Feature
‘As a fan, I never saw women’ – Communications Manager Katie McGuinness on delivering F1 ACADEMY’s message for change
When a series is just getting off the ground, how do you go about telling its story to the world? That’s precisely what F1 ACADEMY’s Communications Manager Katie McGuinness has set out to do.
In the latest addition of our Pathways Into Motorsport series, McGuinness delves into the nuances of her role and how communicating the work F1 ACADEMY is doing to champion women in the industry will help encourage a new generation of young girls to pursue their dream careers in motorsport.
“My job as a Communications Manager is to devise and then deliver the communication strategy for F1 ACADEMY,” explains McGuinness. “That essentially means deciding what we want to tell our audience and how we want to tell them all about our mission, our objectives and what we stand for as a series.
“My day-to-day varies quite a lot depending on whether I'm at the track or whether I'm away from the track. At the track, it means looking after all of the media activity that happens across the weekend. So that could be anything from events to driver interviews, partner activations, making sure that our drivers are where they need to be and on time, which is the most important thing.
“It also involves being the media delegate for the series, so that comes with its own set of responsibilities and is a more official role. That essentially just means that I need to make sure that all of the drivers fulfil their media requirements, like going to the media pen. So you might see me a lot standing around the media pen, but that's actually quite a small part of my role.
“Away from the track, it is working on the strategy for what we want to tell our audience and how we want to tell them. It might be drafting press releases, updating our senior stakeholders on timelines for when we can or can't announce something, developing relationships with the media — it's a really wide-ranging role.”
Having previously worked as a press officer and later Communications Manager for the Formula 2 and Formula 3 Championships, McGuinness has an in-depth understanding of the effort needed to pull together a cohesive media plan across a Grand Prix weekend.
Whether its preparing for announcements weeks ahead, coordinating with teams and stakeholders or adapting to last-minute requests that commonly pop up, she stressed the importance of being able to balance multiple competing priorities at any given time.
“Before I was the Communications Manager for F1 ACADEMY, I was the Communications Manager for F2 and F3, which are F1's other support categories,” says McGuinness. “That role really helped prepare me for this role. It taught me a lot about how the feeder series work, it introduced me to all of the incredible teams that we work with now in F1 ACADEMY and it really immersed me into the world of F1.
“Before that, I was working at PR agencies for about six or seven years, and that was also really valuable experience because working at an agency means you're working on five, six, seven or eight clients. You have to be able to have really good time management skills, you have to learn to juggle things and you have to be able to switch your brain between things very quickly, which is also a skill that you very much need to work in motorsport.”
In executing the series’ media strategy, McGuinness has played a leading role in expanding F1 ACADEMY’s coverage across a global audience through both traditional motorsport media and wider publications.
This year alone has seen the series reach new heights for a junior category and connect with more young girls and women than ever before — with coverage in the likes of Vogue, the Financial Times, The Athletic and Forbes.
“I think one of my favourite parts of this role is actually getting to see a piece of coverage go from an initial pitch all the way to being printed or published online,” she notes. “Recently, we worked with our partner Charlotte Tilbury to deliver a front cover for the Financial Times’ How To Spend It magazine.
“Going from an initial conversation about maybe inviting a journalist, all the way to a physical print cover was such a rewarding experience. That's probably the moments where you see your job kind of really come to life.”
Drawing inspiration from the women around her, she cites Stephanie Carlin, F1 Business Operations Director at McLaren Racing and former Team Principal for Rodin Carlin in F1 ACADEMY, as a role model and hopes that the series’ efforts will change the perception and shine a light on the presence of women in the sport.
“Someone that I really look up to and who's been a great mentor for me is Stephanie Carlin,” she says. “She has had an incredible career in this sport. She joined in a junior communications role, so hence why she's been a role model of mine for a while, and she's worked her way up to be a really senior figure at McLaren Racing now.
McGuinness adds: “If a young girl wanted to work in motorsport comms, I would say focus on the subjects that might help you to get here. English is a great one, you have to have a really good grasp of language, so studying something like English language would be certainly really helpful. Take every opportunity you can because if it's there, if the door is open, then you’re ready for it.
“As a fan, I never saw women. You didn't see them represented. I really hope that in five years’ time when you turn on a TV, a little girl will look and see an engineer who's a woman and see a mechanic who's a woman. The strategies we're putting in place, the initiatives and programmes we're introducing will all help with that swell of change that's coming.”