Update: Use the F1 Twitter directory to find more F1 people on Twitter.
Something cool has happened since we first looked at F1 people on Twitter: actual F1 drivers have started appearing on there.
Not many, mind you, but given the number of up-and-coming drivers using the social messaging service we could soon see every driver in F1 on Twitter.
The F1 teams are well-represented too, and there’s lots of other major drivers and teams on there too. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve found so far – please add others you’ve spotted to the list.
F1 drivers
Rubens Barrichello – There are loads of Brazilian racing drivers on Twitter (apart from Felipe Massa), many of them posting very frequently in a mix of Portuguese and English. Barrichello must’ve written this after a soothing chat with Ross Brawn:
Nelson Piquet Jnr – And he reckons he’ll stay an F1 driver too:
Nick Heidfeld – The official Twitter profile for his homepage, but seems to include little from the man himself.
Update
Jenson Button – Twitter’s newest F1 driver member – how long before he has more Twitter followers than his team mate as well as more points?
Ex-F1 drivers
Juan Pablo Montoya – F1 refugee clearly enjoying NASCAR a lot more.
Antonio Pizzonia – Former Jaguar and Williams racer still most famous for crashing a Jaguar S-Type R during a publicity stunt.
Enrique Bernoldi – Famously vexed David Coulthard at Monaco.
Max Papis – Seven starts for Footwork in 1995.
F1 teams
OfficialBrawnGP – The championship leaders.
TheFifthDriver – McLaren’s confusingly-named Twitter profile. Very good though – often invites and answers questions:
McLaren eShop – Twitter profile for McLaren’s online shop.
BMWSauberF1Team – Basically just news stories, little interaction.
Clubforce – Force India F1 team profile.
Red Bull F1 Spy – Entertaining posts from the paddock.
Toyota F1 – Have protected their updates, you need to put in a request in order to see them, which rather misses the point I feel.
Renault F1 – Mainly press releases.
Other racing drivers
Tony Kanaan – Team Andretti Green IRL driver.
Danica Patrick – Kanaan’s slightly famous team mate.
Jimmy Vasser – Former IndyCar driver turned team owner.
Carlos Iaconelli – Formula Two racer.
Lord Drayson – British peer who fulfilled a life’s ambition by competing in the Le Mans 24 Hours this year.
Andy Priaulx – Infrequent updates from BMW’s former World Touring Car champion.
Lucas di Grassi – Runner-up to Timo Glock in GP2 in 2007, still in F1’s feeder series.
Jamie Green – British driver in the DTM.
Helio Castroneves – Indy 500 winner.
Dan Wheldon – Another IndyCar racer.
Bruno Senna – ‘Nephew of…’ and tipped to be an F1 driver of the future.
Karun Chandhok – GP2 racer who has a strong chance of being India’s next F1 driver.
Alberto Valerio – Another GP2 driver.
Jason Plato – BTCC driver.
Joao Paulo Oliviera – Japanese GT racer.
Pippa Mann – Indy Lights racer.
Harry Vaulkhard – BTCC racer.
Alan van der Merwe – Drove BAR’s car at its Bonneville Speed Trial record attempt.
Other racing teams
Patron Highcroft – American Le Mans Series team which runs the Acura ARX-02a designed by Nick Wirth’s company, who will also be producing Manor Grand Prix’s F1 car in 2010.
CR Scuderia – A Ferrari GT racing team.
iSport – GP2 team, see also PR contact Hayley Smith
Racing Engineering – Lucas di Grassi’s GP2 team.
Meritus_Asia – GP2 Asia team.
F1 journalists
MartinHaven – Commentator for Eurosport on GP2 and other series. Not short of an opinion or two, especially about F1!
JamesAllenonF1 – Lots of good updates over race weekends.
BBC F1 – 5Live, Lee McKenzie, Jake Humphrey, Holly Samos and Emma Buxton.
Autosport – Edd Straw, Simon Strang, Anthony Rowlinson and Mark Glendenning.
F1 Racing – Bradley Lord, Ian Burrows and James Roberts.
Will Buxton – GP Week.
Joe Saward – Seems to only post at this account now and not his old one.
Other F1 and racing Twitterers
AriVatanen – You’ll need to learn Finnish though. Not got many followers but has picked up a few more since announcing he’s running for the FIA presidency.
GP2 and Official GP2 – Two Twitter feeds for F1’s feeder series.
Grande Premio Brazil – Official brazilian Grand Prix Twitter feed.
Shell Motorsport – The very nice people who gave me a tour of the paddock at the British Grand Prix.
IndyCar Nation – Official IndyCar feed.
Are they real?
There is a thriving sub-culture of fake F1 drivers and personalities on Twitter including fakemarkwebber and fakemaxmosley, many of which are very funny. There’s a list of some of them here.
But there are also some accounts purportedly belonging to drivers which don’t seem to be officially run by them. As far as possible I’ve tried to avoid including them in this list, but if you think I’ve missed out one that should be on there or included one that isn’t real, please leave a comment below.
