Behind F1's Velvet Curtain: Kate Wagner on Formula 1 racing

Monday reading #32

Monday Reading is my weekly recommendation of something I’ve found thought-provoking or fascinating. Sometimes it is about something I have read. Sometimes it is about television or food or music or projects I care about supporting. Sometimes I do not send it on Monday. Please share with anyone who might like the vibes!

It seems like people have gotten very into Formula 1 racing? I just see … a lot more people on the internet talking about it. Maybe it’s because of this show Formula 1: Drive to Survive, which debuted in 2019 on Netflix, with Season 2 debuting on February 28, 2020, just in time for desperate COVID viewers clinging to anything remotely watchable. I don’t know. I haven’t seen it and am … not going to.

HOWEVER. For reasons not clear to anyone, including her, Road & Track sent the sports journalist & architecture critic Kate Wagner to a Formula 1 race in Austin, TX, and then pulled the resulting article from its website almost as soon as it was published on Friday. Whomst can say why? I’m guessing no one at F1 was happy with the deck (the summary that runs with the headline) that goes “If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever.”

Well, too bad, because it’s been cached by the Internet Archive (backup link) and now we can all read it:

I think if you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race. No need for corny art singing tribute to the worker or even for the Manifesto. Never before had I seen so many wealthy people gathered all in one place. If a tornado came through and wiped the whole thing out, the stock market would plummet and the net worth of a country the size of Slovenia would vanish from the ledgers in a day. I used to live in Baltimore and remembered the kind of people who would go to the Preakness in their stupid hats and Sunday best while the whole swath of the city it was situated in starved and languished for lack of funds. This was like that, but without the hats. I saw $30,000 Birkin bags and $10,000 Off-White Nikes. I saw people with the kind of Rolexes that make strangers cry on Antiques Roadshow. I saw Ozempic-riddled influencers and fleshy, T-shirt-clad tech bros and people who still talked with Great Gatsby accents as they sweated profusely in Yves Saint Laurent under the unforgiving Texas sun. The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever. People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body. I stood there among them in a thrift-store blouse and shorts from Target.

It is so good and so funny that of course the ruling automotive racing class doesn’t want anyone to read it—which means, of course, that we should.

See you soon! Seize the means of production before then!