F1 Madness started at the beginning of the 2012 season, as nothing more than a twitter account providing live race commentary on F1 race weekends. The response was phenomenal and something started organically happening that nobody could have predicted.
Over time, the love for F1 brought so many fans together that the idea of starting this website was born. Three super-passionate, Formula One frenzied fans got together and decided to put our love for F1 into more than just a twitter account and create this website to share our passion with other Formula One fans.
Three of us make up this crazy F1 fest!
There’s Natalie – who’s written more than 600 columns on F1, and counting! She’s been the F1 columnist for her local newspaper for over 8 years now and has written for the likes of Sport24 and Wheels24. She currently serves as SAfm’s Formula 1 correspondent and has won awards like the 2010 gSport Woman in Media, the 2015 gSport Woman In Media Print award, and was included as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in South African Sports by the Dept of Sports and Recreation.
When asked about her love for Formula One, Natalie says: “F1 is my greatest passion. I live every single breathtaking second of it. This majestic sport is my greatest passion but my goal is to get as many people as possible to fall in love and to be enthralled by the most incredible sport on the planet.
Ritesh is our technical guru guy. He’s always enjoyed F1 as a sport but as his understanding of the sport developed, he became more and more engrossed in the technical side as well as the politics of the sport.
He started watching F1 with his dad from a very young age. Like many of us, he was a Senna fan. His dad was a Schumi fan. Nothing like a good old F1 family rivalry. After Senna’s death Ritesh started supporting Schumi (but no team).
When Schumi moved to Ferrari he became a Ferrari supporter and stuck with them ever since. He now borders on fanatical. True Tifosi. He’ll be quick to add that he does have second and third teams and that they are not McLaren and Red Bull.
Ritesh will end any sentence he can with “Forza Ferrari”!
And then there’s Adele. She’s so passionate about Formula One that she’s lived with the nearly delusional dream that she could be an F1 commentator. Not one to wait for things to happen, Adele offered to start doing live F1 commentary for Wheels24. After leaving 24.com, not doing the live commentary left a huge empty hole and with the encouragement of a few friends, the @F1_Madness twitter account was born.
Adele is an objective F1 fan who enjoys the sport and doesn’t align herself with any one team only. Of course she has her favourites, and of course she has certain drivers she loathes but for the sake of objectivity these little nuggets will remain undisclosed.
She’s never missed a race since she started watching with her Dad at the age of 12. Today she’s downright obsessive compared to her Dad and converts everyone she can into life-long F1 fans.
