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Benefits of being a marketable rookie

When Charles first came to Sauber he had a couple of things working in his favor, Number one, people look forward to rookies having their debut, and Charles has the kind of image that appeals to this idea of F1 royalty and I mean that quite literally, but probably not how you may initially think. I want to take you back to the fact that when people think of Charles, they think of this idea of fate and predestiny and a sort of Meant To Be thing. He is from a country with one of the most widely recognized GPs, he is a fast driver for whom many already feel is a future WDC winner, he comes across as relatively mild mannered and playful off of the track, and he seems to have cross appeal regardless of what kind of F1 fan someone is.

The fans who decry a return to "tradition" like the kind of wealth and prestige associated with his country, it is also in Europe, he has the look of drivers before him etc and he is inoffensive to the status quo. Fans that are looking for a personable individual like him because to them he has an ease about him, he doesn't seem to have a particularly antagonistic relationship with any other driver, and he is more accessible than the "tradition" of drivers before him.

He also has a well known love for Ferrari and is all around very malleable. That is not to say that he is bland, but he is unassuming and that also feeds into how some of his behaviors are received compared to other drivers. A perhaps comparable PR example for the 2020s but to a lesser extent is Oscar Piastri, someone who replaces a driver that isn't yet moving to retire, but then having a relatively broad appeal, online presence, and is viewed as competitive without being antagonistic,

It is an appealing position for a rookie in terms of marketing, although it also is a privileged one that isn't afforded to rookies who are marginalized in some capacity (Yuki Tsunoda is a great recent example of this). But it is an PR positioning that is ideal as was the case with Charles, To be seen as having what it takes to be a WDC one day, but not being seen as entitled and also generally having a positive image re other drivers. We will delve into that a liiiittle more before we finally get to Ferrari.

Alfa Romeo and The Rookie of the Year

When he joined Alfa Romeo, he replaced Pascal Wehrlein and it is met relatively positively. However,for newer fans here, it was not as cut and dry as it is now. Paul was injured prior to the 2017 season competing in ROC (Race of champions) leading to him missing 2 rqces and then was replaced in 2018 by Leclerc.

It wasn't so cut and dry because as you probably have seen, motorsports fans often argue about whether or not drivers in various series should do more competing in other motorport events (Daytona 500 and Le Mans are another example of this), so the way that the situation was handled was seen negatively. Often, including in this case, rookies get grace but it is not all sunshine and rainbows, especially since, in Charles' case he was replacing someone outperforming their teammate. Of course when we look back it seems less extreme and nowadays Paul is often used as a cautionary tale for why F1 drivers should not compete in other series whilst still active in F1 but F1 drivers competing in other series was not always unusual. The narrative around all of this re Charles was that he was just that promising. So he joins and its not exactly a WDC or WCC winning car, but it is enough for people to take notice and buy into this sort of destiny branding that began to really solidify.

Charles Leclerc met those expectations for the most part, and was crowned rookie of the year. And all of that romanticism around him being made for F1, and predestined, was in the eyes of many, evidenced by that rookie year, Now it is all coming together, there is just one thing left to really take this romantic destiny/fate idea to really resonate with mainstream audiences: Forza Ferrari.

Ferrari, the Early Days

Now Ferrari is a bit of a peculiar thing when it comes to PR and branding. Like Monaco, Ferrari is glamour, it is wealth, it is prestige and it is history. The race car emoji is red, people recognize Ferrari when race cars are the topic at hand, it has had notable names driving for it in F1, Le Mans etc.

For better or for worse in the eyes of many, Ferrari IS F1 it IS motorsports and it boasts one of the biggest fanbases too. It is red hot, it is passion, it is electric. But Ferrari is also notorious in the eyes of many as being something of an antagonist, and a negative player in more progressive moves in motorsports, and has a very tight leash on its image such as suing people for unauthorized paint jobs or author customizations of their Ferrari like with Daedmau5. There is a very strict approach in Ferrari about how things should be done and that extends to how they expect their drivers to appear. This is relevant to how the promising rookie briefly becomes disliked alongside Vettel.

