Rec | BEHIND F1’S VELVET CURTAIN BY KATE WAGNER

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Rec'd on 📚 3/4: What did you read last week?

behind f1’s velvet curtain by kate wagner

“The kind of money I saw will haunt me forever.” Kate Wagner can’t drive and doesn’t own a car. She rides her bike to work and mostly writes about cycling (and about the elite’s void of taste as it pertains to architecture and interior design on her blog McMansion Hell, of which I am a long time reader) and describes herself as a card-carrying socialist. This is who Road & Track Magazine sent on a press trip to cover the Formula 1 US Grand Prix in Austin, Texas. The result is hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking, and was deleted from the R&T site almost immediately after it was published. The way that Wagner describes seeing the inside of an F1 racer - the awe, the wonder, the reverence, the mystery - made me feel crazy inside and almost made me cry. Also her ruminations and observations about the state of journalism really stuck with me. I’ll never stop thinking about this piece! “Send me on an experience and I'll have an experience. Sadly, I suffer from an unprofitable disease that makes me only ever capable of writing about the experience I'm having. The doctors say it's terminal.”

@emilyhadorn

Mar 6, 2024

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@janazen

yes!! archive link, since it's been deleted: https://archive.is/u3csL

Mar 6, 2024

@brendog

Loved this piece! I was surprised R&T ran it in the first place given the high risk of upsetting mercedes, ineos, and others

Mar 6, 2024

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