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Mental Health in Formula One

  • Rami
  • Apr 10, 2021
  • 8 min read

Formula One is a high paced career. The popularity on social media, the constant pressure to perform and no job security means that the mental health of the 20 drivers should be taken care of just as much as their physical health.

TRIGGER WARNING: this blog talks about mental health and mentions of car crashes. Please read at your own discretion.

At the bottom of the blog, there will be links to websites for charities or to educate yourself on this topic some more. Please do check them out.

Formula One is a setting in which you have to be at your peak physicality at all times, however, is mental health an equal priority in this career field? Recently, this question has been plaguing my mind, especially since I first saw McLaren's helmets for the Eifel Grand Prix - in which both Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris wore hand-decorated helmets inspired by the charity organisation Mind. After I saw this, I began to wonder if drivers receive the mental health support they may require from their career - that is, without them having to go out of their way to get support - especially in a career such as theirs. I currently study psychology at Durham University and I am hoping to go on to either specialise in mental health or sport psychology - and in both of these careers this specific field of thought is one that comes naturally to me. Therefore, this blog will explore why I think it is necessary for drivers to have mental health support available to them and some specific examples of why I think this. I hope you enjoy and please do let me know what you think!


Firstly, now more than ever, all aspects of drivers lives are visible. Not only do the majority of them feature on both Twitter and Instagram, but there have been a rise in fan accounts that follow every move that these drivers take - and it's starting to worry some fans. With the rise of social media, a lot of drivers gain an obscene amount of followers very quickly, but with the love comes the hate. This means that along with the pressure to do well during the race, the drivers have to be on guard at all times to please their fans, or be met with a barrage of hate comments. However, even seemingly unproblematic drivers are receiving hate comments and DMs for just existing or doing their work.

Recently, a name that has been on many's lips has been Lando Norris. Usually a fan favourite driver, has gone on to create a very successful brand that includes video content on youtube, a massive discord server and a clothing brand (yes, I'm talking about Quadrant). With this, he also streams on Twitch during downtime in the F1 season. A few weeks ago, Lando began to get a lot of hate associated with him due to him referring to a woman as 'it' whilst live, even after his friends told him to drop the subject (I can't go into too much detail about this incident as I wasn't on the stream and haven't watched it, I'm speaking about the clips I saw on twitter about what he said). This lead to an increase in hate, particularly on twitter, especially due to recent events including how unsafe and unequal women are in todays society. However, some of the things said about Lando were not educating him or calling him out, and was just people wishing him ill-will and sometimes even death threats. Whilst I do agree that calling out the people you support for problematic behaviour is a necessity in this day and age, you need to try to help educate them, not wish them dead. This is why some people get scared to learn or have opinions. For this reason, especially with Lando being young, I think it is important for him to have access to people who can help educate him on the topic but also support him in the disgusting comments he receives and how to handle the hate. These hate comments can cause many disorders including social anxiety which could lead to deactivation and Lando feeling completely alone - and I think that drivers deserve support and help when constantly being watched over by hundreds of thousands of fans who are waiting to pick up on their wrong move. And no, this is not me saying what Lando said is okay, because misogyny of any type is not okay, this is me saying he needs to educate himself and grow from this experience.


Lando also recently spoke out about how harsh he is on himself, especially after not performing well in a race and the article for me at least, was quite hard to read. To me, he is a talented driver and he is always improving, but to hear that he just disregards how well he performed if he does worse than expected is just so sad to hear. This just completely convinced me that psychologists should be available to drivers because it is a very common trend for drivers to believe they failed their team when they don't perform to expectation, when in reality there are factors that they cannot control that contribute to their performance. They deserve to be supported with their wellbeing being the most important thing. And before people come for me, yes I know they are drivers and they will always strive to do their best and will get sad if they don't but with the rise of social media, drivers know they will be judged by their fans if they don't perform and just think about how detrimental that would be to read constantly. They are human, like us, and will have days that they just aren't at their peak and for that reason, they deserve the support they need to make sure they can feel good - especially due to the fact they have literally zero job security and are driving for a win as well as their seat in the future.

