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A #socialist writer skewered the #FormulaOne scene. Then her article vanished.
Writer #KateWagner may have seemed like an odd choice to cover the luxury world of FormulaOne.
…FormulaOne races…have become pit stops on the jet-set circuit, where the cheapest general-admission tickets start around $500. Still, #RoadAndTrack mag commissioned Wagner to cover a FormulaOne race in Austin last fall, sending her on a trip funded by British petrochemicals co INEOS.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/03/05/formula-one-road-track-kate-wagner/
Her resulting 5k-word story has drawn praise since it was published Fri, largely bc of the unlikely pairing of writer & subject. “Even better than what you’re imagining,” the conservative website the Bulwark gushed. Fmr CNN host Brian Stelter heralded it as “a joy to read.” While #KateWagner wrote appreciatively about the sport’s aesthetics & superstar driver Lewis Hamilton’s “aura,” she also dissected the #FormulaOne crowd of “tech bros” & “Ozempic-riddled influencers” that surrounds the sport.
“People clinked glasses of free champagne in outfits worth more than the market price of all the organs in my body,” she #KateWagner.
Anyone who wants to read it, though, won’t be reading it on #RoadAndTrack’s website. Roughly an hour after it was published, “Behind #F1’s Velvet Curtain” vanished w/o an explanation.
In its absence, admirers have resorted to sharing an archived version that seems to have gone viral in #media circles — many noting… that it had been “mysteriously removed.”
It’s almost unheard of for a news outlet to retract an article w/o explanation, especially a story of this size whose accuracy has not been publicly challenged. Neither #KateWagner nor #RoadAndTrack responded to requests for comment.
A person familiar w/editorial deliberations at Road & Track said the story, which had been in the works for months, was pulled after its #publication at the order of Editor in Chief #DanielPund on the grounds that it didn’t fit w/the site’s editorial goals.
…It’s possible that #KateWagner’s piece ruffled more feathers in the #AutomotiveIndustry than the typical Road & Track story. …Wagner’s is the kind of grand, impolite story that is increasingly rare in the struggling #magazine industry, where surviving outlets depend on not offending the #advertisers or #celebrities they feature.
#F1 #money #power #censorship
https://web.archive.org/web/20240301170542/https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a46975496/behind-f1-velvet-curtain/
The author [#KateWagner] criticized the general state of #FormulaOne, arguing that it has grown boring amid the dominance of Red Bull Racing star Max Verstappen. Wagner also mocked her hosts at #INEOS, describing its invitation to her as a bid to gain positive #publicity & #whitewash the company’s image.
“The #petrochemical companies, deeply #powerful institutions, need #journalists to write about all the things they attach themselves to that are not being a petrochemical company,”she wrote.
#F1
Well, she's not wrong. F1 has become incredibly boring. One guy starts from the front and drives around the track for a hour gaining about one second per lap over the field. Then they pack up the circus and fly everything to another location somewhere in the world and do it all over again.
@Nonilex first good article I’ve read in a “magazine” for years.
@Nonilex I would edit your post to include this mirror in case Hearst (Road & Track's parent) demands archive.org to take it down. https://archive.is/u3csL