Okay so he is predestined, he has made his mark as a rookie and replaces 1 time WDC Kimi Raikkonen to be alongside 4 time WDC Sebastian Vettel. You can probably guess what I am about to say, but I will say it anyways: replacing someone with no WDCs is very different from replacing someone with 1 or more. It makes comparisons of performance stricter, it makes expectations higher and it makes people less forgiving. It is also further complicated by pairing alongside someone who has been WDC.

When Charles kined alongside Vettel he was dealing with someone who at the very least had been viewed by the public as trying to push the team culture in a direction that may yield better results, and he had the results to back himself up, But Charles was new and that meant him being assimilated into the team and that impacted his image, He has a 4 time WDC to learn from, in a team that has not won the WCC in a very long time. To audiences, he is not being who they thought he was at his former team.

You see, when people speak of drivers from a PR perspective, there is a lot of emphasis on how they command things, what they are entitled to, and what role they should have.

As the fated one, Charles was expected to be less amicable to Ferrari's team culture especially since a more experienced driver could see clear issues in the team's culture, and audiences did not have the impression that Charles recognized when he needed to be assertive, and when he should back his teammate.

So for a lot of people, he was in the right team, and he had the right talent, but the approach was wrong and he was not taking heed of lessons he could be learning from his more experienced teammate. It is a difficult balancing act PR wise, because of the nature of the PR of the team he is in, and also the way that its branding has made it so personally meaningful to tifosi.

Big fanbase that wants drivers that love the team, and prior to this latest pairing of Leclerc and Sainz, was big on supporting the team not the driver, notoriously so. It would probably have been even more negative of him to seem critical of the team, but it was a Catch 22 because what happened instead was that whilst him and Vettel seemed relatively amicable, only one of them was viewed as trying to win WCC and WDC whilst the other was seen as someone falling short of their potential, in the name of loving a team that had been losing for a long time.

Generally when it comes to Ferrari it is more logical from a PR perspective to be seen as viewing the team the way its fans do. A sort of reverence and pride for its prestige, history and Italian heritage. A sort of serendipitous occurrence in a driver's life.

It is one of the few teams where the team has always come before the driver in terms of priority. It is the expectation at this point. You are not supposed to seem like you think you deserve something when you drive for Ferrari, especially when you are new so it was always going to shake out the way it did from a PR perspective. Either he alienates audiences that feel that Ferrari is stuck in old ways, or he alienates fans for whom ferrari is not just a sports team, but a national institution.

And as long as Vettel and Leclerc were paired up, Leclerc would have negative PR. To replace a WDC to be the teammate of someone with a WDC was never going to shake out well because it made him look like a liability. He did not have the perceived assertiveness or the developed skill to in some people's view, justify what seemed to be a differing perspective from Vettel.

And that will always be a PR nightmare because what is there to defend a driver who is fast but doesn't have the results to show for it? It is one of the recurring issues in this period of time, he and Vettel were amicable but did not seem to have the same sentiments on their team. And just like that the predestined becomes the entitled in the eyes of his detractors. But then, just like that, Vettel is now gone, and in his place is Carlos Sainz. Does not have a WDC or WCC under his belt, and just like that, Leclerc's biggest PR issue seems tp ne a thing of the past.

The Leclerc Sainz Era

People used to want to know why Charles deserved any favor from Ferrari. Sure they liked him well enough, and he was in their view he was a logical choice for the team, Ferrari was in his veins through and through. But you will never be viewed as more deserving of team support than a proven driver with the WDC and/or WCC.

So even as people root for you, they are going to be very questioning about the capacities in which you think you may know better than a teammate, even when the team us Ferrari. But when your new teammate is also considered unproven, it changes the PR dynamic significantly. Whether Leclerc defends the team or not. is seen as assertive or not, it eases suspicions a lot, Now he just wants to win and it is unquestioned when he feels that he deserves something. Now, after all these years, people view him as being back on his fateful path, and it shows.

It is coinciding with the peak of Drive to Survive and a Ferrari that is more open to marketing its individual drivers alongside its rigid team branding and there is a tidal wave of new fans, fans who are unfamiliar with the previous understanding of Ferrari First, who approach it like other teams where you may support a team but it is driver first.

