Fast cars, high fashion: Are F1 drivers the new style stars?

Lewis Hamilton swaggered into the F1 Paddock Club at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in a fiery red Rick Owens fit for the qualifying session on Dec 7, 2024. The next day, he was decked out in Dior, in another Ferrari-coded look for the final race of the 2024 season last December to the delight of tifosi everywhere. It was his final race with Mercedes – ending a 12-year stint with the team – and a not-so-subtle statement signalling his shock move to Ferrari in 2025.

That wasn’t the first time the seven-time world champion and undisputed style king of the paddock has made a statement with his fearless fashion choices.

From Murakami flowers, gold sequins and pearl necklaces to fresh-off-the-runway looks and custom fits from the likes of Louis Vuitton, Prada and more, Hamilton isn’t one to shy away from experimenting with bold statement pieces.

Sometimes they work, and sometimes the offbeat fits prompt folks, like a former men’s fashion magazine editor friend I happened to broach the topic of Hamilton’s fashionverse with once, to scrunch up their faces in disapproval.

Style is subjective, after all, and the versatility Hamilton flexes with his threads is as eclectic as his New York-based stylist Eric McNeal’s client list, which runs the gamut from Charli XCX and Zayn Malik to Erykah Badu.

All that sartorial risk-taking over the years certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed by fashion’s reigning queen, Anna Wintour, either. Last year, Vogue’s empress supreme named Hamilton co-chair of the upcoming 2025 Met Gala alongside Pharrell Williams, A$AP Rocky and Colman Domingo for the theme, Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, thus cementing the race driver’s influence far beyond the track.

WHEN SPEED AND STYLE INTERSECT

To be sure, Hamilton isn’t the only F1 driver turning heads with their dapper ensembles on today’s grid. In contrast to Hamilton’s often baggy, oversized fits, former Mercedes teammate George Russell opts for a classic British preppy aesthetic with straight-leg chinos and polos or button-downs even when not garbed in former team sponsor Tommy Hilfiger (newly replaced by adidas as official team partner for the coming 2025 season). There’s even a video of the duo on Instagram swapping styles and picking out outfits for each other for laughs.

Driver image has come so sharply into focus so much so that after news broke that Hamilton would be leaving for Ferrari last year, Mercedes posted a job ad for a newly-created position: “Marketing operations driver clothing executive”. Responsibilities include dressing Russell as well as incoming rookie driver and new teammate Kimi Antonelli, and managing their outfits for official team appearances on and off the track in 2025.

What’s driving the growing investment in crafting driver image and F1’s sartorial ascent?

Well, what began as a side hobby of (mostly European) billionaires almost eight decades ago has evolved into the world’s most glamorous sport ever since the first race of the inaugural Formula One world championship series was held at the legendary Silverstone circuit in England in 1950.

But it was Liberty Media’s acquisition of the Formula One business in 2017 that catapulted the 75-year-old brand into global mainstream consciousness.

The US-based media giant, which has stakes in Xirius XM and Live Nation Entertainment among other major media assets, promptly debuted the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive in 2019, chronicling all the behind-the-scenes drama of the preceding 2018 championship season – and fanning excitement and anticipation ahead of the next race season.

The award-winning docudrama was a stroke of genius that offered viewers a rare peek of what went down not just on the racetrack but in the team garages of the motorsport series that had yet to crack the American market.

Trailing all 10 teams to every stop on the race calendar around the world, the hit series unmasked the key protagonists of the sport, showcasing the drivers’ and team bosses’ personalities and offering a glimpse into their personal lives like never before. The antics of the antagonists became water cooler fodder while some, like Mercedes team principal and Austrian billionaire Toto Wolff, unwittingly earned himself ‘zaddy’ status.

The show single-handedly lifted the veil on the once-ultra exclusive sport and six seasons in, it has garnered F1 a new fanbase of millions beyond motorsports enthusiasts.

Two new Grand Prixes on US soil were also added to the race calendar, which further steered the cultural zeitgeist from fast and furious to fashionable and fabulous.

In Las Vegas and Miami, the races take on a life of their own, bringing out a galaxy’s worth of star power like nowhere else on the planet.

At the second race since F1 returned to Sin City under the new Liberty era, Paris Hilton slayed in a skin-tight red latex race suit last year. In Miami, Blackpink’s Lisa married racetrack with runway in a motorcore ensemble – a micro mini skirt paired with a cropped moto jacket in washed leather from Acne Studios – accentuated with a killer accessory: Boyy's helmet bag that was cheekily on-brand for the occasion.

FUELLING THE MOTORCORE PHENOMENON

Now with all that celeb drip on the track and with F1’s popularity at an all-time high, the heat is on for the drivers to amp-up their highly photographed paddock walk-in looks before changing into their team kits.

