In a recent interview with F1 presenter Lawrence Barretto, Carlos Sainz joked about a viral Formula Fakers post that claimed he was living with new Williams teammate Alex Albon after a pipe burst in his Monaco apartment. Whilst it’s true that the pair used to be neighbors, this was obviously not real- something which is hopefully obvious to a fan of Formula Fakers since their first appearance on X in January this year.
For those unaware, Formula Fakers is a parody account of Formula Racers, a very real F1 news page. Somehow, people see an account with “fakers” in the title and “low-quality motorsports fake news and analysis” in their bio and think “hmmm, yeah, seems legit!”. The amount of FF posts I have seen discussed on other platforms (cough cough Tiktok) as if they are completely real and the stone cold truth is actually quite concerning, in my opinion.
What has happened to critical thinking? Thinking about the things we read and see online and questioning them for even a second? I find myself so far in the other direction; I’m very cynical, I literally don’t believe anything until I see it from a source I trust- I have many, many private Tiktoks talking about the ‘ridiculous’ Carlos-to-Williams rumours. And I might have been in denial, sure, but the point is that I really struggle to have the same naivety when it comes to information on the internet that I seem to be seeing more and more of. I’m in an F1 group chat (and these girls are all wonderful!), but occasionally somebody will send a chat saying something like “OMG did you see that the new Drive to Survive season has an episode rated 18+????” and I find myself rolling my eyes (again, these girls are wonderful and somewhat ironically talking about these rumours can be fun). But this particular rumour did make its way to several serious F1 news pages. The ’18+’ content and what it may be was discussed at length in comment sections and videos all over social media, and whilst this is funny, it also once again raises the question- why are we not thinking about what we read online?? In all fairness, this does seem more believable and/or realistic than some of Formula Fakers other posts such as these classics:
Unfortunately this is exactly my sense of humour and I giggle every time, but surely it’s extremely obvious that this is not a reputable news source. Having a good laugh is one thing, and the DTS ‘rumour’ is hardly damaging, but it is still not good that an obvious parody account is occasionally being taken seriously.
Of course the fault doesn’t lie with Formula Fakers; it is ultimately the fault of people not checking sources, taking everything they see at face value, and taking fake news/ satire posts and running with them to other platforms where the source isn’t listed at all, so that other people don’t even have the chance to see where it came from. I read this article from Medium that I found really interesting, and one of the reasons they gave for the decline of critical thinking was prioritising emotional reasoning over logical thinking; if a post invokes an emotional reaction like excitement or humour or anger, people’s judgement may be clouded by their emotions and they don’t think to look further before spreading the word. It also talked about technology and social media and the overwhelming volume of information online- when there is so much to take in, its so much easier to just believe it than whip out Google after every scroll. Its time consuming and boring, yet increasingly necessary to avoid misinformation in today’s online climate.
Even more recently, a rumour has been going around that Susie Wolff will be running for the FIA presidency against the current president who will not be discussed any further right now because this is a happy, fun space and I do not want to talk about that man. Would I absolutely kill to see Susie as the president of the FIA? Yes. Lives would be changed. But the alleged source for this ‘news’ is speculation from Autosprint Italy that the misogynistic FIA investigation against the F1 Academy managing director was a warning shot from the governing body because they ‘knew’ she wanted to run for president. I say alleged source because I looked on their website and couldn’t find a recent article saying this- granted, I don’t speak Italian, I was translating headlines and bylines so it is very possible and likely that this is the source, I’m just not 100% sure. Regardless, I personally wouldn’t consider speculation and opinion a strong source to base an article on, but this rumour has been reported on by multiple smaller F1 publications citing ‘a report from Italy’ as their source. It’s telling, however, that it hasn’t been published in the likes of Sky Sports or ESPN.
In all fairness, this is more of a personal annoyance than a criticism of the media. Going back to the Medium article, it discusses the priority of sensationalism over substance; headlines are written to get clicks, quotes and soundbites are taken out of context to support an exaggerated narrative that drives engagement. The Susie Wolff story is interesting and makes for a good story, it’s just not really rooted in any truth. Though as I said before, if it is all true I will genuinely start jumping for joy because I love Susie Wolff a lot and she would eat that presidency UP. I think people generally need to start taking things with a pinch of salt and asking themselves just a few more questions.
Within F1, a lack of media literacy and spreading of fake news isn’t the worst thing that could ever happen. It’s arguably a lot worse when it’s happening in the wider world and global politics, and it’s happening there in a much more serious way. It just gets on my nerves because it’s so easily avoidable, especially in F1 where genuine news is always confirmed by the same reliable, unbiased outlets and not X users with an immovable vendetta against drivers or teams they don’t like. It’s not that hard to find out what’s true and what’s opinion, satire, or speculation, but F1 is a show and I suppose we all need to be entertained somehow.
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