Additionally, the fanbase that IS Ferrari First has a strong association with one driver being Ferrari First in Leclerc, versus driver first in Sainz, thus feeling endeared by Leclerc. You may recall the GQ article last year https://www.gq.com/story/charles-leclerc-carlos-sainz-ferrari which sort of seeks to re-assert Ferrari's position in its branding as the most important part. But you may notice something else, which is how Leclerc is presented as the quintessential Ferrari driver.

At the time of its release, people did note favor towards Leclerc, with the phrase about Maranello "romantically imagining Leclerc a full head taller". But what went over people's heads was that from a PR perspective, Leclerc in a way became Ferrari. He is positioned as the glamour and the luxury and the romance and the European identity that Ferrari has also positioned itself as and you can see it in how people imagine him to be and what they say when they have positive things to say.

Conclusion

When Vettel was around, due to his experience, the romanticism of Ferrari was not the same, and it still is not the same based on that article, and so Charles went from a promising rookie, to a blind admirer of Ferrari and its legacy. But then Vettel was gone and in his place a less experienced driver, and so Leclerc is less irritating as a result to audiences who felt that Ferrari shafted Vettelm and Sainz came in and was viewed as disruptive and entitled but without the results to defend those sentiments. And so it became a matter of Charles is Ferrari and Ferrari is Charles, wouldn't them winning together be so romantic?

F1 PR

When it comes to F1 there is one thing that is paramount to understanding its business model, which is how exclusive it is, Even if they accept the Andretti bid that is part of the appeal. F1 sells itself as exclusive and luxurious.

Where other motorsports are also expensive and highly exclusive, they may present themselves as somewhat rough and tumble, with a lot of emphasis on ideas of grit and being "hardcore" so to speak. You see it a lot when fans of one motorsport weigh in on which motorsport is the best one in terms of skill and the likes by weighing in on racecraft related skills like endurance, frequency of collision and strategy. The other thing to understand is the luxury aspect and the monetary value of that.

I touched on the association with certain groups on the Charles essay, what with the Monaco GP, and things like high profile guests etc come into it, but another element of that is that luxury in sports also is the means through which teams justify the high price tag to participate in the sport as a fan.

You can also see this in things like the culture around attending Wimbledon (a similar feel to the Monaco GP) or Equestrian Dressage and so on. And whilst generally sports merchandise is expernsive regardless of the sport, and the fans that frequent these sporting events live are not the average fan (hence the importance of things like viewership and social media engagement which are less cost prohibitive than for example going to a La Liga final or the Superbowl in person and has not just merch and tickets, but food, hotels, transport and so on but that is another essay entirely). F1 is a whole other ball park of that.

F1 sells that its luxury and exclusivity is a necessity. If you look at most sports, a big part of sports journalism is about growing the game, even ones considered to be the domain of the rich like tennis. And when teams sell to audiences they are selling their merchandise, yes, but they are also selling the rare opportunity, perhaps the only one to invest in being a participant.

F1 tracks are predominantly in the middle of nowhere and are already logistically difficult to go to, there is emphasis on the heritage of the sport and most of the sponsors outside of gambling companies are also for people who make a lot of money.

Think about the response to a potential Porsche-RBR team versus RBR-Ford, or about the Mercedes team uniform and merch being Tommy Hilfiger. The luxury and prstige with a high price point is part and parcel of how F1 makes its money.

If you participate in the sport outside of social media and TV, the cheapest parts of participation (like a standard issue team cap or a lanyard) are pricier even compared to other motorsports like NASCAR. I remember last year the special pride collection from NASCAR was cheaper than any standard issue F1 merch. And this is actually where (at least I think haha) Andretti comes in.

The Andretti Animosity

Andretti comes from the American (although American motorsports is extremely popular outside the US but once again, another essay) cultural understanding of motorsports which is more laid back, more easily accessible and is understood to be cost prohibitive but not to fans. American motorsports have a host of accessibility issues both in person and through things like TV, and like most sports the fans that can afford to attend are the minority, the kind of pricing around F1 for fans would be considered to be outrageous.

