Hi! Love your blog and I feel like I’ve learned a lot more about the sport and drivers!
In your opinion, which driver has the most effective PR and/or communication style? Effective can be determined many different ways but however you want to interpret it, I’d be interested to hear.
P.s sorry if you’ve already answered a similar question! If so, please ignore
Thank you so much for your kind words!! And for the fun ask!!
There's obvious examples of drivers like LH who has obviously built a brand larger than life, or Charles, who's extremely popular, so it's effective, but I think with them it's very obvious that they're good at pr, if that makes sense? Their reputations are built on that understanding. Yet, they've built images in a way where many think that what they see is who these people are rather than a carefully constructed idea of authenticity.
Though, as I said, with them you expect the pr. Overall, and I'm of course biased, I think Max is up there in best pr. Why? Because most people don't realise how good his pr is. Look, he's not the most popular driver, but as I've mentioned before in similar asks, he's never needed that popularity the same way as he become very successful very quickly. But because of his personality, if you like him, you like him. Of course he has fans that only like him when he's winning, but all in all fanbase is loyal to him, and being now the face of f1 gets him recognition and a status others don't have.
Max also comes from a certain background, which has meant that his success in the sport didn't depend on how noticed and liked he was by sponsors. With Max, you would always bet on success backed by both talent and the opportunities.
In a way it also helps, I think, that Max comes from a smaller country with less competition in terms of celebrities or even athletes as compared to, say, the UK. There's plenty of very successful Dutch athletes, but few get the recognition Max has, and few compete in sports as globally popular as f1, so he by default has sort of become his nation's ambassador. And I think he's done well with this responsibility and privilege.
So Max has always gotten away with more or less being himself. Which is also not to say that he doesn't have a public and private persona, but pretty much anyone you talk to will confirm that Max is essentially the same you see as a stranger, and the "just a guy" isn't just a front he puts up to be perceived as such. But as discussed before, you don't become as successful as he is without knowing how to play the game – and he does. Max really is just that blunt, but he also knows how to weaponise that. How often do people underestimate him because they don't realise the bluntness is as much of his personality as it is his strategy? I also think people massively underestimate just how savvy Max is when it comes to contracts and business overall. People so often assume he's just about the racing, and doesn't care about anything else, but again, you don't get to the top – and stay there for this long – if you haven't mastered the rules.
Just look at how he's interacting with the press. He knows how to deal with the media on his terms. People want headlines, he knows this, so he makes sure they don't get these headlines – or they get them on his terms. Equally, back in early 2024 he's publicly dealt with the CH affair much better than so many other drivers. He's been in the spotlight for so long – longer than most drivers – and yet there's no scandals, few ripples here and there, most of which happened when he was younger.
Him and his team are running a tight ship when it comes to his image, even if they sometimes choose odd paths to pursue. As discussed prior in my essay published in 2024 (it's somewhere in the tags) on Max's image, I think his team struggled a little in finding their footing for a while, but it feels like that's settled more now, both as he's grown even more distant from social media and as he's become even more private with being a father now. They did the smart thing and let his success speak for him, and stopped pushing a narrative that didn't make sense. It also helps that over the last couple of years, people have started to like Max much precisely for his success, the personality he's showing, and the fact that Max as a champion is much more interesting than whatever is happening in f1 now, and even last year.
So I guess I'll simpy end this with linking another piece on Max I wrote that's very dear to me personally, and which also sort of shows who he is and how people perceive him now.
