My hosts were nice people. They showed us extraordinary hospitality

March 3, 2024 4:31 PM

Kate Wagner (a cycling journalist best known for her blog McMansion Hell) takes a trip to the Austin Grand Prix for Road and Track magazine as a guest of INEOS F1 team. A subeditor chose the pull quote “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.”. Shortly after, an editor chose to pull the article entirely.
posted by ambrosen (89 comments total)

Cowardice on the editor's part, honestly.
posted by mhoye at 5:15 PM on March 3 [16 favorites]

That was an enjoyable read. Always good to hear about the rich from someone who's not hoping to be invited back.
posted by clawsoon at 5:17 PM on March 3 [30 favorites]

Looks like they even deleted her bio page at Road and Track, even though they still have at least one older article by her. Some insecure billionaire (or billionaire's toady) wasn't happy.
posted by clawsoon at 5:23 PM on March 3 [31 favorites]

I would love to have an annotated guide to who is in those photos.
posted by bq at 5:27 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

What a lovely read.
posted by Cobalt at 5:30 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Silly Road and Track, or whoever pulled your strings, I never would have even heard of it let alone read the article if you hadn't pulled it. And for all its criticisms of the circus, the excess that permeates every part of formula 1, it was really quite flattering about the sport itself, the cars and the drivers.
posted by adamt at 5:31 PM on March 3 [11 favorites]

There are links on this random forum that I know nothing about to now-deleted tweets by both the author and the editor, as well as copies of the story on Yahoo (now deleted) and MSN (still up, for now).
posted by clawsoon at 5:32 PM on March 3 [4 favorites]

I guess I’m an idiot because I don’t understand how I read the article if it’s been “pulled.”

This is a particular kind of writing I don’t enjoy - too much about the author and too impressed with itself- but it sounds like a fun trip.
posted by jeoc at 5:35 PM on March 3

I would love to have an annotated guide to who is in those photos.

The very high resolution image of the woman in red is kind enough to show, when zoomed in, that she is the "First Lady of Texas".

Is the picture just above that one of a cryogenically de-aged Elon Musk?
posted by clawsoon at 5:37 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

It's a great article and I honestly learned something about F1, which I would never have otherwise.
posted by emjaybee at 5:40 PM on March 3 [4 favorites]

→ Some insecure billionaire (or billionaire's toady) wasn't happy.

Possibly the owner of INEOS, who is quick to reach for lawyers
posted by scruss at 5:40 PM on March 3 [4 favorites]

I don’t understand how I read the article if it’s been “pulled.”

Look closely at the header and the URL. The article linked by this post is served by the Internet Archive Wayback Machine; the original URL, https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/, now redirects to the main Road and Track site.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 5:47 PM on March 3 [20 favorites]

Damn. This article seems to be the rare exception that proves the rule that press junkets lead to biased coverage. Kudos to her for maintaining her journalistic integrity. Road and Track, on the other hand...
posted by surlyben at 5:50 PM on March 3 [9 favorites]

I guess that’s why Hunter S. Thompson never wrote for Road and Track. “The Austin Grand Prix is Decadent and Depraved” And don’t even get me started on his coverage of the Mint 400.
posted by TedW at 6:07 PM on March 3 [19 favorites]

I can't imagine how they could have expected any different from her if they had vetted her volume of work properly. Someone might have been fired over this.

The article is sublime.
posted by CynicalKnight at 6:20 PM on March 3 [16 favorites]

This is great, especially the sentences covering driver pay and ticket price disparities between NASCAR and F1, also the contrasts between bicycle racing and car racing journalism.

She's a national treasure. I sent a friend her twitter thread of Slovenian castle appreciation from an old book, full of detail and wit: https://x.com/mcmansionhell/status/1737670949422465380?s=20.
posted by lwxxyyzz at 6:28 PM on March 3 [10 favorites]

Since I'm not really the audience for R&T, i didn't expect to like the article, even if I knew beforehand she'd be dishing the rich. But I did, very much.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 6:29 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

And I totally missed the McMansion Hell connection the first several times I read the FPP! Her article was actually much less snarky than I would have expected from that.
posted by TedW at 6:30 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