Yes in those spaces F1 is also seen as this high price point product, but if IndyCar for example were to sell at the price point of F1 it wouldn't fly. For F1 with some of the cheaper tickets being (at least when I looked it up) 2000 USD when its expensive to spend 200 USD at IndyCar, the amount that F1 fans pay to attend is steep. And then F1 says, yes but there is only 20 drivers and 10 teams with some of the most expensive engineering in the world and therein lies the disgruntlement re 11th teams and the idea of how much dilution fees should be.

They likely are not refusing Andretti because they think its beneficial PR wise, they are trying to leverage the PR that they have because they perceive any 11th team as a threat to exorbitant pricing and sky high profits. They are also attempting to close the door on further pushes for more teams. As you may have seen people already brought up Haas and that is what they don't want, precedence to add more teams. So from a PR perspective how may you leverage that?

The main things to consider are as follows:

American audiences are viewed as desirable as a profitable group to sell F1 to

The prices and nature of access that American audiences associate with motorsports that they are already familiar with is far cheaper than F1

American audiences would likely invest more with a team that is not just American owned or driven, but feels culturally American

So you as a team see that there is money to be made, in an audience that does not need to be convinced that motorsports can be interesting, but these audiences are not satisfied by your arguments that they should be open to such high price points, their local taxpayers footing the bill to host F1 races, and an audience of non American fans that hold contempt (for both valid and invalid reasons) for anything that they consider "too American".

So, either you let a team, especially an American one like Andretti in, you tell American fans that you have someone truly American for them to root for. You know Andretti already, and now you can support him in the exclusive big leagues. It is more expensive than you are used to, but its a global stage, an exclusive one, imagine being able to support your team every weekend.

To you and me, that is a sweet deal, especially since the bid includes General Motors and the F1 factory being US based. And its so likely that the profits really go into overdrive as a result, and so the other teams don't lose a piece of the pie as the pie gets bigger. If you are familiar with american fan culture with teams then you already know this, but the sports merchandise industry is worth billions, its not loose change, if American fans invest in the sport the numbers are sky high.

But then again, a more Americanized F1 also means other exorbitant prices are pushed to come down, and they don't want fans, American or otherwise to expect to participate in the fandom of the sport, they want fans to pay the high price tag and not challenge it. These record profit and viewership years with a noted larger American audience involved them paying up, but as the entirety of motorsports experiences something of a renaissance, fans are less enthused about the price tag, and every continent (yes, every single continent) has other more viable motorsports options for fans.

Yes its not necessarily the same kind of glamor and prestige as F1, but a lot of what people love in one motorsports, can be found in another. And, with lockdowns gone in most places, audiences are not at home likely spending more, and so to them what went up, must come down. So what do F1 and F1 teams do instead? Try to spin PR in a way that persuades audiences that there is something remarkable that they are paying for.

Andretti brings more profit yes, but he also brings people who do not necessarily view F1 as this novel thing in the way that fans who came in 2020-2021 do. As a result, you may get them to pay a little more, but not thousands more, especially for what (based on the last COTA and Miami race fan experiences depict on social media) seems to them to be a mediocre at best fan experience. So now what you are seeing is an attempt to leverage PR to say that fans ARE paying for something, exclusivity and the best of the best. And its not just about convincing American fans either.

How often are European fans told that they are paying for the exclusivity, history and prestige of F1? How often do European fans speak of being priced out of F1? Sometimes this is attributed to the pursuit of American audiences by fans but thats a clever PR slight of hand which moves discussion away from why F1 is several times more expensive for fans than whatever their local motorsport competitions are, and instead tells them that they need to protect F1 and its exclusivity as fans from the sinister forces that will Americanize the sport, despite the fact that Americans are also priced out, and in the case of Las Vegas, have been negatively impacted by the presence of F1. Lets circle back to Andretti.

There are two things about Andretti that makes the attempt to leverage PR seem strange. Manufactures backing, and a motorsports experience. Incidentally, motorsport experience is part of how Haas found itself in the sport, but the manufacturing backer is a big one. Now there is a lot of money to be made if he gets in, potentially record profits, but how willing will people be to pay how much they have since at least 2022?

