Formula 1 Fan Zones | Solarflare Studio

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Interactive Installation

Experiential Design

Motion Design

Mobile-first digital fan zone activations Solarflare built with Wasserman for F1 across the 2023/24 season. Physical installations combined with digital experiences across multiple global race weekends.

Digital activation at race-weekend pace

Formula 1 Fan Zones operate at a pace that most brand activations do not. A race weekend runs from Friday to Sunday; the fan zone is fully operational from the moment the gates open; and the audience, tens of thousands of passionate and technically literate fans, has high expectations for the quality of what they encounter. Working with Wasserman across the 2023 and 2024 F1 seasons, we built mobile-first activations that combined physical installations with digital experiences across multiple race weekends and multiple territories.The multi-territory brief meant building for a range of network conditions, device types, and languages simultaneously. A fan zone activation that works in Silverstone needs to work in Singapore and in Austin, on the same hardware, with the same reliability.

Physical and digital, designed together

The strongest fan zone activations work because the physical and digital elements were designed as a single experience. We worked with Wasserman from the concept stage to ensure that the mobile-first digital layer and the physical presence in the fan zone were genuinely integrated: the digital experience made sense because of what surrounded it, and the physical installation was more legible because of what the digital layer added.Mobile-first at a live motorsport event means designing for a particular set of conditions: high ambient noise, direct sunlight on screens, users who are also trying to watch cars and talk to each other. We ran usability testing in simulated event conditions and used the results to calibrate interaction complexity, text size, and feedback mechanisms.

Consistency across a season

Running activations across a full F1 season means the hardware and software travel, get set up and torn down repeatedly, and operate in a range of climates and venue configurations. We built the technical stack with operational resilience as a core requirement: the system had to come up cleanly on event morning, run without intervention across the day, and give the on-site team clear diagnostics when something needed attention.For F1 and Wasserman, the commercial case for fan zone digital activation rests on engagement quality and brand time: how long fans spend with the experience, and whether the association between the digital interaction and the F1 brand is positive. We built reporting into the activation to capture both metrics across the season.

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