01 — Sidelines to Grid
Sidelines to Grid
A season-long companion that teaches new Formula 1 fans the sport as it happens.
The opening screen and the daily home, captured from the working prototype.
Role
Concept, design and prototype
Type
Self-initiated
Platform
Mobile · 390 × 844 · 9 screens
Year
2026
02 — The problem
A sport growing faster than it can explain itself
827m
global fanbase in 2025 — up 12% in a year
43%
of the fanbase is under 35
1.1m
average US race audience, 2023
2026
the year the FIA simplified its own terminology
Formula 1’s fanbase reached 827 million in 2025, up 12% in a year and 63% on 2018. Forty-three per cent of it is under 35, and 57% of every new fan added that year came from that group. F1’s own Global Fan Survey, across 186 countries, found that content is now the primary entry point — fans arrive attached to a driver or a storyline rather than to an understanding of the sport.
The gap shows in the numbers. Twenty-eight per cent of US adults call themselves F1 fans, more than half crediting Drive to Survive — yet US race broadcasts averaged 1.1 million viewers in 2023. Even the FIA has conceded the language problem, renaming its 2026 technical terms after finding them too complex for fans to follow.
Sources: Formula 1 2025 season review · F1 Global Fan Survey 2025 · Morning Consult · Nielsen · FIA, 2026 technical regulations.
03 — Principles
Three rules the product had to obey
01
Progressive disclosure
The season is the curriculum. One idea per race, released the week it becomes relevant — so the sport teaches itself in the order it actually happens.
02
A companion, not a coach
Answer what was asked, then stop. No quizzes, no scores, no correction. The personality is restraint.
03
Editorial calm
Serif headlines, a near-black canvas, one red. Something you would read on a Sunday morning, not something competing for your attention.
04 — Structure
Three loops
A daily loop, a race loop and a season loop. The navigation follows those rhythms rather than the content types — Today for the daily one, Season for the long one, and Ask always one tap away, because a question during a race cannot wait for you to find the right screen.
Following is an overlay rather than a tab, entered wherever the thought occurs.
Five surfaces, two of them reached from inside another.
The information architecture: onboarding gates a five-tab shell, with the race-day explainers living inside Ask.
05 — Structure before surface
What each screen has to do
Today is a priority stack, not a feed. Time first — the countdown is the only live thing on the screen — then the two things a new fan needs next: a way to ask, and a way to make it personal. There is no infinite scroll. The screen ends.
Ask is a reading column. The answer and its diagram are one block, so they arrive as one explanation rather than two responses. Suggestion chips sit below the thread, so the screen offers what it can show you before asking you to type.
Onboarding — Three steps, and the first asks for nothing.
Season — A spine of 24 nodes. Progress is a shape, not a percentage.
Following — Pick, then immediately see the consequence.
The explainer, in one unit
Every answer that can be a timeline, is one. The bubble carries the words, the card carries the shape of the thing — an axis, a window, a marker for where the race is now — and a plain-language line closes it. Binding the two means a beginner never has to work out which part of the reply the diagram belongs to.
06 — Visual system
Editorial, not sporting
The category look is bright, dense and loud — saturated team colours, badges, streaks, progress bars that fill with confetti. For an audience whose real problem is quiet embarrassment at not knowing, that is the wrong register. So the system borrows from print instead.
No photography anywhere in the product — type, rule and light on dark.
Type
Instrument Serif
Headlines, and the numbers you read as story — podium positions, race numbers, championship points.
Inter
Body and interface.
JetBrains Mono
The numbers you read as instruments — countdowns, lap markers, gap times, dates.
Colour
Ground
#0A0A0B
Canvas
#0E0E10
Accent
#E10600
Caution
#FFD700
McLaren
#FF8000
Ferrari
#E10600
Red Bull
#1E3A8A
Mercedes
#00D2BE
Patterns
The recurring blocks: the countdown card, an editorial brief card, the rivalry comparison, and the companion answer bound to its explainer.
07 — The product
Four flows
Race day
Four questions a new fan asks during a race, each answered with a short paragraph and a diagram that animates from a starting state — cars spreading then bunching, a stint bar filling, two lanes diverging at the pit box. All four concepts are about change over time, and a static diagram throws away the part a beginner is missing.
The four race-day explainers: the pit window, the undercut, the safety car, and tyre life.
The season
Twenty-four cells, one per race. White behind you, red where you are. No percentage, no XP, no streak — progress you read in a glance rather than a number you are scored against. The retention mechanics stay quiet: lessons unlock the Thursday before each race, a primer arrives before the circuits that need one, and the notification itself carries a tone control that reads Keep reminders gentle.
Progress as a shape, and the one notification that offers to be quieter.
Following
Choose a team and a driver, and the same scroll pays it back: a brief tinted to the team’s colour, the title fight as two serif numbers either side of one split bar, a six-round form arc read out in plain words rather than left as a chart to decode. Rivalry and storyline are the frames this audience already arrived with, used as the bridge into the mechanics they do not have yet.
Pick Ferrari and the brief takes on Ferrari’s colour — personalisation you can see the moment you choose.
Onboarding
The first screen asks for nothing — it is a cover. Only the second asks how much you know, and it asks in the fan’s own words rather than as a difficulty rating: I have barely watched a race. I know a few drivers and teams. I follow but want depth.
Cover, level, interests — three steps that set the voice before the product asks for anything.
08 — Iteration
Four passes
01
Onboarding and the companion
The core bet — an intake that reads like a magazine cover, and an assistant that explains without condescending. This pass set the voice and the visual system; everything after it inherited them.
02
Season progression
The first build had no reason to return to on a Tuesday. The 24-round spine turned a reference tool into a nine-month commitment, and forced the harder question: how do you build a habit without gamifying it?
03
Team and driver following
Progression gave the product a shape; this gave it a stake. Rivalry and storyline framing entered here, as the bridge from what a content-first fan already knows to what they do not.
04
Race-day assistance
The sharpest pass, because it carried a real constraint: a question asked during a race has seconds to be useful. That is what turned the companion from a chat window into four animated explainers.
09 — Next
Where it goes next
Three things would move this from concept to product. Usability testing with self-identified new fans, to check whether the explainers actually land — whether people leave understanding an undercut, or only feeling like they do. Connecting the companion to live timing, so the race-day answers track the race rather than describe it. And extending the curriculum past its first twelve chapters to cover a full season.
Nine screens, one voice, one season.