Christian Hewgill, the star of two Formula 1 podcasts, has been a fan of the sport since childhood, first getting into the sport in 1998 as Hakkinen and Schumacher battled for glory on-track.
But, for the man who grew up near Loughborough, the idea of stepping into the glitz and glamour of the Grand Prix world felt a “million miles away.”
“As much as I thought it would be a great thing to do, I just didn’t think it would be possible,” he tells me over a sit-down interview. “I’ve been brought up by working class people, I went to a non-fee-paying council run school and Formula 1 just seemed a million miles away.”
Karting was Hewgill’s first route into motor sport, however this quickly fell by the wayside, owing to the lack of funds “more than anything else.” At this point, Hewgill was also beginning to appreciate another part of sport: broadcasting, looking up to the likes of Jim Rosenthal and Steve Rider who presented motor sport at the time.
“I went to university and did a degree in Broadcast Journalism and at that point the aim was a career working in local radio because that’s what I thought was realistic.”
Joining the Newsbeat team
His breakthrough came with the BBC, where he spent ten years across various outlets, including Radio 1’s Newsbeat team. The outlet aimed to take younger people closer to the stories that mattered to them. Each week, the station aired a variety of different stories, from Eurovision to F1.
“I was pretty happy doing news and sports as a career at the Beeb, but I’ve always been a massive motor sport fan because of karting.”
“And one of the brilliant things that Newsbeat did at the time was encourage us to pitch stories about things we were interested in,” Hewgill explains. “They employed a young and very diverse team, and therefore, they got quite a diverse selection of stories. At its heart, Newsbeat featured young people doing cool things, and that’s what F1 is.”
Hewgill joined the 5 Live team as part of Newsbeat at the 2019 British Grand Prix, and it was only then that he realised that this could turn into a career.
“Formula 1 had always been a bit of a side passion that I enjoyed away from work. I didn’t know how I would feel about that becoming my job, but it was that weekend that made me realise, maybe I want to do more of this. That was the light bulb moment.”
Interest continued to increase, culminating in Hewgill presenting Newsbeat live from the Bahrain paddock in 2022. From “barely getting an F1 package” on Newsbeat back in 2017, Hewgill was now presenting a live F1 programme on Radio 1 from Bahrain just five years later. It was a weekend that changed Hewgill’s professional career for the better.
Brief spells with LBC and talkSPORT followed for Hewgill as Newsbeat relocated to Birmingham in the summer of 2022 but for him, the love for covering news had faded.
“I loved doing Newsbeat and I’m so grateful for the first 10 years of my career. But talking about the news all the time [for 10 years] had started to drain on my mental health, the negativity, the tribal approach that news has got towards politics. I did lose the love for it,” he says.
“And then it was like, what else do I do? I’m not particularly academic. Doing daily news and sports is all I’ve ever done. The only other thing I know and am truly passionate about is Formula 1.”
Presenting Newsbeat live from the F1 paddock posed its own challenges, but one that made others curious, including a certain Radio 1 DJ….
Introducing The Fast and The Curious
…even if, originally Greg James was going to have an off-mic role on The Fast and The Curious!
“The plan was always for me to present with someone else,” Hewgill reveals. “He’s an incredibly humble bloke, bless him. And he said that he presents enough stuff as it is, so Greg had talked about him potentially not being on the podcast. He really wanted to executive produce and build something from the ground up.”
Plans quickly changed once the two of them realised how well they “bounce off each other,” owing to their friendship stemming back to the days of working together at Radio 1. The pair of them wanted the new F1-themed podcast, which was James’s idea to begin with, to highlight the lighter aspects of the sport, that other podcasts do not cover as often.
“It was incredibly collaborative, discussing what isn’t out there and what can we bring that’s different? I didn’t feel that there was a podcast that lent into the humour of the sport and the silliness of the sport because the sport is mad!”
“This travelling circus that goes around the world, there’s so much humour and funniness to it. I didn’t think there was a podcast that lent into the, for want of a better word, the Drive to Survive era, in that there were more and more people coming into F1 who knew a bit, but didn’t know loads.”
“Some of the sports podcasts I listen to, they’re all football experts, they’re all F1 experts,” notes Hewgill, citing The Monday Night Club and The Race’s F1 podcast as podcasts he enjoys, but not necessarily tailored towards the casual fan.
“All the sports podcasts I’d listened to were all a panel of experts. One of Greg’s big mantras is you can love sport in whatever way you want to love it. You don’t need to be a fanatic and know everything.”
Betty Glover, nominated for 2023 Women’s Sports Journalist by the SJA, joins Hewgill and James on the podcast.
“Betty is a phenomenal sports broadcaster, but by her own admission was only just falling in love with F1,” Hewgill tells me.
“She was new to it and we wanted the audience to go on that journey with her. Betty has been amazing because she thinks to ask different questions that I do. Stuff that’s obvious to me isn’t obvious to her.”
The three are genuinely friends both on and off-air, with Hewgill’s and Glover’s friends thanks to Newsbeat: the two presented coverage of the Winter Olympics together.