I'd like to eat the rich as much as the next guy (can't afford groceries much anymore), but I tired of the article quite quickly. Yes, we know there's a bunch of rich, shitty people attending F1. Hell, there's a bunch of rich, shitty people running F1. Yes, the world would be immeasurably better if they all lost ony 1% of their combined wealth. No need to repeat it over, and over, and over, and over.
posted by Geckwoistmeinauto at 6:44 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

I also was about to say, it reminded me of Hunter S. Thompson's original Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the original article he turned in to Sports Illustrated and had rejected. Except I found Kate Wanger's writing a lot more readable then Thompson's.
posted by Canageek at 6:52 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

It's difficult to understand how they published the article in the first place. I'm guessing nobody involved at Road and fuckin' Track, (and precious few of its readers), are all that interested in a snarky socialist takedown. You learn something new everyday!
posted by 2N2222 at 6:53 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

Ratcliffe, the INEOS CEO, is a known entity in cycling, about whom one says things usually reserved for supporting characters in James Bond novels.

cackles
posted by lalochezia at 6:59 PM on March 3 [7 favorites]

Not that it's news to me, but as someone who subscribed to Road & Track for around 20 years and have 6 compilation books of Peter Egan columns from both R&T and Cycle World, it's sad how far R&T has fallen.

I stopped reading about 10-15 years ago when they made an obvious pivot from a magazine for and by people who liked cars for what they were to a rag that only targeted the wealthy who didn't care a whit about cars as anything other than social markers of conspicuous consumption.

Can't believe they were stupid enough to send Wagner on that assignment; they got something great, which they should've expected and feared. Glad they did though.
posted by Ickster at 7:02 PM on March 3 [34 favorites]

Queueing that up for a later read but first sending that to a friend who still lives in Austin and is into F1.

F1 is a symptom rather than a cause of what ails Austin, but I have some feelings about this topic before I read what Kate Wagner (whose work I really enjoy, especially as it hits the intersections of money and taste) has to say. They lead me to approach this article with the glint of schadenfreude in my eye.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 7:08 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

she is the "First Lady of Texas"

The blurry line below says "Cecelia Abbot", so that is indeed Greg Abbot's wife.
posted by CynicalKnight at 7:21 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

Looks like they even deleted her bio page at Road and Track, even though they still have at least one older article by her. Some insecure billionaire (or billionaire's toady) wasn't happy.

I can also see Kate saying "fuck you I want nothing to do with you bootlickers" after finding out the article was yanked off the site. I'm really curious about how this timeline looked from her POV
posted by thecjm at 7:33 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

I'm sure those very tall gentlemen standing closely behind her are bodyguards, but....does the First Lady of Texas require bodyguards?
posted by bq at 7:47 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

I'd like to eat the rich as much as the next guy...

Oh yum, like those Koch Bro's Buffalo Wingtips are so fingerfucking licking good. Your umami is by no means umaminous. Also, why is there no Lawn Chair and Barcalounger Magazine for us serenely sedentary types?
posted by y2karl at 7:48 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

This was a fantastic read. I would never have read this article on my own (even before the deletion), and I'm so glad you posted it here.
posted by rednikki at 7:52 PM on March 3 [9 favorites]

I got comps to the Melbourne F1 race years ago and went because I was curious. I wasn't in a catered area or anything, I imagine that's a different experience, but out with the rabble my main takeaway was how bizarrely serious everyone was, there were precious few smiles. Also, a large quantity of bad fashion.
posted by deadwax at 8:02 PM on March 3 [3 favorites]

Wagner on Lewis Hamilton:

Some people are totally different off the record, but Lewis was simply a more lively version of himself. I find him a fascinating figure. A lot of fans either love or hate him, see him, paradoxically, as both humble and arrogant. The word quiet is better. Not reserved, not shy, just quiet. He belongs to a special group of people. The ones I've met in life include the violinist Hilary Hahn and Pogačar, the Tour de France winner—human beings who walk the earth differently, with an aura that transcends it. He appeared perpetually relaxed, controlled and refined, both present with us in the room but on a higher plane within.

