Wheel it Up F1 with Simone Stewart

Wheel it Up F1

Three Black women talking all things F1, including race day action and F1 news.

F1 has been a love for Simone since she was young as her Grandparents, dad, and sister all watched the sport.

Simone is currently a Producer for ITV Sport helping produce a wide range of sports ITV Sports covers such as football, horse racing, snooker, and rugby. Simone is most proudly a Wolverhampton girl born to two Jamaican immigrants who has always followed her passions for sport and media. Creating a space that's welcoming of women of colour especially black women in F1 has been a mission for Simone for a long while and Wheel It Up is a vessel that does just that.

“We are excited for the growth of Wheel it Up, we want to be trackside interviewing drivers, bringing our audience news, gossip, and having fun whilst doing it”

What is the biggest challenge you are facing in your role, business, or project right now? How are you tackling it?

So one of the biggest things that we're facing at the moment for my podcast, F1 is trying to find a time where we're all free to record as we all have day jobs and all of us are busy women. We're trying to dedicate Mondays or Tuesdays to recording our podcast. But that can be challenging if we have other commitments and obviously work-life balance and whatnot. So that's one of the challenges in things and also trying to navigate a space. There are other podcasts that recently just come out as well and you know, they have some access that we don't have necessarily. So I guess for us it's just trying to grow our audience organically and, attract new people that are interested in us and what we're talking about around Formula One on our podcast. I would definitely say scheduling our time has been something we try to overcome.

“Make sure you plan your episodes and what you want to do and talk about”

What is one piece of advice you'd give to someone starting out in their career and podcasting?

Make sure you plan your episodes and what you want to do and talk about. I know that some people can just wrap up and turn on the mic and say I'm gonna start podcasting my friends, but you actually have to have some thought process in that. So I'd say, there's a lot of planning that will go into it. Not just, okay, what are you going to talk about? But you also need to think about where you see your podcast going. What is the longevity of your podcast? Who are you trying to reach and the format of your podcast? So it's important that you think about all the different elements. If you have multiple people involved in the podcast, what kind of roles they play within your podcast? It's important that you plan your podcast before, during, and after.

What can we look forward to in the new season of your podcast?

Well, this is our first season of F1, having just finished the Sound Up Program 2022, whoop! And so what I would say you can look forward to, from our podcast is that we're going to bring you lots of fun, a little bit of insight into our backgrounds and our love for Formula One. Also some news, race reviews, obviously, because that's what the podcast is really about. We're gonna bring different elements in terms of content that we haven't necessarily seen podcasts do. I won't say too much because we haven't started them yet. Still, we're hoping to attract people through the content that we're making and make it so that we don't try and alienate any new fans of other demographics. You could easily just switch on and listen and understand what we're saying.

“We're hoping to attract people through the content that we're making and make it so that we don't try and alienate any new fans of other demographics”

What's been the most influential resource of your career?

I would say the most influential resource has been my friends and my peers. My friends that are in the same career path as me. It has been very resourceful to ask them questions and lean on them, for advice to vent creative ideas. That's been a really good resource for me because we're on the journey together having similar experiences and sort of navigating the same space. And you know Issa Rae says, it's not always about networking up, it's about networking across.

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