Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Walker, Natalie Moorhead and Shanna Reilly.
It’s an honor to have you all on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Natalie and I (Rachel) have been friends for 12+ years and are both based in Nashville, TN. In early 2021, we, along with a handful of our girlfriends, got very into Formula 1 racing from the Netflix series “Drive to Survive” and found ourselves all of a sudden obsessing over the sport, waking up early on Sunday mornings to watch the races on tv and were often in the group text messages discussing all of the juicy details with our girlfriends! Some of us then decided to attend the Grand Prix race in Austin, TX in October 2021 and we all had such an amazing time there. Shortly thereafter I was introduced to Shanna (who is based in Austin, TX) by a mutual friend as I was told she had an idea to form an all-female podcast about F1 and our mutual friend thought I may be interested. I didn’t know the first thing about forming a podcast, but regardless the idea immediately sparked interest in me since I had developed this newfound, overwhelming love for the sport. I then had a thought to also pull in Natalie, who I knew loved all aspects of Formula 1 as well and who I knew could bring a lot of creativity and wit to the table. I’m fairly certain that when I sent her the text to ask if she was interested, she immediately responded with “OBVIOUSLY!” in all caps. The three of us then would meet together on FaceTime to get acquainted (since neither Natalie or I had ever met Shanna in person!) and to start throwing together ideas for the podcast – what we would want to name it, what logos we would want to use, potential topics, segments for the episode, etc. We held quite a bit of these brainstorming sessions together and we knew to get started we wanted to first come up with a clever and catchy name for the podcast. And lo and behold, “Girls Just Wanna F1” was born! We felt the name was very apropos and captured our feeling of the sport perfectly (and in a punny way, too!) Over the next couple of months, we then decided on our logo designs, researched how to record/edit podcast episodes, how and where to upload them, started social media accounts, discussed what topics we thought fellow female F1 fans would like to hear about and what type of format for the show we wanted – you know, all of the essential components required to create a podcast! Once the actual 2022 Formula 1 season started (March 2022), we released our first episode introducing ourselves and overall feeling it out. Over time, we got more and more comfortable co-hosting and were able to find our groove and our niche the more practice we got! We are now one full season in – 19 episodes, to be exact – our format is centered on news in the F1 world and our funny takes on them as well as discussing all of the weekly race stats and technical details. It has been a wild and fun journey!
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Not totally smooth – we discovered pretty early on that editing podcast episodes was a pretty big job – both pretty tedious and time-consuming. After a few stabs at editing episodes ourselves, which took many hours each time, we decided that we should bring on board a professional podcast producer/editor to help alleviate this grueling task! This ended up being a great decision as it took so much stress and burden off of us, having a lot of the technical aspects taken care of! This allowed us to then spend more time on the content and creativity aspect of the podcast, which was more of what we wanted to focus and spend our time on.
Other struggles:
– Finding times that worked for everyone to record episodes having 3 people with full time 9-5 jobs and busy schedules! Also recording in 3 different locations is a bit more challenging vs being all in the same room/location together. Sometimes we really had to work hard to get ourselves pumped up and energetic since we each just alone are just in front of a computer screen when we sit down to record!
– Around the same time that we launched our podcast, we found that several other all-female Formula 1 podcasts had been formed as the popularity of the sport had ramped up, especially in the US. While there is definitely a lot of room for podcasts and content creators within the realm of Formula 1, we in the beginning found ourselves sometimes comparing what we were doing to what some of the other podcast groups were doing. i.e. some would pump out episodes faster than we could or they had more downloads than we had. It’s easy to get down in comparing yourselves to others’ perceived successes, but it ultimately just forced us to hone in on what makes us stand out against others and on what we felt would produce enjoyable content for people to consume, all while trying to stay true to ourselves.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We were a trio of women – Rachel Walker, Natalie Moorhead and Shanna Reilly – who came together as we all had a shared love for Formula 1 racing and decided to channel that passion into the form of a podcast! We felt we had so many thoughts and feelings on various aspects of the sport and knew we needed an outlet where we could put it all out there in the universe and where we could dish on it all with our girlfriends, We ultimately created the podcast that we ourselves would want to listen to: one that focuses on the racing, of course, but also one that hones in on the details a lot of technical podcasts skip over and one that would make you laugh. We discuss what the drivers are up to in their personal lives, the fashion, social media interactions, who is dating who, rivalries on the grid, our personal favorite drivers, the politics behind the sport, etc. Most of our listeners tell us what they love about the podcast is that they feel like they’re dishing on F1 with their girlfriends – and laughing along the way – and we consider that to be the best compliment! I think that’s what sets us apart from most of the other podcasts – that we cover and are knowledgeable on not just the technical aspects of the sport, but we also cover the fluffier, light-hearted and often funny sides of the sport as well. I think we do a great job in balancing that throughout each episode and we believe it’s what has kept our listeners hanging around.
I think what we are most proud of is that despite the fact that none of us had any experience in podcasting whatsoever, we figured out a lot of the aspects (technical and otherwise) of podcasting with a bit of time and research put in. We became more and more comfortable co-hosting throughout the year to where it eventually felt so natural and were able to find our rhythm and specialties! For 3 people without any tech or podcast backgrounds, we think that it is pretty amazing that we managed to get this up and running, and in a short amount of time, too. We have since produced 19 episodes throughout our first year (with the help of our podcast producer/editor) We also throughout the year built up a loyal and engaging following on social media – I think due to the fact that so many other women (and some men!) could relate to our feelings and excitement surrounding the sport. It has overall been a really fun and rewarding experience!
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
I think the most important lesson we’ve learned is to stay true to our vision for the podcast and what feels right to us. We aren’t trying to be everything to everyone; we’re being ourselves. And what that looks like is 3 women who don’t take themselves too seriously and disagree sometimes, but who come together over their love of Formula 1 racing. We’re fun. We’re loud. We’re opinionated. We’re dramatic at times. And maybe a little too edgy for some. But we always work hard to put out a product we’re proud of and that is authentic to ourselves!
Contact Info:
- Website: linktr.ee/gjwf1
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/girlsjustwanna_f1
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/girlsjustwannaf1
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/girlswannaf1pod
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GirlsJustWannaF1
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@girlsjustwannaf1
