Motorsport Weekly: Australia GP & Adventures of a Casual Fan

Welcome to your new go-to motorsport/lifestyle weekly newsletter where I yap too much about F1 and my life. March 11th-March 18th.

Mar 19, 2025

Good morning, you know the drill. It’s race week again! Last week we had the first F1 race of the season and, boy, did it not disappoint.

When I got the notification of heavy rain Saturday night and the F2 race cancelled, a small part of me hoped F1 would follow suit. I was heartbroken and sad, and when you’re heartbroken and sad the last thing you want to do is watch an F1 race at 12am. What you really want is to shove your face with pizza and watch Sex and the City. And on top of being heartbroken and sad, I was frustrated, because you’re telling me I’ve waited months for F1 to be back, and now I have to watch the first race while being upset over some guy with the emotional depth of a kiddie pool? You’ve got to be kidding me.

This might have been the worst start to an F1 season I’ve ever had, all thanks to Mr. Kiddie Pool. At least I wasn’t the only one having a bad time. After the first couple of laps in Australia, the rookies were right there with me.

Between Ferrari not knowing how to read the weather app, a boat load of DNF’s, and a surprise P5 finish from Alex Albon, this race had everything.

In this weekly newsletter, we’re going to discuss the Australia GP and talk about my night out and adventures as a “casual” fan.

Jo’s Notebook: Australia GP

What I’m taking away from this race, besides a f*cked up sleep schedule.

McLaren have a rocket ship of a car and I don’t think people are talking about it enough. Lando Norris was told not to push with Verstappen 0.6 seconds behind because “the pace is in the car.” If that doesn’t tell you all you need to know…
Williams are not playing around this season. They’ve spent enough time at the bottom and this year decided enough is enough. Their qualifying times were shocking, both into Q3 over the likes of a Red Bull and Mercedes, and Alex Albon finishing P5. Maybe Carlos Sainz had the right idea after all.
Red Bull and Racing Bulls have a problem, and it’s not surprisingly not the car. When will Christian Horner and Helmut Marko learn that sometimes tough love just doesn’t work, especially when the love part is left out of the equation. For Marko to say Isack Hadjar’s reaction to his DNF was “embarrassing” is absurd and insensitive. The drivers on those teams have such heavy weights on their shoulders and probably feel as if they’re disposable and after one mistake will be thrown out.
Ferrari still has strategy problems, what’s new. “Let’s add this to the words of wisdom” is going into the book of my favorite F1 quotes. Thanks Charles!
Mercedes had a team member at the beach in the pouring rain to report the weather, which helped them time their pitstop to inters perfectly. God Bless Mercedes and that one team member, thank you for your service.
The new F1 graphics just aren’t doing it. The radio messages, the podium graphics, the podium itself, and the lap times being gone for 15 minutes straight… it was a mess

Being a Casual Fan is Kind of Fun

I told myself at the beginning of the night that I would be home tucked in bed with my Mercedes hat by 11:30, ready to watch qualifying in Australia. But instead, I was at The Spaniard, a large, dimly lit bar in Manhattan, chatting to some guy. He was a bit short, looked like Milo Ventimiglia, and had a Goodreads account full of classics, yet claimed he didn’t like to read. Jess Mariano, is that you? But I knew it wasn’t going to work out the second he said he was from Miami and frat president at his university. Oh, and did I mention he works in finance?

“We’re going to the Manchester United game in two weeks,” his friend tells me after I went on about my newfound love for football. I’m filled with jealousy, but my guy, Santi, tells me we will go to a game together next time. In hindsight, I wish I had continued talking to him just for that.

After some talks about gambling in Vegas and how many books we’ve read, I looked down at my phone. 11:50pm.

“We have to go now! Qualifying for F1 starts in an hour,” I tell the boys. Santi gives me disappointed eyes, but I didn’t care, because the only men in my life that mattered were the 20 F1 drivers lining up on the grid.

We say our goodbyes, which includes hugs, phone number exchanges, and promises of a first date. Then my friend and I make our way through the crowded rooms in search of the exit.

We never make it to the exit, though, because we get stopped by a group of guys wanting to know if a hot dog is a sandwich. Maybe it was the three cocktails I had drank prior or the adrenaline of talking to strangers, but I decided to entertain the conversation. The time slipped away, and suddenly I was just a girl in her early twenties having a fun night out in New York.

Next thing I know, it’s 12:30am, and I’m still stood at the bar chatting up these guys. Qualifying is in 30 minutes and I was in the West Village, not at home in Brooklyn. So basically, I was royally screwed.

“Oh my god, I only have 30 minutes!” I shout to my friend, Vaarya, who’s also an F1 fan. She takes charge and goes over to the bartender, begging him to put on ESPN. After many failed attempts, we take the loss and accept we won’t make it home on time.

“Well, can’t you just watch it on your phone?” Vaarya asks me. I stand there, trying to think of why exactly I couldn’t watch it on my phone. I guess I never really thought about it before, which is pathetic considering I pay an arm and a leg for yearly F1TV.

“I guess I could,” I decide. My night concluded with me watching half of qualifying in the Uber home, and the other half in my bed with my Mercedes hat, and I realized one wasn’t any better than the other.

Something I’ve learned about F1 fans over the past 2 years is that they can be a bit judgmental: rolling their eyes at fans who don’t watch free practice and scoffing when you say you like to watch the races at the pub. I mean, there’s been people who called me a fake fan because I watched races at the pub occasionally. Sometimes it seems as if the idea of being a casual fan is something other fans look down upon, like you can’t be a real fan if you don’t watch every second an F1 car is on track.

But on Friday night, out on the town with my friend and a drink in hand, I realized being a casual fan is kind of fun. Watching qualifying on the phone half drunk in the Uber, gasping with my friend after Liam Lawson got knocked out of Q1.

Being a fan of something comes in all different shapes and sizes, it’s not Brandy Melville’s “one size fits all.” You don’t need to watch every practice session, every qualifying, or heck, every race, in order to be a fan. You just have to be yourself and like what you like, and that’s enough.

Sometimes you’ll be watching with your team kit in bed with three screens full of data. Sometimes you’ll be watching on big TV’s at a bar surrounded by other fans, trying to hear the commentary. Or maybe you’re at a bar and have to watch on your phone because you don’t want to go home just yet. Sometimes you’ll be working and have to avoid spoilers so you can watch the next morning. Or sometimes you are heartbroken, shoving spoons full of ice cream into your mouth and don’t feel like watching your favorite driver potentially DNF.

The moral of the story is that do what you want and watch how you’d like. There’s been many times I cut my night short just to watch qualifying when all along I could have just had it on my phone. If you’re having fun, just have fun, because F1 will always be there tomorrow.

That’s all for this week! Stay tuned for next week’s newsletter for my China GP thoughts and more :)

xoxo,

Jo <3