Welcome Racing Roles!
Hey everyone, Logan from FanAmp here with some AMAZING news for all of you!
Introducing our newest FanAmp Base… Racing Roles!!
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Lis, the founder, and Shanna, the Social Media Manager, to learn more about why they started Racing Roles and to give you all some insight into their motorsport passion!
Without further ado… Please welcome Racing Roles to FanAmp!
Q: What is Racing Roles and why did you start it?
Lis: The types of roles that you see online or on TV are actually only a fraction of the ones that exist. You only hear about a couple of them and it is never very clear exactly what their job is. We figured if people can find out what the jobs are, they can start to understand a career and create a path towards it. Hopefully we have helped to inform and motivate people to follow their dreams!
Shanna: Just like what Lis said, Racing Roles is all about helping people at the earliest stages possible. We know that people don’t always have the resources to access and understand the different career options available. They have a dream and sometimes that dream is as simple as wanting to work in motorsport, but obviously, once you get to a career, you need to make it more specific. Sometimes people just don’t have the right information to understand the possibilities, so we are aiming to help them early on so that they have the opportunity to learn about the different routes they could take. Ideally, we’re reaching people in elementary school to help them pick their career path as there are certain courses required in high school or university to achieve their dream profession!
Q: What is your role within Racing Roles?
Lis: I founded it and am, supposedly the boss. I basically organize the posts and the schedule and try to keep an eye on the team and be there for them if they need anything. My role covers everything really from reaching out to people for interviews or making sure to network through social media and make sure that we are accessing the best information to share with our audience.
Shanna: I’m the media and communications manager which means I basically cover everything to do with the social media platforms. I also do some of the outreach and communication between people we are working with, whether that be partners or potential partners, teams, companies or individuals. At the moment, our team is quite small but we have Christian who is in charge of interviews and networking as well as doing a lot of the in-person events. Savannah is one of our researchers who finds all of the information that we share and we have just recruited Emanuela who will be our future project manager. Even though we are still small, our team is growing which is very exciting!
Q: What has been the most exciting experience or moment you’ve had since working at Racing Roles?
Shanna: I have two different things that come to mind. The first one is when we got invited to go to the MotoGP Testing. It was incredible because we had the chance to gather information and make connections with people in the different roles there. It was just very validating to have people take us seriously and believe in our cause enough to invite us out and give us the access we needed. From that experience we were able to get interviews and create tons of posts and content for our audience. The other thing that comes to mind is that we got a message from one of our followers who said ‘Thank You’ because her daughter had been looking to get into Formula 1 for a while and had applied to several teams but got rejected and had no idea what to do next to progress forward. They then came across our post which highlights other companies that run within Motorsport. Her daughter then applied to do a placement in one of those companies and was accepted. It's a great success story for us and one that really emphasises our mission.
Lis: Shanna definitely just mentioned one of my highlights which was attending the MotoGP. Like she said, it was so exciting to be seen and accepted as a valid company as well as being given the resources and access to share information with our users. Another thing that comes to mind is that back in June, I was shortlisted for an award due to my work with Racing Roles which was quite a big honour, especially with the event being sponsored and attended by Red Bull Racing. Unfortunately I didn’t end up winning it, but Shanna got to come along and we had an amazing time meeting everyone and it was so great to be nominated amongst so many other incredible people. I even got to meet Hannah Schmitz which was really cool!
Q: What are you most excited for with joining FanAmp and what do you want your users to get out of it?
Shanna: I think what I’m really looking forward to with the partnership with FanAmp is giving our audience a chance to go to a platform and build a community with each other. There they can meet like minded people who aren’t just motorsport fans, but also people who want to work in the industry as well. Within FanAmp they’ll be able to find people with similar industry interests and hopefully connect and share their goals, ideas, past experiences and overall just build off of each other. Here we’re not just posting information they can read, it’s a place where they can actually use that information and talk about it to form their own opinions.
Lis: Although Instagram has been good for getting the information out there, it’s not a platform that is particularly conducive to conversation. We would really love to be able to give our followers an opportunity to build a community and give them the chance to connect through chatting about the posts. I’m very excited to give them the space to communicate with each other and learn from one another.
Q: What would be your dream role within motorsport?
Lis: I thought I was committed to wanting to become a design engineer until I went on work experience and realized that it was not for me. This was one of the reasons Racing Roles was started because I had no idea about all of the different engineering opportunities available. Since then, I know I want to be some kind of track side engineer, but I still don’t know exactly what. I think the aspiration for everyone really is to become a race engineer so that is probably my dream role.
Shanna: I really couldn’t narrow it down, I have three that are all very similar. I would love to be a social media manager, a content creator or lastly a presenter. They’re all somewhat the same thing and very related to one another but I would just love to do anything along those lines or anything within motorsport.
Q: Which team and driver do you find yourself rooting for each race weekend?
Lis: I am actually very neutral about who I support. If I was going to choose somebody, I would say that I enjoy watching Alex Albon at Williams since he’s doing so well this season.
Shanna: My favorite team is Williams and they’ve been doing well with Albon so I’ve really been enjoying this year. I also find myself rooting for Oscar Piastri every race weekend. I’m Australian so I like the fact that he is, and I started watching him in F3 and decided I would cheer for him. Lucky for me he’s done well in every series he’s raced in and he is doing so well at McLaren right now too.
Q: Do you have a favorite driver who is not on the grid anymore?
Shanna: I actually love this question because anytime someone asks me who my favorite driver is, I always have to say Sebastien Vettel, but if you mean on the grid, then it’s Oscar Piastri. But I’m a big Vettel fan and have been since I was about ten years old. I was so sad when he announced his retirement, I hoped it was a joke but at the same time I knew he was definitely ready to leave.
Lis: For me, I have to say, pretty much the entire Formula E grid. There have been quite a few newcomers but lots of the drivers have been so lovely to us whenever we ask for interviews or little things to help our content, so I am a big fan of the entire Formula E grid.
We are so excited to have Racing Roles on board with FanAmp, and we can’t wait to see all of the possible Motorsport roles posted within the Base!