Sarah Kaye and James Coker on how creators build an audience, and why brands need to understand that work before asking to be part of it.

A paddock pass, a camera, and an audience can make a motorsport creator look like a distribution channel: give them access, hand them a brief, and wait for the post.

But that’s not the full story.

It’s about:

Sarah Kaye and James Coker offer two different ways into that story. Sarah helps new F1 fans understand a sport that can be difficult to enter.

James uses comedy to find something fresh in the F1 stories fans are already discussing.

Their work differs in many ways, and overlaps in others. The value in a creator partnership lies in understanding why fans chose that person, instead of treating them as a route to "F1 fans" as a broad category.

Before making F1 videos, Sarah noticed women asking technical questions on fashion creators’ accounts. They wanted to go to races and follow the sport, and they wanted explanations that did not talk down to them. Questions such as “what is DRS?” showed her an audience she could serve. Her early DRS video did well, and later questions from the community helped her create her post-race recaps.

"I wasn't trying to break a mould," Sarah said. "I just saw what the community was asking for and tried to serve them as best as I could."

That is a more useful account of niche-building than deciding in advance to be different. Sarah saw people trying to understand something and made content that helped them. Her documentary background suited the work, but the audience's curiosity gave it direction.

The need does not disappear once someone learns what DRS is. A new or casual viewer will still wonder how a qualifying order works, what lapping is, or why a pit-stop decision matters. Sarah's argument is that understanding those details gives people more context to follow and understand a race, and more reasons to stay with the sport.

Sarah also makes a deliberate choice about how to answer her audience. When a story prompts an angry reaction, she looks for the context that may be missing. On our call, she described planning a video about proposed shorter races. Fans were frustrated about losing laps; she wanted to explain the engineering trade-off she understood to be behind the change.

That does not mean Sarah has no opinions. She said she tries to keep her videos focused on giving viewers enough information to reach their own conclusions.

"I try and just provide more information so people can make their own decisions."

She says trust is difficult to gain but very easy to lose; most people who sell partnerships know this all too well. Hot takes can generate engagement, but she worries that the kind of argument they attract could make her comments less welcoming to people asking basic questions. Her restraint helps sustain the community her work is meant to serve.

James Coker is the reason there cannot be a single formula for valuable F1 content. His comedy and improv background leads him to look for the unusual or funny angle in a story. More than half of his content, he said, reacts to something happening in F1 in real time. He has several recurring formats, among them boardroom sketches, fake press conferences, and videos in which he explains something to himself, and he chooses the one that fits the story and the joke.

"I'll think, do I have anything that's unique or funny to add to this conversation that hasn't already been done or I haven't already seen?"

That question is James's editorial filter. His first video, filmed as a joke with his wife playing his race engineer, reached 11 million views on Instagram. He followed it with comparisons such as F1 teams as NFL franchises and drivers as Mario Kart characters, and he has kept making F1 content for more than three years.

Sarah gives fans clarity, and James gives them a comic perspective, and it would flatten both of their work to say they simply "make F1 content". Their audiences follow them for different experiences. A marketer who overlooks that difference may get a post and miss the reason the post has an audience in the first place.

Sarah described a familiar tension in brand work: a company likes what a creator makes, then sends a brief asking them to make something that does not feel like it.

One brief wanted a product feature mentioned within the first four seconds. Sarah understood the concern that viewers might scroll away before hearing the message.

Her counterargument was that an immediate product mention might identify the video as an ad and give them a reason to leave sooner.

She does not treat creative control as a refusal to collaborate. When a brief and her understanding of the audience don't align, she prefers to get on a call and work through both sides’ goals. She also declines deals she cannot execute with integrity or make interesting for her audience. That selectiveness protects the quality of the partnership she does take on.

James described another side of the process. Larger brands may start briefing well before a race and ask creators to pitch several concepts. The eventual content can pass through an agency, the brand, and a rights holder that needs to stay on message. The work is to find a creative idea that can survive those requirements without becoming a generic ad.

James put the opportunity this way: “I’ve seen that value on the brand side of working with creators, and also how great it is to collaborate and merge what the brand voice is with an individual creator and make something that feels a little more authentic that’s not just an ad.”

Being clear about the goal still matters. The lesson for brand teams is to set the objective, then make use of the judgment that drew an audience to the creator. Sarah knows when an explanation needs room to unfold. James knows whether a story calls for a sketch, a fake press conference, or a simpler joke. Those decisions are part of what the partnership buys.

Sarah is especially clear about the mistake of judging a creator video as though it were a direct-response ad. If the aim is an immediate purchase or link click, she argues, a brand should consider running ads. She sees a creator's contribution as access to a different kind of audience attention, one built through familiarity with that person's voice and work.

She would like to see marketers repeat successful partnerships more often, so a brand's presence becomes a natural part of a creator's messaging instead of appearing in one isolated sponsored post. She pointed to Hugo Boss dressing creators for interviews in Miami as an example of a brand contributing to the setting and presentation of content without making every moment feel like a product pitch.

Commercial expectations still belong in creator partnerships. The argument is for choosing expectations that fit the work. A creator can introduce a brand in a way their audience is willing to spend time with. Asking that same piece of content to function exactly like a sales ad risks discarding the reason for working with the creator.

Viewers see what a creator filmed at a race, and rarely the decisions about what could be published.

Sarah described different rules for a brand trip, an FIA guest pass, and a media pass. On a Vegas trip with Atlassian, she could film pit-stop practice from the Paddock Club, but paid Atlassian content could not include track or pit-lane footage. Footage obtained through her FIA guest access could not simply be repurposed for a paid brand campaign. She has to keep those distinctions clear when working on content from the same event.

James raised a related question about behaviour in professional spaces. He acknowledged the difficulty of giving creators the same access as legacy outlets that pay substantial sums for media rights, and argued that creators need to understand how to work appropriately when they're granted access.

"You are there to work. You are there to bring value to whatever entity gave you that access. You are not there in a personal capacity."

Their accounts make the work behind a post more visible. Sarah must know which footage she has the right to use. James must develop ideas that fit a brand, pass approvals, and respect the space he has entered.

For brand teams: Start with why an audience follows a creator. Brief the commercial objective clearly, then collaborate on how to express it. Sarah's explanatory voice and James's comic one are not interchangeable.

For creators: The work that builds an audience is worth protecting. Both Sarah and James described choosing which opportunities fit their values and their work, and both showed that creative independence operates within contracts, approvals, and expectations of professional conduct.

For anyone trying to understand creator value: Look past the pass, the follower count, and the finished post. Sarah built trust by answering questions new fans were already asking. James built an audience around the funny angle only he would find. That ability to make something people choose to watch is what a brand is partnering with.

Sarah's version is to serve the audience first and protect the trust that makes them listen. James's is to find the joke that lets fans see a familiar story differently. Neither of those is something a pass buys.

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If you spot one I missed, reply, and I'll add it next week.