Max Verstappen of the Netherlands leads during the F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at Bahrain International Circuit on March 2, in Bahrain, Bahrain.Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images
A while back, the PR representative of a car-tire manufacturer contacted me out of the blue. They wondered if I would like a free trip.
They offered to fly me business class to a Formula One Grand Prix. They’d put me up for the race weekend at the Four Seasons. They’d give me a VVIP all-access pass and party invites. All I had to do in return was talk to someone about tires.
No one said anything about writing anything about tires. That was understood.
Nothing was mentioned about saying only nice things about the tires. That was especially understood.
As a long-time admirer from afar of airplane seats that fully recline, this story was a natural fit. As someone who works for an uncompromised, non-corporate journalistic outfit, less so.
You ever slept in a Four Seasons’ California King? I have. As a person who cannot afford Four Seasons on the regular, it was a bad mistake.
At The Globe and Mail, we have a rule about freebies – No. I don’t want to claim that I wept as I sent back my regrets, but I was misty.
Over the years, I have turned down all-inclusive ‘working’ vacations to every continent, including Antarctica (ship cruise). The one that remains wedged in my memory is a two-week self-guided driving tour of Germany to see a soccer ball. That’s it. Look at the ball. Write something about how, I dunno, round it was.
I couldn’t bear to ask what sort of car they were offering, but I have a terrible feeling it was a Porsche.
The rule that you paid your own way, no matter what, used to be universal in Sports departments. Then everyone went broke.
The Sports departments who aren’t broke tend to be the same outfits who run leagues, own teams or broadcast the games, which removes the ‘independent’ from the journalism.
Being invited to North Carolina or Dubai to write a news release about a new golf resort used to be something to crow about. Now it’s become a grey market – not technically wrong as long as your employer allows it, but not something you want people talking about.
Every once in a while, this friction staggers into view, usually hilariously.
Last week, Road & Track published a 5,000-word thumb-sucker about Formula One. It did that thing that magazines used to do to electrifying effect back in the golden age – pair an obvious topic with an unobvious writer. Like Hunter Thompson covering a police convention.
In this case, the writer, Kate Wagner, does not regularly cover mainstream sports. She writes about cycling and architecture, and has a regular gig at that leftie Bible, The Nation.
The story she produced is exactly what magazines used to crave in a long feature – something different. Wagner was dropped into the middle of a Formula One weekend and started knocking things off the shelves.
The cutline gives you the gist: “If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could do it in about an hour by taking them for a spin around the paddock of a Formula 1 race.”
So, not exactly nice things.
Tucked within the piece was the problem. Road & Track didn’t pay for Wagner’s trip. INEOS, a petrochemical company that sponsors the Mercedes F1 team, did.
Wagner described feeling a “bit of an ick” at the idea of accepting INEOS’s largesse. But she accepted it.
Having accepted its hospitality, she proceeded to mock INEOS in print and, in particular, its CEO, Jim Ratcliffe. She compared Ratcliffe to Rudyard Kipling and a character out of a Bond film. None of it was at all vicious, but it certainly wasn’t a news release. Worst of all, it was funny. Corporations hate it when you’re funny about them.
The story lasted about an hour on the Road & Track website before it was pulled down without comment.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post tried to get to the bottom of things. Road & Track had no comment. An INEOS spokesperson said they had no idea that story had even been published, which might even be true.
The Post piece suggested by inference that someone at F1 might have been angry at Wagner’s tone. I feel very sure that no one at F1 cared. It has so many unpaid typists on staff writing free marketing material in return for the occasional race pass that one dissenter – no matter how loud or talented – cannot be heard.
That is, until someone yanks her piece and turns it into a viral sensation.
It doesn’t take a genius to guess how this happened. Some creative, outside-the-box thinker at R&T assigns Wagner. His/her bosses don’t realize this has happened. Wagner turns in her literary petrol bomb. Everyone in editorial loves it. They throw it up on the website. Someone in corporate sees it for the first time and freaks out.
This isn’t about taking F1′s name in vain. It’s almost certainly about putting the freebie ecosystem in jeopardy. Because why would companies such as INEOS pay for you to travel the globe so you can insult their boss?
No freebies means no travel means no two-week, self-guided tours of Germany in a Porsche means no 5,000-word thumb-suckers to wrap around a double-truck advertorial spread of car tires.
You don’t want to get on your horse here, however high. Road & Track is not The New Yorker. Selling automotive fantasies is its business. Why put your business in danger to publish a hatchet job, however delightful?
Mostly, I feel jealous of Wagner. She’s just lived the journalist’s dream. She got a free trip, a war story that will never quit and a CV highlight that may feature in her obituary.
Wisely, she has yet to comment on what went down, but for a cheeky post on X: “Apropos of absolutely nothing at all if you want me to go on a 5000 word experience for your magazine you can email me at …”
I’m sure she’ll tell that story in print some day. But why go there unless someone else is paying for the trip?