All these and me too!
If you’ve not given Twitter a try yet and would like to you can sign up for an account here.
If you login in you can see all the people I’m following including lots of F1 fans and readers of this site.
Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter! I’ve got two accounts you can follows:
f1fanatic_co_uk – This is my main account where I post interesting stuff I’ve found, some links from the site, chat with people, that sort of thing.
f1fanticupdate – Follow this to get a Tweet with a link to new articles on F1 Fanatic as they’re added.
Here’s a sample of my Tweets from the German Grand Prix, which also appear in the F1 Fanatic Live Blog:
Katy
16th July 2009, 12:07
I follow so many F1 people on Twitter, including you Keith :-P and it’s great. I couldn’t watch quali last weekend cos I was on a train, so went on Twitter on my phone and read all your updates, was really helpful.
Barrichello and Piquet put up pictures too which is good cos you get to see a little bit of what they see :)
TommyB
16th July 2009, 14:05
I was on a train during Qualy too ;)
Andrew White
16th July 2009, 15:58
I was on a plane during qualy (no joke!). I win :P
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 21:33
Cool glad you find it useful!
Ronman
16th July 2009, 12:43
funny you should mention it today Keith, for no reason i started following Rubens and Jenson just yesterday. but the Jenson one doesn’t seem genuine.
TommyB
16th July 2009, 14:11
If they say f1″driversname” Then they are just feeds from the website. You can tell when they are really or not pretty much by the way the page looks and what gets posted.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 21:32
Yep I’m not sure about the Button one either (or the Raikkonen one) so I didn’t put it in.
goofy
17th July 2009, 10:44
there is real jenson button now :)
http://twitter.com/OfficialBrawnGP/status/2685949078
arale
16th July 2009, 12:59
J Noble@Autosport:
twitter.com/NobleF1
TommyB
16th July 2009, 13:16
I really like following the Indy drivers. They put up funny pictures and videos. Its nice to see that drivers are down to earth people really. I have even had an @reply from Danica :D
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 16:34
Yeah it’s great to see eo many of them one there.
And I’m guessing Twitter is big in Brazil?
TommyB
16th July 2009, 17:52
Looks that way Its overgrown with Brazilian racing drivers.
Which reminds me. You missed Luciano Burti off your list
TommyB
16th July 2009, 13:19
Does anyone follow the FakeF1 drivers on twitter by the way? The most some funny stuff especially Fake Mark Webber
TommyB
16th July 2009, 13:24
*post
Katy
16th July 2009, 16:37
Yeah I do. Some of it’s quite funny :-P
TommyB
16th July 2009, 17:53
Cheeky
Katy
16th July 2009, 18:41
Yeah not all of them are funny though ;)
Pradeek
16th July 2009, 13:51
Piquet’s link points to Barrichello.
ajokay
16th July 2009, 14:09
Maybe he wishes he was.
Nirupam
16th July 2009, 16:51
LOL !!
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 16:34
Have put the Piquet link in.
smboyce
16th July 2009, 14:06
I’ve never been a Piquet fan but the stuff he posts on Twitter is so endearing…he must look like such a tourist taking photos in the drivers parade and briefing
Tom
16th July 2009, 14:59
Keith, great update. I think having all the guys on social media sites is a realy cool thing, great to get some insight behind the scenes of F1 which has previously been so hard to do. I recently posted similar sentiments on my blog: http://temcloughlin.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/formula-1-and-social-media/
Hopefully we’ll see more and more F1 personalities joining Twitter and blogging as it brings a much more immediate element to the way we experience the sport.
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 16:33
Cool, have subscribed! Are you on Twitter?
Tom
20th December 2009, 14:28
Glad you like it, not all F1 stuff on there but try to make it useful when it goes on – can’t beat you guys to the breaking news!
@thommcloughlin on twitter, get following!
Tom
20th December 2009, 14:29
Sorry, @tommcloughlin !!!!
nottherealthef1fanatic
16th July 2009, 17:57
McLaren is on twitter
gabal
16th July 2009, 18:37
I don’t really get Twitter I must admit. I don’t see much substance in ”tweets” and prefer to follow blogs where there is something more to read. This way I get a feeling that I only get a headline and not a full article.
Katy
16th July 2009, 18:44
People tend to put the headline then link to a blog though. So I guess you get to read lots of different blogs and articles from sites you wouldn’t necessarily have found before. That’s what I’ve discovered by being on Twitter anyway.
gabal
16th July 2009, 21:26
Well, sounds like how I read rss feeds in Google Reader. I’m trying to keep an open mind about it so I added a few twitter profiles to my rss reader but so far I’m getting a lot of noise and not much content…
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 23:42
This is why I have two feeds: one just for headlines and the rest for me to use to talk to people. In some ways I think Twitter is becoming a mainstream alternative to RSS – not necessarily better, but likely to become more popular.
