For context, if you missed it: Formula E partnered with Arcade Media to bring eight content creators to Jeddah yesterday. They got to drive the GEN3 Evo around the same circuit that hosted a race the week before. The event pulled 5.8 million views on the stream.

The criticism came fast, and it came loud. Here were some of them:

→ The marketing timeline was too short
→ There wasn't enough training content beforehand
→ The creators were somewhere between 10-15 seconds off professional pace
→ It diluted how difficult these cars actually are to drive.

Some of that criticism is completely fair and worth taking seriously. Announcing your creators a week out doesn't give you nearly enough time to build proper mindshare with casual fans unless people are already following Formula E closely, which most of these creators' audiences aren't.

The Sidemen Charity Match, which Arcade also works on, gets promoted months in advance for exactly this reason. Long-form storytelling ahead of the event is what makes it stick in people's minds and turn a one-day activation into something people actually remember and care about.

The GP Explorer comparison is also completely legitimate and worth learning from.

That event had training camps, coaching sessions, test days, and content at every stage of the journey leading up to the actual race. It drew millions of viewers across multiple countries, and French national TV broadcast it live. More people showed up at the track than attended most Formula E race finales.

The key difference between the two is that GP Explorer was creator-led from the very beginning, meaning the storytelling and content strategy came from people who already understood how to build anticipation with their audiences.

Evo Sessions are Formula E-led, which changes the dynamic and places the burden of storytelling on a property that's still figuring out how to reach audiences beyond traditional motorsport fans.

The storytelling before and during the event could have been much richer if they'd thought it through properly.

Show how difficult these cars actually are to drive weeks in advance. Set benchmarks that give people context. Show the gap between creator lap times and professional lap times in a way that makes that gap the actual story instead of something to hide from or be embarrassed about.

The difficulty is genuinely the most compelling part of the whole thing, not a weakness that needs to be managed. I am not shy about giving my own criticisms of Formula E, as I wrote in my newsletter a couple of weeks ago.

They should be applauded for the risks they’re taking, and the criticisms are regurgitated talking points that miss the point of what Formula E is trying to do here.

The loudest complaint I keep seeing all over Reddit and Twitter is some version of "this would never happen in F1, IndyCar, or rally, especially not at a circuit that just hosted professionals the week before." That statement is absolutely true, but it also completely misses the point of what Formula E is trying to build.

Formula E isn't trying to impress existing motorsport fans with events like this.

They're not trying to win over people who already watch racing every weekend and have strong opinions about driver development pathways and technical regulations.

They're trying to reach people who have absolutely no relationship with the sport at all, people who've never watched a race in their lives and probably never will unless something gives them a reason to care.

The creators of those cars have built and held the attention of millions of people for over a decade. Their audiences aren't watching Formula E on Saturday afternoons. That's precisely why they're being invited to get behind the wheel in the first place.

The other argument I keep seeing repeated is that sim racers or motorsport YouTubers should be in these cars instead of general content creators.

I understand the logic behind that thinking, but I'd push back pretty hard on it.

That's essentially the choir singing to the choir. You'd be marketing to people who are already adjacent to the sport or actively interested in motorsport content.

You wouldn't grow your fan base by a single person who wasn't already aware of or interested in racing. You'd just get better, more technically accurate content for the fans you already have, which is fine, but doesn't solve the actual problem Formula E is trying to address.

The most important part of this whole conversation.

For years and years, one of motorsport's biggest barriers to attracting new fans has been the perceived distance between the sport and everyday life.

You can't just walk up and get in one of these cars. You can't relate to what it feels like to drive something that fast and that difficult to control. The gap between fans and athletes feels almost infinite, in a way that genuinely doesn't exist in most other sports where normal people can participate at some level.

This has been regarded as motorsports' USP, but also its downfall. Maybe it’s time to drop the ego and recognise that anything not authentic doesn't diminish the value of the sport.

Nobody criticises tennis for letting amateurs pick up a racquet and play at their local court on a Sunday afternoon. You'll never be Novak Djokovic, and you know that going in, but that first time you actually hit a ball cleanly over the net and feel what that contact is like, you suddenly have a personal connection to the sport that wasn't there before you picked up the racquet.

That connection matters in ways that are hard to quantify but absolutely real. It's part of how sports build lifelong fans who care enough to watch matches, buy tickets, and follow players' careers. Right-holders no longer have decades to build fan bases.

What if Evo Sessions, when it's done properly with the right storytelling and build-up, is motorsport's version of that tennis court moment?

Not a simulation of what professionals do or an attempt to pretend these creators are anywhere close to professional pace, but a genuine attempt to close the gap between the sport and the people watching it from the outside.

The creators weren't trying to be racing drivers or prove they could compete. They were experiencing something that almost nobody in the world gets to experience, something genuinely difficult and scary and thrilling, and they took their audiences along with them for that experience.

That's not diluting the sport or making it less special. That's expanding who feels welcome in it and who can see themselves as part of the motorsport world in some way.

The concept behind Evo Sessions is absolutely right for what Formula E needs to do to grow. The execution just needs to catch up with the ambition, and I think that's completely fixable if they're willing to learn from what worked elsewhere.

Build the story months out instead of announcing it a week before.

Show the training process and let people see how hard it actually is. Show the fear and the progression from someone who has never driven anything remotely like this to someone getting strapped into a GEN3 Evo on a street circuit in Saudi Arabia.

Make the benchmark data part of the narrative instead of something to downplay. Show fans exactly how far off the professional pace the creators are and let that become the frame for understanding what's happening rather than pretending everyone's on the same level.

Build it into a repeatable series format with its own identity separate from Formula E races. Give it a competitive structure that makes sense, whether that's versus formats, time attack challenges, or something else that creates stakes and makes people want to come back to see what happens next round.

I'm sure Ellie and the Formula E marketing team are already thinking about exactly these kinds of improvements for next year. The instinct behind Evo Sessions is absolutely sound. The execution just needs time and iteration to match what they're trying to accomplish.

Which brings me to what I watched unfold at the Canadian International AutoShow two days before Evo Sessions happened.

The new ownership group for Canadian Tire Motorsport Park held their first public press conference, and honestly, it was one of the more encouraging things I've seen in Canadian motorsport in years. As a Canadian, I want to see more development in Canadian motorsport.

They haven’t announced massive immediate changes or made bold promises about transformation, but because of how they talked about what they're actually trying to build there.

The ownership group includes Chris Pfaff, who comes from auto retail and understands the marketing and entertainment side of the business. Pfaff Auto was my first step into automotive and my first big boy job.

There's also Alec Jacobson and Peter Leung, both bringing the kind of patient capital that actually lets you build something properly instead of demanding immediate returns. Canadian Tire is staying on as title sponsor, which provides continuity and shows they believe in where this is headed.

One of the investors said something during the Q&A that really stuck with me.

When someone asked about their appetite for making the kind of significant fiscal investments the track needs for infrastructure, accommodations, and attracting bigger race series, he talked about investors in terms of "capacity and willingness."

The group has both the financial capacity to actually spend what's needed and the willingness to invest in building something that takes time to develop properly. That combination is genuinely rare in motorsport, especially at the property ownership level.

But then he followed it up with something even more important.

He referenced Field of Dreams and said "if you build it, they will come" isn't always actually true in the real world. They want to make sure, before they build anything substantial, that they're really clear on what the business plan is and what actually makes sense for the property and the surrounding community.

That's the kind of thinking that builds something sustainable, rather than chasing quick wins that look good in year one but fall apart by year three.

The plan they laid out is genuinely ambitious but also grounded in understanding what the property can actually support.

They want to bring back outdoor concerts like CTMP used to host years ago. They're working on better camping experiences for race weekends. They're exploring building a facility where people can store their race cars and have them serviced on-site, which creates a community of regulars who actually use the track throughout the season.

They've already had discussions with NASCAR about bringing them back, which would be great for Ontario. They talked two weeks ago with IMSA about getting the GTP prototypes back to the track. They're open to vintage racing series and other categories that make sense for the facility and the audience they're trying to build.

Chris Pfaff talked about something that really resonated with me. He's passionate about using the track not just for racing driver development but for road driver training that actually makes people safer on public roads.

Teaching young drivers what it feels like when a car starts to spin out in a controlled environment, where they can learn to manage it. His own kids are going straight to the track when they start driving to experience the skid pad and learn car control before they're out on public roads dealing with real traffic.

That's the kind of thinking that expands what a motorsport property can mean to a community beyond just hosting race weekends a few times per year.

The government is clearly on board with supporting this properly.

The Ontario minister who spoke talked about CTMP as part of a $34 billion tourism economy that employs 300,000 people across the province.

They've already started discussions with Metrolinx about transit options to actually get people to the track from Toronto without requiring a car, similar to what they've done for the Canadian Open golf tournament.

That kind of infrastructure thinking is what turns a facility into a proper destination instead of something you visit once and never come back to.

One of the journalists asked about accommodations, which has always been a challenge for CTMP. There aren't a lot of hotels or places for teams to stay near the track, which limits what kinds of events you can realistically host there.

The ownership group is already talking to developers about what makes sense, whether that's building something directly on the property or working with the Township of Clarington to develop better accommodation options nearby that serve both the track and the wider community.

These are business people with real capital who genuinely love motorsport and understand they're taking on stewardship of something that matters to Canadian racing history. Ron Fellows owned CTMP before this and always talked about being a steward of Canadian motorsport heritage. This new group clearly takes that responsibility seriously while also understanding they need to bring real business thinking to how the property operates and grows.

The deal almost didn't happen without Chris Pfaff, the operator who would actually run the track day-to-day. That tells you something important about how they're thinking about this. It's not just about owning a prestigious asset. It's about having someone who knows how to operate an entertainment business and understands the marketing side, working with investors who have both the capacity and the patience to let that vision develop properly.

One of the owners mentioned they're first-generation Canadians. Another family has been here for multiple generations.

All of them talked about how important it was to them that this track stay in Canadian hands and get developed with Canadian capital.

The previous owners were apparently courted by multiple American buyers who could have offered more money, but they wanted to make sure it stayed Canadian, which is why this deal came together the way it did.

Formula E's Evo Sessions and CTMP's new ownership don't seem related on the surface, but they're actually teaching the same fundamental lesson about how properties grow successfully in motorsport.

The properties and series that are going to grow their audiences over the next decade won't be the ones protecting the sport from outsiders or insisting everything has to work the way it's always worked.

They'll be the ones finding genuine, creative ways to let people in and make them feel like they can be part of motorsport in some meaningful way.

Evo Sessions is trying to do that by literally putting non-racing people in the cars and showing their audiences what that experience is actually like. CTMP is trying to do it by expanding what a motorsport facility means beyond just hosting races, by building road driver training programs and year-round entertainment options and creating reasons for people to care about the property even if they're not die-hard racing fans.

Both need capital and people willing to let the execution catch up with the vision. Formula E needs to invest in the storytelling runway and content creation that makes Evo Sessions work properly.

CTMP needs investors who understand that building accommodations, transit infrastructure, and entertainment programming takes time and doesn't generate immediate returns.

The common thread is understanding that you can't optimise for short-term wins if you're trying to build something that lasts.

You can't announce creators a week out and expect it to land the way GP Explorer did with months of buildup. You can't expect CTMP to suddenly start hosting IndyCar races before you've invested in the safety upgrades and scheduling strategy that makes that possible.

You need people who have both the capacity and the willingness to build things properly, and you need to be honest about what you're trying to accomplish and who you're trying to reach.