How streaming and social media have helped build the modern F1

Enzo Ferrari famously said, "If you ask any child to draw a car, they'll draw a red one." When she was a child, Sofia Valente Pierini was the prototypical example. 

"Every Sunday that we would go over, my maternal grandfather, my Nonno, would have his little early 2000s tube TV perched on the kitchen counter," she recalled. The Formula One Grand Prix would be playing, and Valente Pierini's eyes would naturally be following the Ferraris. 

In 2025, Lewis Hamilton, Valente Pierini's favourite driver, stepped into the iconic red uniform for the first time, and in June 2026, he won his first Grand Prix as a Ferrari driver. 

"It hasn't been easy, emotionally, to be a Hamilton fan and a Ferrari fan," Valente Pierini admitted. She's made F1 content under the handle @formulasofia since 2022, much of it capturing the highs and lows of Ferrari fandom. "Seeing him at the top step of that podium was amazing, it was like a homecoming." 

Valente Pierini is part of a new generation of content creators helping to redefine the F1 media ecosystem for a younger, more diverse audience — one whose association with the sport might have otherwise been a faded Ferrari flag hanging in their grandfather's living room.

Along with the smash-hit Netflix reality show Drive to Survive, user-generated content is helping to engage a new F1 audience, in much the same way that radio acted as a catalyst to draw in baseball and hockey fans.

Transforming F1: How female and Gen Z fandom is shaping the sport’s future

Why we're still watching Formula 1: Drive to Survive, 8 seasons in

Every new form of broadcast technology has had peculiarities that perfectly suited them to certain sports. F1's online content is just the latest instance of media synergy powering