Kevin M
16th July 2009, 18:52
The SniffPetrol Twitter (http://twitter.com/sniffpetrol) which updates only during race weekends usually is the most hilarious thing I’ve ever read related to F1.
Chaz
16th July 2009, 19:05
This is great…
Gman
16th July 2009, 20:43
USF1’s twitter feed:
http://twitter.com/USF1
and the feed for Jonathan Summerton, hopefully one of the drivers for the squad:
http://twitter.com/jsummerton
Keith Collantine (@keithcollantine)
16th July 2009, 21:31
Thanks for the Summerton – I did have a look at the USF1 though and I couldn’t find anything to prove it’s official.
Gman
17th July 2009, 0:29
You’re welcome- I had the same feeling about the USF1 deal. Perhaps we’ll see some of their announcements on there when they start coming out.
zerogee
17th July 2009, 0:42
Some of the Fake F1 drivers are pretty lame. Heikki is rubbish and most of them gave up after a week or so. @fakebernie is quite funny, especially when he and @fakemaxmosley get into an argument.
Whoever runs those two could be the least creative people on earth, the humour just writes itself given how gaffe and scandal prone they are. @fakejenson is dull but worthy and I think @fakemarkwebber was pretty much the first.
I’ve unfollowed most of the team accounts, they’re too dull by half. @leemck (Lee McKenzie) is quite dull (and spent the pre-season promoting her gambling efforts which I thought odd). I’d love to see a team transporter or something like that tweeting its location just to give you a feel for just how much pounding around the teams do.
mp4-19b
17th July 2009, 3:16
i’ve tried very hard to understand the concept behind twitter, but in the end it makes no sense to me. its really frustrating for me as to why i’m not able to come to terms with twitter. cuz people out there talk about it so much, but still i fail to get its concept. maybe i’m a bit old fashioned person. i’ve given up on twitter. the only f1 website i follow is this. this is the best place on planet F1!!
TommyB
17th July 2009, 13:21
Jenson has twitter as of today
This is the link
http://twitter.com/The_Real_JB
vet4snak
17th July 2009, 13:28
Hello Keith and all,
In general, I do understand the point where you came from. But for the sake of cost cutting (or a budget cap), further development of the KERS system might not be of a economic choice.
The 2009 KERS development spending, which started from late 2008 to early 2009, should be considered as sunk cost. Since that past spending cannot be reversed if the KERS teams decided to continue with it or just ditch the KERS project all aside.
So I view the KERS spending issue with a different view than what the articles suggests. I do believe if FIA, FOTA and other parties want to stay parallel to the aim of cost reduction, I think KERS should be dropped.
From a racing standpoint, with no doubt, it gives more thrilling races (especially at starts). But if we give KERS too much power, then the emphasis on the harmony between driver, chassis, engine and the team might be overshadowed by the ‘boost button’. And that harmony, is what make the likes of Ayrton Senna, Keke Rosberg, Alain Prost such great masters of the sport.
From 1998-2004, we have seen quite a bit of overtaking with cars not using KERS, and those new 2009 aero parts. Interestingly, I think Formula 1 should consider what is different between the cars of 1998-2004 to the new 2009 ones in terms of overtaking, because apparently, there were more overtaking during those years, in my opinion- of course.
And thanks for all the articles on f1fanatic.co.uk, I am a big fan of this website. Keep up the great work!!
TommyB
17th July 2009, 16:38
Is this meant for the KERS article and not the twitter one?
Clare_msj
17th July 2009, 22:58
Ooooh i just got me a Twitter name and thingy today – everyone else seems to have one and I felt left out!! Now just gotta get the hang of it….
chunter
22nd July 2009, 1:21
I discovered the beauty of Twitter thought IndyCar actually, I’m glad that F1 people are along too. I think the reason I haven’t noticed as much F1 buzz right away is the time zone difference.
There was something very strange about saying a few little blurbs about something and then suddenly, some 20 to 50 people are along…
Gianecchini
22nd July 2009, 23:01
Good Evening !
How could you forget me ????
The headquarter of Fernando Alonso on twitter ! :D
http://twitter.com/MiasF1World
Bytor
25th July 2009, 9:17
I think @Kimi_Raikkonen is real. The updates are infrequent enough and real sounding enough that it is unlikely to be a fake IMHO.
Gianecchini
26th July 2009, 6:55
I agree with you Bytor.
Nick D
26th July 2009, 15:55
nice article – a list of links to twitter accounts would be handy – thanks
LAK
6th September 2009, 1:44
New F1 driver in the Twitter world! Sebastian Vettel! @real_Vettel
Check out
LAK
6th September 2009, 1:45
http://twitter.com/real_Vettel
LAK
6th September 2009, 2:03
One more F1 driver Grosjean! Check out http://twitter.com/rgrosjean
Thanx Keith for keeping us updated :)
linio
9th September 2009, 16:56
How Can colleges Use Twitter?
Johnny Eichholz
25th August 2010, 5:38
i’m not sure I go along with everything that you wrote, but I like the way you express yourself in your thoughts. Just started following your RSS.