“It’s the first time I’ve come off the air and gone ‘I really like being on the radio with her,’ she’s such a funny and infectious personality. I wanted to work more with her and wanted to develop that relationship on air with her.”
A successful first season
But how did the three turn an idea into a reality? Most drivers tend not to come out their shell in the media pen interviews, instead sticking to pre-rehearsed lines about the race weekend.
“Some people say that motor racing drivers are quite dull, I couldn’t disagree any more. Motor racing drivers are fascinating,” Hewgill believes.
Arguably, one of the reasons The Fast and The Curious has been as successful as it is because they have curated content away from the pressure cooker of a race weekend, giving racing drivers and team personnel alike the platform to be open about themselves.
To help achieve this, he admits the team did carefully craft some of the first season in 2023, but for very good reason, with both McLaren, Williams, and Alpine drivers’ regulars.
“We quite carefully went after some of the drivers we thought would be good fun. We wanted to have fun with them and they seem to have enjoyed being on it. The teams have been very receptive to what we’ve done in terms of, we’re trying to celebrate the sport in a different way and have some fun with it.”
“The reaction has been so warm from people within the sports. I think we expected a degree of stiffness a bit ‘who the hell are these guys.’ People have been so warm and friendly which has been lovely. All we’re trying to do is celebrate the sport and celebrate the drivers.”
With 64% of The Fast and The Curious’ audience female, and most of their audience in the aged between 18 to 29, it is fair to say that the show is attracting F1’s most sought after demographic.
“It’s all very well seeing numbers on spreadsheets, whenever you’ve been in broadcasting for long time, you know when something’s working because you get that interaction and the warmth for the audience, which has just been amazing.”
Throughout each episode, the team have always tried to be themselves, something that came across in their interview with seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton prior to the start of the 2023 season.
Hamilton has been supportive of LGBTQ+ rights with his rainbow helmet on display at various races during the past few seasons with Mercedes, as well as continuing to promote diversity and inclusion within motor sport.
Both topics are of importance to Hewgill, himself a gay man and one of Racing Pride’s ambassadors.
“Throughout my broadcasting career, I’ve always tried to be myself. I’m no good at pretending to be anyone else, and coming out as gay made me realise that,” he says.
“I spent many years trying to compress that and trying to be someone else, it made me deeply unhappy. Some people switch to an on-air persona, I just can’t do that. I am gay, it crops up in conversations sometimes, like Greg’s wife Bella sometimes does, and Betty’s boyfriend Alex does. We wanted the podcast to be authentic and I think we’ve achieved that.”
“When we interviewed Lewis, I was keen to say that as a gay guy it means a lot to me that he does go out and takes the stances that he does. I didn’t expect that me saying that to him at the end of the interview to resonate across on social media on TikTok, Twitter and Instagram.”
“And that was just through me being honest, so it does make a difference. We’re just trying to be ourselves through all of our podcasts.”
For year two, the team has so far covered all the big stories in the run-up to the new season, while also launching a visual version of their podcast.
Explaining F1 concepts to fans
Hewgill’s Bahrain 2022 gig with Newsbeat was also the springboard for his second F1 adventure, this time with F1’s in-house team, presenting their podcast series F1 Explains alongside Katie Osbourne.
“F1 liked the Newsbeat approach to tackling F1: I was trying to explain it as I went along, and they were keen to work together on something,” he says.
“Chris Browning-Brant, who has gone on to be my editor on F1 Explains, said to me, ‘I heard the Bahrain programme and we were going to get into touch with you’, and I got in touch with them, and so the paths crossed naturally.”
“F1 didn’t feel they have a podcast that properly explains the sports and not just a new audience, but to more established audiences as well.”
The podcast explains the key terminology that fans hear race-to-race, such as explaining the intricacies of the Drag Reduction System (DRS). As well as hearing from the drivers, the podcast features “strategists and engineers and people who you don’t normally hear from.”
“There’s such a big wide world that exists in Formula 1 and we wanted to explain the sport in detail, and shine a light on some of the voices you don’t necessarily get hear from, very similar to The Fast and The Curious, it’s been so warmly received.”
“This year so far, all the episodes have been listener based because we’ve had so many questions from people saying ‘so can you explain this,’ and I’m sat there going ‘I’d never have thought to have done that, what a great idea that is.’ The fact that people are engaging with it is lovely.”
“Whether you’re a new fan or someone who’s been watching for decades like me, I’m convinced you learn something every episode.”
Hewgill has no regrets on his broadcasting journey so far.
“I’m in the happiest place I’ve ever been in my professional career because I just love making both of them. I feel very lucky with them,” he tells me.
“I said at the start of this interview, I felt a million miles from a Formula 1 paddock where I was growing up. I genuinely believed as a kid that you couldn’t be gay and be a professional sports broadcaster. Hopefully I’ve shown that it is possible to be LGBTQ+ and a motor racing presenter, and that’s really important to me.”
“I just want to enjoy it while it lasts, however long that is.”
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