Wagner on the F1 press junket:

What I received wasn't a crash course in Formula 1—in fact, Formula 1 only became more mystifying to me—but journalism, as viewed by the other side. The great irony of the other side is that they need journalism. The petrochemical companies, deeply powerful institutions, need journalists to write about all the things they attach themselves to that are not being a petrochemical company. Formula 1, on a rapacious tangent for growth and new markets, needs journalists to spread the good word of the richest sport in the world.

posted by spamandkimchi at 8:22 PM on March 3 [17 favorites]

Thanks for posting this. I'm a cycling fan and have enjoyed Kate Wagner's writing on cycling, particularly her newsletter Derailleur.

Besides the class war elements I found the article had interesting things to say about F1 as a sport, at least for a non-fan like myself. I enjoyed Drive to Survive (moreso in retrospect because its quality and popularity seems to have encouraged Netflix to bankroll the cycling version, Tour de France: Unchained, by the same producers). Since watching DtS and learning a bit more about F1 I've found it odd how limited and predictable the winner's podiums tend to be. I can appreciate the technology behind the cars and skill and athleticism of the drivers, but as a spectator sport I would think it gets boring seeing the same two teams win all the time, and recently seeing Verstappen winning everything. Does Alpine have fans?

Cycling in recent years, both women's and men's, has had some degree of this phenomenon but not nearly to the same extent.
posted by good in a vacuum at 8:22 PM on March 3 [1 favorite]

F1 has found itself in a strange position - it was, a decade ago, in a relatively rough space. Teams were failing. The current line-up of ten teams is down from 12 in 2010. The reason Red Bull owns two of the ten teams is that long-time backmarker Minardi was going under and they couldn't find anyone else to buy them out. They sport enacted a series of cost-saving measures like limited development and testing time, along with years-long development freezes on things like the engine itself. All of this kept the sport alive but essentially locks the finishing order for each generation of the cars. When a new spec is announced, whoever gets it right will dominate for years until the specs are updated. Mercedes was unstoppable in the last generation. Red Bull is even more dominate now and will be that way until 2026.


What all this means in that now with the sport being at its most popular, it is lacking in the thing that makes sport interesting - competition. This past few years are going to be the high water mark for F1. They're just not set up to capitalize on this level of popularity in the long term. In the short term, however, there are always billionaires wanting to buy in and entire countries wanting to host races.
posted by thecjm at 8:32 PM on March 3 [6 favorites]

That last line makes it seem like she knew this piece was doomed.

But I loved her ambivalence, and details, and turns of phrase! What a great article.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:40 PM on March 3 [5 favorites]

That was a fun read! I have been a journalist covering F1 briefly - I have no real idea who is who but my F1 friend was delighted. I did a tech angle and got to see how they set up the backroom support which was actually very interesting - everything is broken into units with multiple copies in constant logistics from track to track so that they can rapidly set up the support rooms in advance AND simultaneously upgrade or reconfigure setups on the fly, essentially a constantly moving R&D lab that is linked to the backroom. They had dedicated high speed cables etc - it was really interesting because the UI was enormously important - every new track area was refitted to be laid out the same so no one has to waste any time getting used to a new space. Also the actual cars are ridiculously tiny and fragile looking.

There was a lot of money floating around. I really enjoyed reading her take on it because it is so normalised for me that I didn’t note it.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 9:16 PM on March 3 [14 favorites]

Toad(y) and Hack
posted by credulous at 9:26 PM on March 3

Except I found Kate Wanger's writing a lot more readable than Thompson's.

Ahem.

Song Of The Sausage Creature
posted by PareidoliaticBoy at 9:27 PM on March 3 [9 favorites]

The link to the article isn't quite working for me, even from the internet archive. Does anybody know of another source?
posted by Pitachu at 9:40 PM on March 3

the First Lady of Texas require bodyguards?

In case she breathes the same air as a woke liberal or gets assaulted by a maniac, or some right -wing nutcase who believes her husband is insufficiently right wing enough.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 9:49 PM on March 3 [6 favorites]

I haven't even read the article yet and the photos of the place were dizzying. I remember when they first built or opened or had some early event there, I worked at this restaurant next to a hotel that had been completely booked by some terror kingdom richie rich. I can think of many reasons this annoyed me, like, slavery, capitalism, 9/11, etc but in them oment what annoyed me is the relatively low tips made that day because typically we could rely on a healthy crossover of various hotel patrons. I do consider myself lucky no fuckwit prince booked out the restaurant, I didn't even really much care for serving normal folks and I do not cotton to royalty.
posted by GoblinHoney at 10:31 PM on March 3 [2 favorites]

What a beautiful essay.

