FaceTime: an F1 culture publication.

Miami gave F1 plenty of obvious headlines.

Tucked behind all of that was Carlos Sainz finishing P9, Williams scoring with both cars, and a quote that felt very Carlos: 'this was a massive step forward, and still not enough.'

This edition of Race Week Cinema is about the “Carlos Sainz effect,” but not the magical fan version where he walks into a factory and the car gets faster because of vibes.

Sports interviews have been on my mind because I think we underestimate what a good question can do.

The right one can make a driver, journalist, team principal, or young racer feel less like a quote machine and more like a person with stakes, contradictions, and a world around them. The wrong one can flatten access into content — or worse, into a billboard.

This week’s FaceTime is my argument for better questions in sports journalism, especially in Formula 1: more specificity, more follow-ups, more curiosity about who gets left out and what power is hiding.

Access is not the same as journalism. If the interview is a bridge, we should probably stop using it like ad space.

If you’ve looked at the new 2026 regulation changes and thought “I know these words individually but not together,” same.

The Religion of Motion

AKA: what happens when elite sport rewards motion so completely that we stop asking what that motion is for.

Formula 1 is obsessed with speed, but it also asks its drivers to be emotionally aerodynamic. To recover quickly, stay legible, and make pressure look clean.

Formula 1 sells proximity. Journalism pays the price.

The paddock is supposed to be a workplace. F1 sells it like a dream.

I wrote about that — and about what happens when a sport turns access into aspiration and blurs journalism with branding.

This week’s FaceTime is a love letter to journalism and an analysis of paddock access, creator culture, and the way F1 keeps marketing closeness as proof of worth — then acting scandalized when people start chasing it.

I wrote about the 2026 F1 regulations, but the real subject is harder to pin down than “the cars are weird.”

This week's FaceTime is about what it means when a sport modernizes itself so aggressively that it starts sounding less convinced by its own future. I walk you through Oliver Bearman’s terrifying Suzuka crash, the FIA’s immediate reaction, and the Verstappen test — and how all of it asks a bigger question than whether the new formula is technically clever:

What does Formula 1 still want to protect when it changes?

No races, millions at stake. What are the F1 teams doing right now?

No races for five weeks does not mean Formula 1 has stopped.

The latest edition of The Translator Desk is about what teams are really doing during the April break: the upgrades they can still make, the limitations they cannot escape, and why this gap matters so much in the opening phase of a brand-new regs era.

There is a very real reason Bahrain and Jeddah are not happening, and this piece acknowledges that while looking at the stories living alongside it: the work still being done in factories, simulation rooms, and engineering offices while the calendar goes dark.

Kimi Antonelli was supposed to be the future. Then, China happened.

The latest piece in Race Week Cinema is about what changed around him the moment that win happened: not just the records, or the Mercedes one-two, but the emotional timeline.

Before China, there was still room to think about Antonelli as the future, as someone you were allowed to watch become. After China, that distance shortened, the language around him hardened, and the patience the sport had been offering him suddenly looked a lot less necessary.

F1 drivers are some of the most privileged workers on the planet.

They are still workers inside a brutal, high-pressure machine.

This piece for FaceTime is about money, mental health, burnout, fandom, and what it actually means to “humanize” millionaire F1 drivers without turning into their unpaid PR team. (It's also about the other bad habit on the internet: acting like wealth erases pain, risk, or humanity altogether.)

There is something very strange about watching Formula 1 celebrate record fan growth while parts of the fandom still treat new fans like intruders.

This FaceTime piece is about the myth of the “pure” F1 fan: the idea that there is a correct way to arrive, a respectable entry point, a version of fandom that counts more than someone else’s. I wrote about gatekeeping, “DtS fan” as an insult, women and younger fans being treated like they need to prove themselves, and why I think the sport cannot keep profiting from people while making them feel like guests in it.

If you have ever felt like you needed to apologize for the way you found F1, hopefully this piece makes you feel otherwise.

Arvid Lindblad’s debut was never going to be just about the points.

For FaceTime, I wrote about the rookie's entrance into F1 while carrying not only the usual pressure of performance, but the emotional and symbolic weight that comes with being part of the RedBull system. That is: being watched as a prospect, a future, a promise, and a story people want something from.

This piece unpacks why Lindblad's debut felt heavier than a simple result sheet, and why sometimes the real meaning of a weekend lives in what it asks a driver to carry before anyone decides whether it was “good enough.”

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to watch a place you know get translated into a version built for someone else’s eyes.

I grew up with the Las Vegas Strip as part of my internal map, so when Formula 1 came to the city, it became impossible not to notice how quickly a real place can be smoothed into spectacle. The skyline becomes shinier, the traffic disappears until it's aesthetic again, and the city becomes a backdrop before it can remain a city.

So I wrote about that.

Picture yourself on your couch.

The race is on your TV, but you’re not that invested yet. Maybe you’re new to F1, maybe you’ve watched casually for years, drifting between teams like “whoever is least annoying this season.” The lights are about to go out, commentary is doing its thing, and you’re simply enjoying the noise.

And then something dumb and tiny happens.

A radio clip crackles through, someone swearing in three languages after a lock-up. A camera catches a driver sitting alone on the grid, helmet off, eyes somewhere very far away. Or it’s the opposite: a ridiculous send up the inside that absolutely should not have worked, or a last-lap heartbreak that leaves their engineer saying the softest “I’m so sorry” you’ve ever heard.

It hits you at 200kph, the thought: that’s my driver.

I wrote about that feeling — how a random F1 driver quietly becomes “your person” on the grid — for the first piece of my new column Race Week Cinema, which is part of FaceTime, an F1 culture newsletter.

If you’ve heard that new rules are “anti-racing,” or “Formula E on steroids” and you’re quietly wondering what did I miss?...this one’s for you.

The latest piece from The Translator Desk is a fan-friendly guide to the 2026 season that skips the panic and actually explains:

what changed under the skin (power units, active aero, overtake modes)

why drivers are so mad about “energy management”

how these rules will actually show up on your screen in the first few races

It’s written for both new fans and people who’ve been here since V8s were screaming on Sunday mornings. No engineering degree required. just curiosity.

P.S. I’d love to know: what are you looking forward to in Australia?

I’ve been stuck on Toto Wolff’s Epstein “joke” all week — not because I think he’s secretly evil, but because of what it says about who Formula 1 is really built for.

In the F1 media pen, things happen fast.

A question lands. A team principal half-smiles. A dozen journalists make the same mental calculation at once: Is this on the record? Is this a joke? Is this going to be The Quote? And then, before you even decide how you feel, there’s the sound. That little burst of “okay, we’re moving on” laughter.

It’s not always cruel. Sometimes it’s just reflex, or a social lubricant. Most of the time, it’s a way to keep the scrum from turning into a courtroom. But sometimes, that laugh tells you exactly who the room is for.

Last week in Bahrain, Toto Wolff tried to swat away fresh Mercedes rumors and ended up making an Epstein “joke.”

On paper: bad taste, quick regret Underneath: a signal about what kind of harm this sport, and many other sports, still feel comfortable treating as background noise.

I just published a long-form piece on FaceTime about it. It starts in the Bahrain media pen, detours through my Stanford dorm and a whiteboard ranking me “ugly” and “crazy,” and ends with a simple question: what does a room’s laughter say about who gets to feel safe staying?

To read the full piece, please click here to head to FaceTime, an F1 culture publication that breaks down the sport less like an explainer and more like a one-on-one call with a friend.

💌 If you’ve ever loved F1 and still felt like you didn’t fully have a place in it, this one’s for you: