Josie Smith: Living and communicating F1 and MotoGP (Part 2)

It doesn't happen everyday that you get to know and interview a person who worked both in Formula 1 and MotoGP. But this is exactly what happened to Palmen in Motorradsport, being myself lucky enough to get the chance to interview Josie Smith, who has worked in both series as Press or Communications Manager.

While in Part 1 we focused especially on her career in motorsports, in Part 2 we walked through Josie's opinion about the growing presence of women in motorsport, and AI and trends in social media communication. And there was also room for remembering Marc van der Straten, whom Josie got to know when she worked for the ELF Marc VDS Racing Team in Moto2.

Josie, what do you think about how the presence of women in motorsport has developed?

I think it's improved a lot. There's a lot more women in teams these days, to the point where I don't think there's a single team that doesn't have at least one woman travelling full-time with them. When I was growing up in the 2000s, the only women that I ever saw when I was growing up were grid girls. There are people that still that when women want to work in racing, especially in MotoGP, they want to work just as grid girls. And I have a lot of respect for the women that choose to be grid girls.

I admit anyway that we still work in a very sexist industry. MotoGP is a lot better for not being sexist about the people that work in it, but many men, among the fans, still believe that they know more than women, including those who have actually been in the industry. But sexism actually comes mainly from the fans. I've only ever experienced sexism in the workplace once, but in general no one in the paddock cares if you're a guy or a girl, as long as you're doing your job and you're not in the way.

We still see sexism in motorsport, despite the fact more and more women work in this field, often with important roles.

If you look at the side of the team you see during a race weekend, from Moto2 and Moto3 especially, you'll see at least three that are front and centre. One is Rebecca (Pesando, ed), who works for Red Bull KTM Ajo, and we also have Susie (Susanna Sola, ed) and Karina (Homilius, ed) who work for IntactGP. They're front and centre with the team, celebrating with them and always buzzing around with a phone in their hand or ordering team members around.

There's a lot of women who are just always there, but you see them only occasionally in parc ferme or garage. There are many women in hospitalities, for example, and many who are keeping it all going in the background. In general, the paddock is quite diverse and it's no longer a case of “this job's for this gender and this for this gender”. It's no longer surprising to find women working even as mechanic or data analyst. It’s a lot better than it used to be.

This also applies to racing, also with dedicated series such as the F1 Academy or, in motorcycle racing, WorldWCR. Do you think that having series only for women is a solution to bring more girls to motorsport?

I think it gives a good opportunity for women to showcase themselves in racing. With WorldWCR it's a bit more difficult, especially with the fact that they don't race at every WorldSBK round and also Superbikes isn't as popular as MotoGP. They've not really had that moment where they've really taken the step to go further. Ana Carrasco is now in World Supersport (after becoming the first WorldWCR champion in 2024, ed), but the Honda is not as good as some of the other bikes. It will be anyway tricky to see how much of it is the rider and how much of it is the bike.

With F1 Academy, at least, they have managed to get some really big sponsors behind some of the teams, but they also fall down on the fact that once they leave after their three years, the sponsors don't really go with them. They stay with the team that's in F1 Academy. However, you have the likes of Doriane Pin and Abbi Pulling showing that when they are going into other series, they can seriously compete against the men. Abbi Pulling is in GB3 doing really well against the guys there, and after being in the F1 Academy she has the ability to go to sponsors and say: “I won here, and this is what I can do”. And she’s building on that.

May this system lead to women racing on their own and being kind of separated from men?

Hopefully not. At the minute, the step of showcasing women is there , but I think no one is actually doing anything except for showing them in their categories. No one's managing to make the next step of helping them after they leave or taking a risk on having them into the World Championship, except for Ana Carrasco. The potential is there, but they definitely need to have an incentive in the same way that they're trying to get more non-Spanish and Italians into teams in the World Championship. They do need to start trying to get teams to take a risk by getting a woman rather than just looking at the top three in Rookies Cup and Junior GP and saying: “I will put one of them in.”

Going back now to communication, we have seen an increasing usage of AI when it comes to writing posts or preparing graphics. What do you think about this?

I don't use AI at all, apart from the background remover on the likes of Photoshop or Canva. I think that if you work in an industry like social media, that people are constantly looking for especially in bike racing, they are always looking for a way to cut money. I feel that if you start adding AI into your content, you're just showing that you can be very easily replaced by a couple of prompts on a phone, and you're just taking the way out of your job. I personally hate it.

In my opinion, the only good use of AI is in things like the medical side of things and some analytical side. I don't think AI belongs in social media and I hate seeing teams jump on the trends, because I also think that they see it as easy content. No one's actually looked up to see what has been happening with AI companies and what they do with the images. They forgot that if you're putting pictures of someone else into a machine that learns, that machine could easily be hacked. All you're going to do is give them the likeness of your rider and they can use it. They couldn't technically, but because you've said yes to the terms and conditions they can legally use it to do what they want with it.

It's actually quite frightening to see how many teams rely very heavily on AI. When a trend comes around, they're the first to jump on it.

As a communications manager, how comfortable do you feel with following trends, rather than making something original?

I like trends, but not every trend works for either team. I just think that there is a time and a place for them. For me, it's better to try something original and get some low engagement than to jump on every single trend, because at that point you've just got loads of trends and no one actually knows anything else other than: “Yeah, they're just going to do these memes”.

A positive example I could mention is Racing Bulls in F1. They have a very good mix of what content they do. They do a lot of trends, but they also have a lot of fun with their two drivers, who are very young and actually fit the demographic of doing trends. However, they also get a big part of their personality out of them when they do it. They don't just end it at the trend and that's it: they do the behind the scenes, they do the fun little things where they're ragebaiting Liam Lawson every single race weekend. People love that, that's original and everyone's desperate for him to go back to Racing Bulls, so they can have more of that content.

As I said before, there is a time and a place for a lot of this stuff. I think that if your entire social media strategy is based on the latest trend, you are very quickly going to run out of willing riders, because they're going to hate it in the end. Moreover, you're not helping build your team brand and their brand either, because it doesn't show anything of them, except for the fact that their social media manager has been on TikTok.

If everyone follows the same trends, in the end you just see many posts that are like copy-paste. And creativity and human component start to lack…

It’s fun to have the riders do certain things, but when you see things like Johann Zarco, who is now 36, doing some of those Gen Z trends, I wouldn’t know how much it fits him, what's really going on or if it's just another bit of easy content.

When I worked in Formula One, the agency I was with also ran the social media of Aston Martin, so I worked quite close with their back-then art director Jimmy Horne. He looked at trends, but then he tried also something else, like trying to bring back the “turn your phone horizontal” thing. He tried some stuff that was actually going against what platforms were telling you to do, but still it was working for them. They were taking risks on what would be nice and creative, while still suiting the brand identity of Aston Martin. Sometimes it worked great, sometimes it didn’t. You just have to take the risk, because who knows…You may end up creating a trend yourself!

Moving towards the conclusion, since you worked for the ELF Marc VDS Racing Team, would you like to share a memory of Marc van der Straten, who sadly passed away during 2026?

One of my favourite moments was probably the Misano GP in 2025, when we were celebrating Sam and Catherine's birthday. We had Marc there as well and he was being funny as he usually was, and taking pictures of everyone in the team. When he was in the box or on the grid, he was constantly taking pictures of everyone. He was a lovely guy who absolutely adored racing, and wanted to capture every moment of it. It was really nice to see how many of his old riders were there for the minute of silence in his honour. When you look at it, you realize that many MotoGP or WorldSBK riders raced for his team in the past. And they all remember him, which is amazing.

And to end our interview, Josie, here's the “Thank You Moment”. Who would you like to thank especially?

My biggest thank you would go to Ben Cowley (owner of the Pace Six Four, ed), for taking the risk of hiring me into Formula 1. He taught me so much and he essentially let me loose on the account of a now multiple F1 race winner (George Russell, as told in Part 1, ed). He's the one that took the chance when I know that still hundreds of people wouldn't do it now, because I never did the university route for it. I just had the love for the sport on my side, and it was enough for him to trust me. I've got quite far with that…So yeah, I thank him so much for everything.

Palmen in Motorradsport is grateful to Josie Smith for her time, and wishes her all the best for the future and the next chapters of her story in motorsports.