I would like a socialist working class woman without a driver's license to review all sporting events going forward.
posted by zymil at 11:38 PM on March 3 [38 favorites]

Good article, obvious why it was pulled (which was idiotic) given the focus on the obscene money involved at the top of the sport that someone clearly wasn't happy with. But this is true of most sports, I suspect, and if you focus on the richest sport of them all it's going to look doubly obscene.

A little unfair with the few NASCAR to F1 ticket comparison as you can get F1 general admission tickets for about the same price as NASCAR seated tickets - it's not quite the same, but when the circuit is fundamentally different it's understandable.

But very fair that the prices can be ridiculous and are going up. You can do a race weekend on a tight budget, but it's becoming more difficult - the newer circuits? Not possible. Prices at Miami, Las Vegas, the UAE? Outrageous, and the traditional style circuits are putting their prices up as well. Despite that, the sport has seen record attendance the last couple of years.

> The trip to the track took about 30 minutes. When we came into the entrance, there were people walking from seemingly miles away with lawn chairs.

After the race you'll find these chairs abandoned and littering the general admission areas - when I went in 2017 I shot about three rolls of film of them dotted in various places. It seemed a good analogy for the "use once and destroy" aspect of many parts of the sport. I don't know if I'll ever use these in my final edit however.

> Formula 1, on a rapacious tangent for growth and new markets, needs journalists to spread the good word of the richest sport in the world.

The problem is that F1, in reality, is boring. Really boring. The author alluded to this in parts of the essay. The events are setup to have multiple distractions that make attendees forget that the race weekends are three day long events where you're waiting for moments that last seconds. Often those moments never occur.
posted by lawrencium at 12:22 AM on March 4 [14 favorites]

Kate Wanger

Most unfortunate typo!

Great article, brilliant read, even as an F1 fan.
posted by Dysk at 1:04 AM on March 4

What a great piece!
posted by Coaticass at 1:32 AM on March 4

Fun read. I do find it a bit odd, though, that there was zero mention of F1 being owned by US-based Liberty Media.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:33 AM on March 4 [5 favorites]

Pitachu: The link to the article isn't quite working for me, even from the internet archive. Does anybody know of another source?

It is, for now, still available on MSN.
posted by clawsoon at 3:12 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

She pointed out something that still surprises me when watching F1, which is how free the drivers are to criticize the car. As she mentions, in cycling you would never criticize the sponsor in public, but even in other sports there is this polite fiction when athletes are asked about their coach or the refs or the other players on the team. A false humility is expected - "we all should have played better and that starts with me," "the coaches did their jobs, we just didn't execute," etc. - in some cases with the risk of fines if you are too forthright in your complaints about the refs.
posted by misskaz at 4:46 AM on March 4 [4 favorites]

The sums of money involved in running a F1 team too are staggering - $180m in 2018 - easily 30% more than that these days.
posted by lalochezia at 4:56 AM on March 4

Wow, to be the editor who has to go back to the publisher and say, "So it turns out the person who also writes McMansion Hell does not actually operate from a position of deference and awe towards the uberrich."
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:47 AM on March 4 [23 favorites]

Liberty Media delenda est.
posted by ob1quixote at 7:15 AM on March 4 [3 favorites]

She pointed out something that still surprises me when watching F1, which is how free the drivers are to criticize the car.

It makes sense when you understand that the cars and the drivers are, more or less, meant to operate as one, and it’s the driver, above anyone else, who can give feedback. And, given that they are meant to work as a unit, when the car is somehow not working with the driver, the team is going to hear about it.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:18 AM on March 4 [2 favorites]

The sums of money involved in running a F1 team too are staggering - $180m in 2018 - easily 30% more than that these days.

If anything, $180m in 2018 is on the lower end to run in the top tier before the cost cap. There were indications that Mercedes and Ferrari were dropping $450 million a year, plus what was being spent on engine development. In fact, the Mercedes practice was to build three full cars for every year, engines and all, using different concepts and just run them to see which one was best. And the old comment about Ferrari is that they're a racing team that sells cars occasionally.

So yeah, with that level of money being involved, it's zero point zero surprising how shady many sponsors are. Hello petrochemicals! Hello gambling! Hello tobacco-pretending-it-isn't-tobacco!

She pointed out something that still surprises me when watching F1, which is how free the drivers are to criticize the car.
it’s the driver, above anyone else, who can give feedback.

As part of that, I think it's also actively selected-for in the kind of motorsport series that lead to F1 -- it's usually a compliment when a driver is described as a "straight shooter" or "blunt" or "down to business." There is an additional significant allowance for drivers yelling about how shit their cars are during race. But there are also lines you can cross. It's generally understood that Alonso got in trouble/got the team in trouble with their engine manufacturer for his infamous GP2 engine comment.
posted by joyceanmachine at 7:29 AM on March 4 [3 favorites]

The problem is that F1, in reality, is boring. Really boring.

Well, at least they do race in the rain, as well as turn both left and right.
posted by TedW at 7:38 AM on March 4 [8 favorites]

I don't know, I thought the article was very much a "Kate Wagner" article. Half the things were generalizations that are mostly wrong, but were kind of fun to make.

She also references the baseball playoffs, which were 6 months ago. If she had anything to say about this article, she's had plenty of time to say it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:50 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

Wow, to be the editor who has to go back to the publisher and say, "So it turns out the person who also writes McMansion Hell does not actually operate from a position of deference and awe towards the uberrich."

My best guess is that it was more like:

“We need to attract a new audience!” (No instruction from publisher on how)

Editorial meeting: let’s get someone to write a really fun gonzo piece about F1, who has a vaguely related audience. Bikes have wheels, and the Youngers.
PR: you’ll give us how many words? Amazing! Have your tickets!

(Writing happens, piece is turned in)

Editor: recognizes both genius of piece and potential issues, publishes it anyway. Hey you asked for traffic. Points to Deadspin, Vic-oops, not Vice (RIP)

Fact checker calling PR: can you confirm Prince Harry was there? What was the statehouse? Confirms Birkin bag price elsewhere.

PR: #%!@#!
Publisher: #%!@#!
Editor:*sigh*, presses unpublish button

I’m super curious if this went out in print. My dad has every single issue of R&T ever; it is his prize collection, so I’ll ask him later.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:54 AM on March 4 [8 favorites]

It does the brilliant job of increasing my interest and appreciation for what is theoretically the center of the practice while simultaneously increasing my loathing of the culture around it. She catches the joy of building complicated, highly-optimized, vehicles and piloting them, but also the rapacious vacuity of excessive wealth. They should have left it up; it might bring in new fans.
posted by GenjiandProust at 8:22 AM on March 4 [10 favorites]

I liked it well enough, whether the goofing-on-the-aristos part was rote or no. Somehow, I'd forgotten that Wagner covered cycling, and I liked her comparisons to that sport, which seem to avoid simply saying "but bikes are just better." (Even though they are.)

The closest thing that I've ever done to watching F1 was watching Iron Man 2, and I wonder if the Monaco scene--between the well-that-didn't-age-well Elon Musk cameo (he also appears in a photo in this story) and Tony having trouble with a third-rate supervillain that he should have been able to reduce to a greasy puddle in about two seconds--is the major contributor to the film's not-great reputation.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:45 AM on March 4

This was a great read. I feel similarly to the author; I am hugely fascinated by the technology of motorsports and simultaneously appalled by the enormous concentration of wealth that comes along with it.

There were a couple mentions of Hunter Thompson above; I was actually reminded of David Foster Wallace quite a bit. Some of his best writing is about tennis, another sport with unfortunate associations with wealth.
posted by dbx at 9:28 AM on March 4 [3 favorites]

And, given that they are meant to work as a unit, when the car is somehow not working with the driver, the team is going to hear about it.

I meant to the press. Obviously the driver needs to give the team feedback, and I watch F1 so I know that the driver is giving feedback during the race which is broadcast on TV. But I meant in interviews with the press I just am so conditioned to hearing the athlete being reluctant to blame other components of the team effort publicly.
posted by misskaz at 9:41 AM on March 4

And this just came across my bluesky feed today:
A private race track, designed by an F1 track designer, cut into the side of a mountain in Japan.

I so love big feats of engineering and infrastructure, and I find it tremendously depressing that such things are no longer public works but instead private playthings. Bring back the WPA! Let's have publically owned sports leagues! The only thing stopping us is the billionaires currently profiting off of them!
posted by dbx at 11:30 AM on March 4 [5 favorites]

I meant to the press.

If I’m reading the article right, no matter how good the driver, the tech can keep you in a lower position for a few years at a time, so I think it’s fair for a driver to say “the car is coming along” if only to not have to say “I guess I’m second rate” for 2-3 years at a time….
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:43 AM on March 4 [1 favorite]

it’s fair for a driver to say “the car is coming along” if only to not have to say “I guess I’m second rate” for 2-3 years at a time

I'm clearly doing a poor job of expressing myself, because I feel like everyone is responding to something I didn't say.

I understand the desire for a driver to say that. I also would understand the desire for a quarterback to say the offensive coordinator's play calling sucked, or a baseball pitcher to say he did his part but none of the hitters on his team got any runs... yet they rarely do (again, to the press). You might get some reading in between the lines types of comments but it struck me when I started watching F1 to hear drivers talking to the press and saying the car isn't good enough, in quite direct and plain language. I'm used to a forced "unified front" when it comes to talking about a team effort in sports, and the expectations/culture around F1 are different. I was merely noting the difference, not criticizing it or questioning why a driver would say those things.
posted by misskaz at 12:12 PM on March 4 [4 favorites]

I find it funny that any athlete's press conference on any subject has any relevance at all. Completely unforgettable, unless the athlete/coach gets fined afterwards for criticizing something. Sports press conferences are worthless and not worth debating.

I find F1 and IndyCar, for the most part, have become just long parades with hard to read car logos.
posted by pthomas745 at 12:28 PM on March 4

In F1, the fastest car wins almost regardless of who drives it. I mean, you need to be an exceptionally good driver to even attempt to drive an F1 car, let alone race the thing but it's cars that win championships not drivers.
posted by plonkee at 1:46 PM on March 4

In F1, the fastest car wins almost regardless of who drives it. I mean, you need to be an exceptionally good driver to even attempt to drive an F1 car, let alone race the thing but it's cars that win championships not drivers.

This is sort of broadly true, but not actually true because of how every F1 team fields two drivers.

Take last year. Checo Perez scored 285 championship points and was second in the driver standings.

His teammate in the same car won the championship by scoring 575 points. Put another way, the gap between them could have won the championship by itself. In fact, that teammate won the team competition by himself -- the second-place team scored 409 points.

So yeah, a fast car is necessary to win the championship, but it isn't sufficient. The driver is hugely important. Even though we're one (1) race into this season, we're seeing it again -- same car, but when driven by Checo Perez, the Red Bull is beatable. In Max's hands, the same machinery is hanging out 20+ seconds ahead of everyone else within 10 laps of the start.
posted by joyceanmachine at 2:35 PM on March 4 [5 favorites]

The other part of it is that saying the car isn't good enough isn't really blaming the team directly. You're not going to hear them say "the car's not good enough because so-and-so isn't doing their job." It's more analogous to a football player saying "we're still trying to get in sync on offense" vs blaming a specific coach.
posted by AndrewInDC at 2:40 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]

I can't imagine how they could have expected any different from her if they had vetted her volume of work properly.

Perhaps because her earlier piece for them on NASCAR in Chicago -- written as a Chicago resident and non-driver who grew up around her father's NASCAR fandom in North Carolina -- was tonally quite different from her more overtly political writing. Kate Wagner is an exceptionally versatile writer as anyone who's followed her work knows already: she can be lyrical about what elite bike riders are capable of and the traditions around big races, but also clear-eyed about the business of professional cycling as she is in the introduction to this article.

(In passing: Ratcliffe and INEOS recently took a minority stake in Manchester United along with control of football operations.)
posted by holgate at 4:19 PM on March 4

I had to check and re-check that I hadn't skipped the penultimate paragraph, because the final graf seemed to come out of nowhere. So I read the whole thing a second time and kept getting hung up on stuff like this:

In the garage, there are many mysteries one is not allowed to know or see. The use of phones is forbidden lest one incur accusations of espionage. When we got into the garage, Lewis's car was naked, its insides visible for all to see.

Okay, in the garage, there are mysteries one is not allowed to see, but when they got into the garage the insides of the car are visible for all to see?

