Hi, my name is Zoey and I’ve never had a blog before. Except I always find myself saying “I can write about this” or “I could write and essay about this” and finally decided, let’s do it!
Since this is my first blog I thought I should start with how I got into Formula 1. When I was younger my grandpa used to take me downtown to a city nearby once a year when nascar would have a showcase and their cars that season would drive through.
Ironically I never cared about racing at that stage I just knew M&M’s was on a car and I liked M&M’s.
Then once I was older, around my junior year in high school, all of a sudden my best friend starts telling me about these guys and how they race cars in a series called Formula 1. Again, I did not care one bit. I listened though because it was something she cared about.
She ended up continuously talking about this one driver and his best friend, how they lived together and supported each other no matter what. I never told her this but I hoped that would be us one day.
Skip to the summer after I graduated, she moved across the country and I never get to see her anymore. One day as she’s talking about it, I finally asked for a name and picture. She took it as time to send the whole grid and find my favorite.
The first photo and name I see is none other than Lando Norris, come to find out, that’s the driver she’s been talking about this entire time! Naturally, I decided that was going to be my favorite. Of course as I got more interested in the sport and learning more, it turned out I related to Lando more than I knew.
So, I went in two weeks from not knowing what racing really was to being at the closest track to me watching drag races in the middle of July. It was crazy, how could all of a sudden this thing I barely knew be so important to me?
Now, like many others I go through hyper fixations, they only last a few months and I was so worried racing was going to be just like that. Yet it never went away, as I kept learning and seeing the love for all things racing just kept getting bigger.
Then around the 2023 Singapore GP, I decided to make a tiktok, it didn’t perform well at all. Yet I didn’t care. I wanted to make more. I needed to make more. Starting college in the fall I changed my major to journalism. I decided if I’m doing this I’m going all the way in, and with social anxiety I’m challenging myself to see just how much I can do.
Even if i can’t get a job in motorsports in the future I’m thankful that it pushed me to do something I never thought I would. Meet people.
I’ve never been good at making friends, and half of my current friends life halfway across the country! The friends near me are either busy when I’m not or vice versa. I have always struggled with feeling alone in a room full of people because I never knew how to talk or relate to them so the friends I do have mean the world to me but sometimes I don’t know how to express it.
I’ve only met two people I can really call my friends through racing, but I’ve connected even slightly with many others. I’ve even gotten stronger with the friends I already had.
Racing brings people together in the most unlikely of places. Knowing there is millions of people who enjoy the same thing I do makes being alone a little less lonely.
Even though it’s just a sport, this is how Formula 1 changed my life.
How Formula 1 Changed My Life 