Cupra Kiro Formula E team commercial director Jon Wilde reports from a massive event at Le Mans that he reckons mainstream motorsport needs to learn from:
Last weekend featured the third running of GP Explorer, held on the Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans.
It's the brainchild of French content creator Squeezie and merges the worlds of web culture and social media influence with motorsport. It creates an event the scale of which most traditional race promoters can only dream of.
The competition brings together 22 predominantly French, male and female content creators, with - new for this year - additional teams from Spain and the United States, to compete in Formula 4 machinery throughout a full race weekend
Tickets for the event, capped at 200,000 (yes, 200,000) sold out in just 30 minutes. Outside of Formula 1, the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Indianapolis 500 a paying race attendance of that level is almost unheard of. A single day ticket costs €80 and increases to €200 for a weekend pass.
From a sponsor perspective, these fans are also a marketer's dream. The age range is late teens to early twenties, with a fairly even gender split, and disposable income that is evidenced through the never-ending queues around the merchandise and activation stands.
Marketeers have well and truly jumped on the GP Explorer train, with brands including Netflix, Subway, Samsung, Durex, Cupra, Lego, NordVPN and many more sponsoring teams. The level of activation in the fan village, with bespoke GP Explorer campaigns, is concentrated and engaging, recognising the value of a large scale and captive audience.
In addition to the attendance, the event was streamed live across participant Twitch Streams, on the GP Explorer Twitch channel, and for the first time, on national French TV channels. The combined live audience figures are expected to exceed 50million, with the previous edition also generating more than 500million impressions across social media.
Walking around the circuit on Saturday, I found myself in something approaching a state of shock. Having worked in motorsport for a decade I have not witnessed this level of enthusiasm, and almost tribal like fandom around a race event where the stars of the show are not traditional motorsport professionals.
So, what makes GP Explorer so successful, and if the numbers are so big why haven't we heard about it?
Conversations with colleagues over the weekend suggested it's largely because social media feeds are dominated by English content.
As a French speaking event, with mainly French creators, and French/European fans attending, GP Explorer has largely gone unnoticed by the British motorsport ecosystem. In fact, for me, this is actually a key to the success of the event.
GP Explorer is not trying to cater for everyone, it's not creating a product with global appeal. The event is focused on delivering something special for the core audience of its participants.
It recognises its heroes are not the cars. The fans have not come to see the pinnacle of automotive technology, nor have they come to watch a race based on energy management or flexible rear wings.
The cars are quite literally just a vehicle for fans to see their icons in a unique environment, to celebrate and share the moment of getting close to modern day stars.
F4 machinery running around the Le Mans circuit may look out of place for the traditional motorsport fan, but for this event it was entirely irrelevant because of the people in the cockpit. The on-track action was as much about pure entertainment and personal and corporate brand recognition as it was a competition.
What can the motorsport industry learn from this new way of looking at motorsport events?
Billed as ‘The Last Race', the third edition of GP Explorer was officially the final instalment. Given its success, it's hard to imagine that really being the case.
I wouldn't be surprised to see the blueprint spin off into new markets in the near future and the model to continue, perhaps to a stadium style event, something that Formula E has tried for its regular races with both success (Mexico City, London ExCeL) and failure (Seoul).
For the motorsport world, to ignore the success of GP Explorer would be short-sighted. What Squeezie and his team have achieved in three years is incredible, they have redefined what a successful racing event can look like, and the time that should be allowed to achieve it.
They've succeeded through focusing on heroes, building a simple and compelling racing product, and engaging an audience that is new to motorsport.
In my view we, as in the traditional motorsport landscape, would do well to sit up and listen.
The Race says
Sam Smith
It's motorsport but not as we know it!
Jon Wilde's despatch from Le Mans and last weekend's third edition of GP Explorer really opens the eyes to what events in our sport might look like in the future.
World championship motorsport comes in all shapes and sizes. From most fans' fix F1 to the new-world outlook of Formula E, and the more traditional World Endurance Championship and World Rally Championship.
But outside of those boxes are new innovations such as the GP Explorer phenomenon which has tapped into a culture synonymous with youth and to an extent tribal affiliations with the cult of personality.
With the advancement of AI and the pure pace of technology used for social, recreational and business means, it is not hard to envisage a near-future combining youth and web culture much, much more.
The level of corporate take-up in such a new initiative as GP Explorer is astounding. Formula E hasn't attracted those levels of names in a decade of trying. Then again despite its proclamations to be the great new motorsport disruptor, it actually feels reasonably conservative up against GP Explorer.
This is highlighted by the similar event that Formula E held in Miami in March. It didn't have 200,000 people there because it was essentially behind closed doors by design. It did have some key influencers though and on a certain level it worked just fine, although its legacy feels very much like a one-off curio that will always be remembered for MrBeast's infamous shunt.
But Formula E would do well to look at the GP Explorer event closely and maybe even call up Squeezie to see if he'd fancy a collaboration.
The world's only all-electric world championship feels as though it needs to think differently if it is to genuinely breakthrough to bigger audiences, something which despite its sensationally optimistic engagement figures, it is really yet to do.