I can't help feeling there was a better essay within this piece that could have used a canny editor to coax it out and instill a thread of connection, while removing the odd contradictory beats.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:12 PM on March 4

I understand the desire for a driver to say that. I also would understand the desire for a quarterback to say the offensive coordinator's play calling sucked, or a baseball pitcher to say he did his part but none of the hitters on his team got any runs... yet they rarely do (again, to the press)

Part of the difference is that a football game is a complicated beast with many moving parts. The offence could have sucked because of bad playcalling, or it could be that the QB didn't play them well, or the runners, or...

Any idiot can see if a car is significantly slower in a straight line than another car, for example. To try and deny or prevaricate about that to the press or fans would be insulting.
posted by Dysk at 5:36 PM on March 4

Okay, in the garage, there are mysteries one is not allowed to see, but when they got into the garage the insides of the car are visible for all to see?

Presumably the insides of the car are not included in the category of mysteries one is not allowed to see? I’m not finding an inconsistency here.
posted by good in a vacuum at 5:48 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]

In the garage, there are many mysteries one is not allowed to know or see. The use of phones is forbidden lest one incur accusations of espionage. When we got into the garage, Lewis's car was naked, its insides visible for all to see.

Okay, in the garage, there are mysteries one is not allowed to see, but when they got into the garage the insides of the car are visible for all to see?

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of other situations where nakedness is allowed to a select private audience but not to be recorded and shared.

This is a little repetitious but I read it as emphasizing how that was unusual and thus adding to the allure: normally you can’t see this, now there’s a chance to push that boundary. Given the tone of the piece, this seemed in keeping with the theme of being behind the scenes in a world most people will never enter.

They also had a minder so I think the choice of the word espionage is important, too: none of these companies expects to keep secrets forever and as a sport they need to keep fans interested by reading those stories but they’re going to try to slow their direct competitors by not making it easy for them to get 40MP photos to analyze. Presumably the same person would have done something if someone had been getting too close or studying some feature too intently.
posted by adamsc at 6:01 PM on March 4 [3 favorites]

She also references the baseball playoffs, which were 6 months ago. If she had anything to say about this article, she's had plenty of time to say it.

The whole thing is about the Austin Grand Prix, which was in October last year. I assume an editor has been sitting on it for a while.
posted by Dysk at 6:03 PM on March 4 [4 favorites]

> Somehow, I'd forgotten that Wagner covered cycling

Does she though? I kid, but her latest article is a lot of words about 13th century European politics, then a bit about a racer in the Vuelta España.

Which is great, particularly after seeing Napoleon over the last 2 days. I guess fans of Sepp Kuss might appreciate her pointing out his shabby treatment by the team, but I hope they get as much out of the H.R.E. stuff as I did.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 7:52 PM on March 4

Let me just say I adore Kate Wagner, even stuff about biking, her enthusiasm for which I do not share. I can hardly wait to read this.
posted by lhauser at 9:44 PM on March 4 [2 favorites]

The whole thing is about the Austin Grand Prix, which was in October last year. I assume an editor has been sitting on it for a while.

The piece was released in line with the start of this year's F1 season. Good time to release a think piece on a subject. A lot of long form articles on sports can be written months in advance.
posted by thecjm at 5:53 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

Thank you so much for this post.
posted by Dashy at 10:58 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

I kid, but her latest article is a lot of words about 13th century European politics, then a bit about a racer in the Vuelta España.

Derailleur is where she where she writes about Styrian castles and Slovenian spas and also cycling. Her most recent cycling piece was last week at Escape Collective about Pogačar doing exactly what he said he'd do to win the Strade Bianche.
posted by holgate at 11:53 AM on March 5 [3 favorites]

There's an article up about the deletion on Detector (archive), where the (new) Editor in Charge gives a weak explanation for the deletion:

The story was taken down because I felt it was the wrong story for our publication. No one from the brands or organizations mentioned in the story put any sort of pressure on me or anyone else. In fact, I heard nothing at all from anyone on the story. No contact whatsoever.

The Defector article quotes the last paragraph about how petrochemical companies need to draw attention to not being petrochemical companies (hilariously, I saw an INEOS ad for some handwash that they make at the cinema a few months back. Weird when what I remember them by is the view of the gas flare at Grangemouth refinery from the Pentland Hills after dark, when out for a ride from Edinburgh).