From a financial perspective, the prices were always going to need to come down and F1, Liberty Media and Teams should have prepared for that, alas, corporations tend to hope for exponential growth and now what we as audiences view as the logical move is like pulling teeth and there is talk of how high the dilution fee should be to compensate teams for loss in revenue. And that is where, from a PR perspective, I presume this is all coming from.

Teams kick about, talk of an 11th team as a sort of manifestation of this hidden threat to the sport, fans want proof that Andretti isn't going to ruin and Americanize the sport and apply more pressure on the sport to make sure F1 protects its roots, dilution fee is negotiated very high as a result and when its announced, fans debate if its too much or too little, Andretti pays up and expresses that he is happy to and tells the American audiences that want to support his team how it was so worth it to pay x money because F1 is worthy of it, fans that want to support Andretti/a culturally American team begrudgingly take his word for it and pay up for merch or GP tickets or whatever, European fans are assured that the sport will not be dictated by Americans and continue to support it, and then the exponential growth continues.

Of course the locals especially in places where the race track is not far from their homes, where they work etc, still are not happy, and for obvious reasons, residents tend to dislike it when taxpayers foot the bill for sporting events, safety issues and more, but based on the reporting around building the Las Vegas GP, and also what has occurred in the various places F1 has raced in over the years and even historically, how F1 impacts locals does not seem to be a priority in stakeholder analysis, but rather is an afterthought.

So yeah, as usual with F1 its really about the money, and what they think will maximize it. So they will keep up this PR song and dance about exclusivity and luxury as necessity, media will keep contextualizing how exclusive it is, everyone will mention how much Andretti and other interested people paid to go ober their bids because its so exclusive, and then Andretti with General Motors and Cadillac will pay up, parrot these same ideas about being in the most exclusive sport ever, and maybe even do interviews.

Then teams will either welcome them publicly for meeting the stringent standards of the sport and emphasizing how necessary the whole thing was, or ignore the entry to reinforce that they were only logically concerned, media will put out pieces about who Andretti is and maybe even F1 primers for new fans, American broadcasters will be talking about the new American team in the most exclusive sport whilst European broadcasters talk about how if the sport was going to have another team and how now American audiences can enjoy a team in the most exclusive sport, and then similiarly to Haas, people will for the most part stop debating. That is of course until someone says something, or a team leaves, or people or corporations want to come in.

On the flipside, if Andretti doesn't get in, teams will be like "we said that this is an expensive exclusive sport and not everyone can join", Audiences won't like that for the most part, because to most Andretti makes sense for F1 regardless of if you want Andretti specifically or not, and probably won't buy it, especially since audiences are already not very moved either way by Stefano Domenicalli speaking about F1, but it may very well alienate large portions of American (and also Non European in general) audiences especially if they like other motorports.

Already because of the nature of fandom in F1, other motorsports fans don't have a great impression of being engaged in the free ways like social media, so if you want them to now be paying fans be it for a cable package or merch or GP tickets, having a new team that is neither European own nor European funded is one of very few means to persuade people to want to participate in the fanfare of F1 regardless.

And for European fans it will be difficult to tell them that rejecting the Andretti bid is not strange, because for the most part, he doesn't have the PR image of someone who would rock the boat too much in F1, and the fact that his teams do well in other motorsports also creates interest as it is not a given that he will be a back marker.

But ultimately, regardless of what happens from here on out, most teams are publicly against it because of money, and they are hoping that the PR built up so far can be leveraged to defend how the money is made, and also ensures that should they negotiate with Andretti re dilution fee, it will not look good if he or the manufacturers he is teaming with publicly state that they think its too high. You will also probably have noted that drivers don't tend to strongly oppose a new team and tend to be in favor of a new team, or indifferent and that adds another dimension to the song and dance but once again, another essay, for another day.

One thing that makes Alex's PR particularly advantageous over Lando and George is how easily he can shift it into other interests with little pushback about whether or not he fits into a space.