Both drivers and their teams are no doubt recognising the media value of that strut down the paddock alone which, let’s be real, is now F1’s low-key runway. So has luxury behemoth LVMH, which last year inked a 10-year-mega-deal with the F1 franchise starting in 2025.

Drivers are now paying more attention to how they show up, cognisant of the groundswell of media attention and how the tactical deployment of fashion can stand them apart from other drivers like reigning four-time world champion Max Verstappen who simply rock up in a standard-issue team polo.

The fashion-forward among today’s F1 driver squad are fast becoming globally-recognised celebrity A-listers worthy of a front row seat next to Zendaya at a Valentino show.

We’re talking about Hamilton, of course. But other F1 stars increasingly spotted on the front row of fashion’s hottest tickets include Alpine’s Pierre Gasly, who attended several shows during last year’s Paris Fashion Week with girlfriend Kika Cerqueira Gomes. The French driver and budding style icon is also known to serve up looks at Roland-Garros, home of the French Open, and the Cannes Film Festival.

More and more, drivers are recognising the power and potential of parlaying their personal branding into glamorous fashion campaigns – and even launching their own fashion labels.

Leading the pack is Hamilton with capsule collections designed in collaboration with the likes of Dior and Tommy Hilfiger, in addition to his own streetwear label, +44 (his race number), launched in 2021.

Williams’ Alex Albon launched his footwear brand, Alex Albon Athletics, during the Singapore Grand Prix in 2023. And even Fernando Alonso’s publicist has gotten the memo. The veteran Aston Martin driver, not typically known to court media attention with his sense of style (or lack thereof) showed us that he, too, can clean up well as a BOSS brand ambassador fronting the first-ever BOSS x Aston Martin capsule collection, which debuted last year.

Rising star Lando Norris, who raced McLaren all the way to the Constructors’ Championship – the team’s first in 26 years – last year, has also capitalised on his F1 fame with his own youth-oriented apparel brand, Quadrant. Often seen clothed in Aimé Leon Dore and Filippa K, the Brit driver is also the star of Ralph Lauren Fragrances’ latest Polo Red campaign.

Speaking of red, we’d be remiss to not mention Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc whose dashing good looks have snagged him brand ambassadorships with Giorgio Armani and APM Monaco, to name a few.

Plans for his own line of eco-friendly apparel under the brand CLACE announced in 2019 unfortunately never took off, but Ferrari savvily slid right into that slipstream with Ferrari Style that showed its first ready-to-wear collection at Milan Fashion Week in 2021.

COUTURE CULTURE

Designed by creative director Rocco Iannone (Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani), Ferrari Style couture is more than team merch stamped with a Prancing Horse; it’s high fashion, folks. Think parkas, bomber jackets and baggy pants that incorporate the use of leather, rubber and reflective tape in tribute to Ferrari’s motor heritage. It’s looks-worthy, luxurious and legit.

Taking a cue from Ferrari’s success off the grid, other carmakers have followed suit and teamed up with luxury fashion houses to drop unlikely collabs we didn’t know we needed.

Last November, Bentley released The Open Road Collection, a seven-piece capsule collection with Picante. The ultra exclusive, highly limited series includes a Glenmerino lambswool knit sweater and a brown leather bomber jacket featuring an inner lining that echoes Bentley’s iconic diamond-in-diamond quilt pattern signature with a numbered plaque on leather patch. One of 20 of these gorgeous, meticulously crafted bombers? Yes, please.

The British streetwear brand may seem a curious choice for Bentley to get in bed with, but it offers a compelling clue as to why the upscale carmaker with such upper crust heritage is looking to pilfer some street cred in the current economy.

Cue Porsche’s super-hot collab with Aimé Leon Dore, which dropped exactly a week later. With its extensive range of motorcore apparel and accessories (leather jackets, driving gloves, leather duffles) unabashedly emblazoned with the Porsche crest, the Aimé Leon Dore/Porsche 993 Turbo Capsule Collection artfully appropriates the bold design language and much of the sex appeal which the Brooklyn-based brand also brought to its custom Mulberry Green 993 Turbo car project with Porsche.

As the convergence of speed and style continues to ignite such exciting collabs on and off the track, drivers will find flaunting their fashion persuasion advantageous particularly for those further down the grid like RB’s Yuki Tsunoda and Kick Sauber’s Zhou Guanyu – the only two Asian drivers who routinely keep themselves in the conversation with chic fits despite not being frontrunners contending for championship points. In fact, scoring style points has even scored Zhou, the first-ever Chinese driver in F1, a Dior ambassadorship in his home country of China.

Now as the influx of rookie drivers prepare to make their debut on the 2025 grid (Jack Doohan, Isack Hadjar, Gabriel Bortoleto, etc) when the new season kicks off in March, they may also find tapping into this fashion-forward phenomenon a favourable strategy to quickly make a name for themselves. After all, the world is watching. Especially the luxury fashion brands.