced sexist catcalling, homophobic abuse and inappropriate touching by male spectators at the Austrian Grand Prix, as per The Guardian, which led to team principals and drivers condemning the behaviour.

"People should come here and feel included and follow whoever it is you want to follow," Lewis Hamilton said at the time, calling out the harassment. "It should not matter about your gender, your sexuality, the colour of your skin."

On the whole, Maia from her experience as a creator also expressed how nowhere near enough is being done within the sport to address “when horrible things happen” such as sexism, racism and homophobia.

Meanwhile, for female F1 fans there is often a negative association with the term ‘fangirl’ and Cowan Brown is on a mission to change this narrative with her platform ‘Sunday Fangirls’. This idea first came about when Cowan posted “an ode to a fangirl” in 2021 to those “who just don’t get” their relevancy, and financial power, and described them as “the untapped billion of this industry”.

“How in this day and age are we still hating on the young female fans when history has proven to us time and time again whether that's in the art space, the musical space, or in pop culture, now in sports, that the young female fandoms are full of absolute experts in this space,” she said and acknowledged this sexist ‘fangirl’ stigma is pattern we’ve disappointedly (but not surprisingly) seen in all of the fields where women express their passion.

But women are building online community within F1

However, one of the perks of posting and consuming F1 content on social media is the online communities that are built through a mutual love of the sport and one successful example of this is Girls Across the Grid.

Aimed at women in their 20s and 30s who are interested in motorsport, the group was founded by Corryn Banham in 2022 and has grown a worldwide reach (20,000 TikTok followers), where members can discuss the latest race in regional WhatsApp group chats and attend organised race day watch parties and attend actual races and racing-related events together.

“[Girls Across The Grid] is an amazing organization and network started on social that people used to find their community, find friends through F1,” Dalton said, and Aston Martin has previously invited them down to their Silverstone HQ.

At the Austria Grand Prix last year, we got to chat to GATG members at a race meet at Belushi’s London Bridge where they shared their experience being part of the community.

“Sometimes you get a bit nervous to do things alone. But having Girls Across the Grid, you always know that there are other people who are also like you who want to do these things,” said Mischa, a London admin for GATG who became an F1 fan in 2021 after she “got hooked” through her friends.

“Being able to go to my first ever Grand Prix in Spain and seeing and bumping into so many of the girls and to just experience that whole weekend with them as someone who's never been before, It was great to finally get to do that with everyone."

Meanwhile for Savannah, it was her first time attending a GATG event and found it to be “really fun”. “I loved how everyone was just open and very supportive,” she said, “The energy was just infectious and it was a good time. I loved it!”

What does the future hold?

While female F1 fans and content creators are on the rise, many will agree there is plenty more that needs to be done to improve diversity overall within the sport, though initiatives like the Creator Collective are a step in the right direction.

“It’s an area of impact that we can make and hopefully we'll make a wider change going forward,” Dalton said and revealed future ambitions for the programme to capture the sport’s global audience. “We would really hope to roll out globally and do more markets, we race all over the world -there's no reason why we couldn't continue this program.”

There is “definitely still a long way to go until we fully are able to sort of be open and loud about being F1 fans,” Mischa noted, but pointed to how F1 Academy is “really helping” to welcome women and to provide “the pathway to enjoy the sport in other factions”.

It's a viewpoint shared by Hamilton who in 2023 acknowledged the increase in young people and women interested in the sport, though said "We’ve got a long, long way to go in terms of creating better accessibility within our sport. It’s changing but very, very slow."

This is something Maia also spoke of: "There are some amazing people in F1 and there are teams who do care, but they're met with resistance from the top and poor funding".

“F1 is so incredibly lucky to have the diversity of fans that it has,” Cowan Brown said.

And the same goes for its female creators, but will the sport altogether comprehensively take advantage of this momentum?

Only time will tell.

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