Lando has two very distinct associations: gaming and golf. When he operates within these things, people like it, they feel it makes "sense", but when he steps outside of those things like when he did the vanity fair spread, or when he was in British GQ, it did not go over so well because those arenas are considered to be outside of his domain of interest.

George has this association that I can best describe as what people imagine when they hear "old money aesthetic". Obviously within the F1 fandom especially in the context of his friendships with other drivers people may say he is very funny or goofy, but when you go to his social media, his interviews etc that is not what is projected. Its very clean cut, sometimes features his girlfriend Carmen, he is at places like Wimbledon etc. There is a very clear mental image of where George should be, and where he is likely to be. For Alex, it is a lot freer, it is almost like there is a certain level of spontaneity (real or not) to his PR image. Unpredictable but not in a concerning or threatening way. He might dye his hair, he might be seeing Lily play golf, he might be spending time with his pets, he might be in x random place.

There is a very light approach to his PR which also makes it easier for him to position himself in a profitable way (like with the merch based on his pets) but also maintain a certain level of privacy that people do not interfere with for the most part. We can probably get into this on another day, but his girlfriend Lily also having great PR further helps him because in the case of male athletes in particular, being associated with people who have their own careers (especially in sports, academia or something widely recognized as being difficult) tends to have a net positive impact. You also see this with people like Valtteri Bottas, Travis Kelce and such. That is, of course if people that an athlete associates with tend to be in the public eye, it is a bit different when someone is more private like Sebastian Vettel's wife, but again, that is a topic for another essay on another day.

Now, to be fair, plenty of people are comfortable being in one particular lane PR wise, or may only have a select number of interests that do not change. However, sports is a fast paced environment with the kind of marketing that changes practically overnight, and so the most advantageous PR anyone can have, is one that allows them to shift gears with ease.

Whether it has to do with interests, the spaces they are in, or the people that they get linked to, the best PR is the one that can transform with little pushback, often because audiences trust in their perception of the person's authenticity, particularly in the context of social media. In sports PR, audiences want to buy into the perceived earnestness of an athlete, and that is why an athelete's individual PR is this extremely delicate balancing act. Professional athletes cannot sell relatability in the same way other kinds of celebrity/public figure can because professional sports involves the understanding that the people participating are exceptional, and therefore a lot more emphasis goes into things like perceived earnestness, authenticity and humility, and when athletes participate in or associate with something that is not associated with their PR image, the pushback can get very extreme. So when the PR is like Alex's which is to say, is dynamic, it means that there is a lot more opportunity to leverage it, because there are more arenas and spaces to go into with it.

This one takes the more classical understanding of PR and recontextualizes it into sports, so you get a good sense of what PR normally does, and how it is then taken and applied into the sporting context: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/50207137_Sport_Public_Relations_and_Communication

This one is good for understanding why sports PR is a political and socioeconomic function, and the ways in which it has become entrenched in the lives of athletes , their teams and the ecosystem of sports themselves: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/humaff-2015-0008/html

I know that sports announcers and commentators hold a lot of interest amongst motorsports fans so this one is useful in understanding the role that they play and why it is that what they say matters to fans, athletes, teams etc (uses rugby as an example in case anyone was watching the rugby world cup this year): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0363811108000283

I recommend the international journal of sports communication in general, but this particular one touches on parasocial relationships and PR: https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijsc/13/3/article-p586.xml

This is about motorsports and sponsorship linked marketing: https://www.journalofadvertisingresearch.com/content/41/1/17.short

This video is a good starting point when thinking about celebrities that are not athletes getting involved in sports as well as the investment (or lack thereof) in women's sports: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5bafHWooWk&list=PLqq4LnWs3olWn4XTLrTVLpy_vYCepYk7A&index=12

This video is an interview about sports and soft power. A big part of sports PR is understanding some of the underlying factors of politics and diplomacy that go into sporting events: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjH971v1ZSQ

This is about sports, PR and promotion: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0363811106001007

This uses East Asian countries as a case study for PR, media and sports nationalism: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244015604691

This is about internet media and sports pr: https://www.kheljournal.com/archives/2017/vol4issue3/PartE/4-3-82-716.pdf