Also, if you need a 5,000 word article written, Kate Wagner's available for commissions, according to her Twitter.
posted by ambrosen at 3:43 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

The story just made it to the WaPo.
Whenever I see stuff like that I assume the writer read about it in MetaFilter.
posted by MtDewd at 3:52 PM on March 5 [1 favorite]

Pulling the article unleashed the Streisand Effect in all its glory. Excellent work all around.
posted by joseph_elmhurst at 4:35 PM on March 5 [6 favorites]

It's hit /r/formula1 now as well.

> Pulling the article unleashed the Streisand Effect in all its glory. Excellent work all around.

Given the (dubious) explanation from the editor above you'd think this might be some reverse (reverse reverse?) Streisand Effect attempt? Article doesn't get much traction. Pull it. Get the interwebs to raise a fuss. Profit?

I dunno, seems a bit weird.
posted by lawrencium at 11:47 PM on March 5

She pointed out something that still surprises me when watching F1, which is how free the drivers are to criticize the car.
He wasn't necessarily criticising the car, just pointing out that it could use some improvement and this is something that separates the best drivers from the rest - being able to understand the engineering of the car enough to give meaningful feedback to engineers about what is actually going on. I think this is a large part of why you so often see teammates widely separated in the field - while the cars are theoretically identical, it's the feedback from the driver that allows each individual car to be adjusted to be as close to perfect as possible for that particular track at that particular moment with that particular driver at the wheel. Someone that relies on data engineers to tell them what's happening is never going to be able to get the absolute best out of a car the way Hamilton and his peers can.

The article was great and it's a shame it was pulled. The writer didn't pull any punches, but I didn't read any of it as criticising any person, more observing how the world of F1 is so different to the rest of the world and how different it is when viewed from the inside vs on TV.
posted by dg at 6:01 PM on March 6

I stopped reading about 10-15 years ago when they made an obvious pivot from a magazine for and by people who liked cars for what they were to a rag that only targeted the wealthy who didn't care a whit about cars as anything other than social markers of conspicuous consumption.

R & T was one of my favorite magazines back in the late 70’s and 80’s. I never got the idea that it was elitist, in spite of the fact that they wrote about cars that cost fifteen times my yearly income. I’m quite glad I didn’t see it recenter the atmosphere as a flaming husk of marketing gas.

Also, as an aside: bicycles are *not* better than F1 cars, they’re *completely different*. As a book I’m currently rereading puts it, “the question seemed meaningless, like answering whether Chinese jade was more important than baseball.” A No Prize is offered to whoever identifies the quote first. Being MF, I expect it within twenty minutes.

Fabulous article, even if I don’t agree with the whole socialism thing entirely. Super rich people are mostly assholes: much like ordinary people…. Okay, maybe more so.
posted by Gilgamesh's Chauffeur at 7:15 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

“The Road & Track Formula One Scandal Makes No Sense,” Rusty Foster, Today in Tabs, 06 March 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 8:11 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

I agree with the Tabs article that if there was no pressure from the sponsors or F1, then this just seems petty as hell. Maybe Daniel Pund lives in a house that Wagner mocked on McMansion Hell?
posted by hydropsyche at 8:48 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]

Okay, in the garage, there are mysteries one is not allowed to see, but when they got into the garage the insides of the car are visible for all to see?

Oh, the visible insides of the car are nothing, that shit is more or less disposable. The car isn't the secret. How it's made, how it's programmed and operated, the millions of dollars worth of equipment and software and purpose-built tools for making the car go vroom vroom real fast? THAT is where the secrets are. And I'm sure that everyone in garage crews is CIA-trained for operational security, but if they're in there trying to work at that point there's probably some computer monitors with stuff on them, and tools out in the open.
posted by Lyn Never at 11:36 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

“How Red Bull is breaking Formula 1” [12:54]—Search Party, 07 March 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 1:00 PM on March 7

I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting!
The bit about eating in the private dining room, and how the ultra rich look and listen and are polite at the journalists with the effect of: train? lure? lull the journalists into thinking how nice it all is...
posted by winesong at 8:43 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

The article has an official home now in case no one has mentioned it yet.
posted by juv3nal at 10:48 PM on March 9 [6 favorites]