Whilst I advocate for these men to be able to be supported in their mental battles, I know there is such a strong stigma surrounding it for men especially. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death for men under the age of 24 - which a lot of the drivers on the grid are, yet they are often criticised for not being 'man enough' when they speak out about the topic. In reality, it is a strong thing to be able to outwardly talk about your inner battles and I think the toxic masculinity that prevents men from speaking out should be addressed and eradicated. One man who has spoken about this battle has been Romain Grosjean. In 2012, it was reported that he had seen a sports psychologist to help him develop and better himself as a driver. When I was first introduced to the sport I was actively told by the person who got me into ti that 'Romain always crashes, he's not a good driver', and whilst he has been in many collisions, I do not believe that he is a bad driver (why else would he be in F1?) and I think that these comments towards him are particularly harsh. It also has a lot to do with the car he was in and how he struggled to control it a lot of the time. Grosjean has since commented that his time seeing a psychologist has maximised his career performance and that it turned his life around.


After the shocking events of the Bahrain Grand Prix 2020, Grosjean also actively told news sources that he would be seeing a psychologist as he feels bad for 'making people suffer'. Grosjean is no stranger to speaking about his support and in doing so, in my opinion, has allowed people who are a fan of the sport to be aware of the hardships that he faces and how he is constantly trying to better himself. Grosjean went into particular detail in the interview about how it was worse that he made his family suffer for nearly three minutes as they did not know whether he was alive after his crash, and that pressure (as I'm sure you can imagine) is immeasurable and I'm glad he was able to open up about it in an attempt to better himself and his mindset.

I also want to talk about Pierre Gasly. He recently released an article describing his life after the loss of one of his best friends, Antoine Hubert. The article was pretty hard-hitting and hard to read, as he really does a deep dive on his emotions and how he struggled to concentrate after finding out that his best friend had been in a fatal crash. It really opened my eyes as to how drivers are just people, they feel the same emotions as us and therefore should be treated as the same. It is very similar with when he lost his RedBull seat to Alex Albon halfway through the same year. He was being pushed through hardship and struggle after another, and the weight of all of that could not have been an easy one. This is exactly why, in my opinion, it should be the norm for people in high-paced careers such as this to have access to the right support to aid them in times as Pierre went through. He got a demotion and lost his friend in fast succession and not only would most others suffer heavily through that, but it would affect your mental health badly, but Pierre got back in the car the next week and drove. That is intense. I know that I do not know how he felt and of course, I am just going off of what I'm assuming most people would feel, but after what he went through, he deserves to know that he has got adequate support, should he need it. Also, I know that I also do not know whether Pierre did go seek professional support, again, I am just a student sharing her opinion on the subject, nothing in my article is law.

There are so many other people, events and topics I could associate with this blog post but I do really want to finish with Charles Leclerc. He came into the sport with a legacy. His father and godfather were racers and he had a lot to look up to, especially with Jules Bianchi being a very big name in motorsport. Due to this, Charles made Ferrari his goal, and after one year in F1, he made it up to Ferrari from Alfa Romeo - living up to the expectations that he is a World Drivers Champion contender. However, to most people, the pressure of having his family expectations and those who knew/were fans of his father and godfather are going to have high expectations for him, which can be very intimidating. Although Charles seems to handle the pressure well, he definitely deserves to have somebody there to ensure that pressure ever did get 'too much' he would be able to seek aid for that.

I would like to reiterate that I am no professional on the topic of mental health, I simply study it (to an extent) at university and use my own experiences to inform myself. I do outward research and read articles, journals and papers on it too, as I do want to be able to form a knowledgeable opinion that is somewhat reliable. With that being said, I do hope that drivers (AND CREW) have access to see professionals due to their fast-paced career.


I also am not saying that they will struggle more than the average person, just that due to their lifestyle (bearing in mind they are away from home for a lot of the year, and some of the drivers have significant others and children they care for) and career, the team they work for should supply someone who is qualified to give the drivers the aid they deserve to better their minds and performance.

Thank you so much for reading, this one took me a long time to get out, I know, but the blog did decide to delete itself and I couldn't bring myself to actually get back onto the website and write again - but alas, it is up now. I really hope that this one interested you and opened your eyes to the struggles that the drivers face that is not just when they drive. This is something thats really close to my heart and something I study and love to learn about and educate others on, so please do let me know what you thought. Thank you once again for reading and as always, please feel free to give me suggestions of what you would like me to write about!!!

- Rami xxx

LINKS

Mind - a charity for mental health: https://www.mind.org.uk/ Samaritans - https://www.samaritans.org/

 
 
 

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