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

Cadence Wille comes from a family steeped in car and motorsport culture. Her maternal grandfather was an automotive technician. Her dad’s family ran a classic car museum and racetrack. But she didn’t start watching Formula One until 2020. And once she did, she was hooked.

"Instantly," said the 26-year-old F1 content creator based in Victoria.

"It wasn’t just the track action that was exciting, but realizing that so much goes into the car development, the rules are so intricate — just everything about it."

In Canada and the U.S., F1 has gone from niche motorsport to mainstream obsession in just a few years, thanks in large part to the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive. 

It's become a global entertainment powerhouse, lifestyle brand and pop culture phenomenon — a shift driven in part by a new wave of content creators like Wille championing the sport online. They post memes and race reactions, dig into the lore and help explain the sport's rules to new fans. 

Wille started making content in 2024 under the handle @cadencebraking. She now has more than 100,000 combined followers on Instagram and TikTok.

"So much of the social media landscape in F1 — there’s a lot of women in that space," she said.

"It’s also giving all of the professionals in motorsport, all of the women working in motorsport, another place to talk about their jobs and their journey."

Tiggy Valen, a California-based F1 content creator and host of the Paddock Project podcast, started making content in 2022 — what she calls starter-pack, 101-type explainer videos. At the time, she said, almost everything else was highly technical, inaccessible to new fans and fronted by British men over the age of 40.

“The goal was to build this educational on-ramp