RaceFans is the new name for F1 Fanatic – here’s why

RaceFans

Posted on

| Written by

I am excited to reveal the rebranding of F1 Fanatic as RaceFans and our new home is racefans.net.

You can read why the old name was replaced here. So the obvious question is: why RaceFans?

Hopefully the name does a good job of telling you who the site is aimed at! But there is more to it than this.

My aim is for RaceFans to be an independent and accountable source of motor racing coverage whose first priority is the fans of the sport.

Many of you have told me, particularly over the last 12 months, you are concerned about the dwindling number of original, independent motor racing news sources.

It’s not difficult to see why. When I first began writing about F1 much of the coverage was offline. Now there is huge online coverage but it’s not just the specialised motor racing press seeking fans’ attention.

Now they might read or watch it on the sport’s official website or get news directly from the teams on their social media accounts. Meanwhile other titles have consolidated in the hands of a few owners. And several of these have become ‘official media partners’ for championships. This has all put independent sites under increasing pressure.

At the same time the costs of covering motor sport have continued to rise and the income from traffic has fallen. That creates a temptation to exploit outrage for clicks when the goal should be to understand and explain.

Some of you have already begun to help us solve this problem by funding the site directly as F1 Fanatic Supporters – now RaceFans Supporters. This vital source of income has helped the site grow and following the major new addition to our writing talent this year I hope more of you will consider contributing to the site directly – and getting ad-free access.

Through this I believe we can create the kind of original and genuinely insightful motor racing coverage we all enjoy. And I hope the reasons for changing the name are now a bit clearer.

The original name of the site described who it was written by. The new name of the site describes who it is written for. We are for RaceFans.

Go ad-free for just £1 per month

>> Find out more and sign up

New RaceFans social media account details

The new name and branding are being rolled out across our social media presences at the moment. Areas of the site are also being changed and you may continue to see some references to ‘F1 Fanatic’ while these updates are put in place. Thanks for your patience.

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

Got a potential story, tip or enquiry? Find out more about RaceFans and contact us here.

118 comments on “RaceFans is the new name for F1 Fanatic – here’s why”

  1. Good luck with the new name, Keith.

    1. @viscountviktor Thanks very much.

      1. Why not RaceFanatics? was it taken?

      2. Then there’s that new software release by the government to spot and remove fanatical websites. It just removes anything with the word fanatic in it!

        1. Well maybe we should remove the word “FANATIC” from the dictionary alltogether!

          Crazy world nowdays!

    2. @keithcollantine

      I hope all goes well on the changeover Keith – good luck with future developments.

      I know your not a two wheel guy but perhaps the occasional MotoGP review would be even more inclusive?

  2. Sooooooo your gonna continue the legacy of multiple news entries over the same news nugget?

    Way to start off the domain.

    1. I know what you mean, there’s a couple of reasons why I chose to do this in two stages.

      The first was from a practical point of view to flag up to make people aware that the change was about to happen and the site was about to change, potentially before their eyes if they were browsing it at the time.

      The second was to address the difficult of making a change like this and presenting it in a way which made it acceptable to people. We all remember the reaction when F1 revealed its new logo last year. I hoped that by explaining why the change was being made before revealing it that might ensure a more positive response (a process which began a few weeks ago when it was first mentioned).

      1. Don’t understand what’s going on. Can’t access forum pages or my messages without being directed to the dashboard. Don’t know how to fix this.

        Is the forum section now dead?

        1. Same here @keithcollantine the forums display but the actual topics link to the WordPress dashboard.

          1. @redmist @glynh Afraid there’s a technical problem there arising from one of the changes, it’s being worked on.

          2. @keithcollantine Any news on when this could be fixed by??

      2. Well done, @keithcollantine. As someone who does branding and design professionally, I applaud your well thought out approach.

        You told us several weeks ago to expect a change in name and reassured us at the time that little would change beyond that and any changes would be for the better. Then you announced the change would be happening iminently, then you changed it. Each time you gave a comprehensive, but concise explanation of what was going on and what to expect.

        You and @dieterrencken are exemplar and I am glad for the changes!

        1. @jmwalley I agree. I’ve been coming on here as long as I can remember. Nowadays, as I have less time to devote to reading motorsport news it’s the ONLY place I come. It’s nice that the effort was made to let us in on this gently!

          The work done by @keithcollantine in those years is massively appreciated and I’m happy to see these new changes. Although personally I find the new logo a little on the bland side. Good luck for the season and the future mate!

  3. Great idea. I check F1 Fanatic every day and now I’ll check racefans.net every day. Best F1 website there is. I’ve already changed my bookmarks.

    1. Ah but no longer an F1 website, but a racing website. I’m only interested in F1 not really into greyhound or horse racing.

      1. I want coverage of the race to Mars.

  4. I like the new logo!

  5. Like the new name. Good Luck!

  6. I am now a RaceFans Fan. I like it Keith.

    1. No we have all been retrograded from fanatics to ‘simple’ fans. Probably because many of us admitted to skip a few races the last seasons…

      On a more serious note, I join someone else saying that the ‘fanatic’ in the name was striking, easy to remember and link to this particular thing. I am quite sad to see it disappear but It won’t change the quality of the site nor my addiction to it.
      I Like the new logo, same spirit with some modernisation along the way.

      The biggest transformation challenge awaits most F1fanatics which will have to change their habits and type ‘rac’ before the automatic fill in picks up in the address bar instead of ‘f1f’…

      1. This particular site *

  7. I was a bit worried when I first heard about this but having read the reasoning and the plans going forward it’s very reassuring that this will be the same as always, if not even better.

    I might not agree with all your views but this is still my number 1 site and if you can keep up the quality of articles and community then I’m sure this place will continue to go from strength to strength.

    Best of luck and maybe I’ll finally get round to subscribing now. :)

  8. Ohhh…. it feels like when Worldcarfans.com change to Motor1.com ……. hmmmmm ……well, okay, good luck

    1. They lost me as a reader when that change occurred. Not only the name stank but the killer for me was the new (horrible) web design.

      Motor1 sounds like a motor oil not a news website.

  9. I don’t like how American it sounds. No one using British English would call themselves a race fan. Motor racing fan, yes.

    1. www stands for WORLD wide web, not British wide web.

      It makes sense for someone who wants to further his world wide audience.

      1. Michael Brown (@)
        13th February 2018, 1:35

        @the-last-pope @bamboo It hasn’t even been a day and we’re already arguing over wether this is a British site or not

        1. @bamboo
          Why should a site that wants to be seen as more global, sound like an American site?

          I just can’t help imaging only a loud american “race track” announcer using “race fans” in a sentence.

          1. Thats your opinion that you are trying to treat as concensus.

            You are being pedantic. How about encouraging Keith?!? Hes stepping outside of his comfort zone and taking a risk.

          2. Most countries that don’t have English as a first or second language (most of the world) use American English, as they learn it primarily off TV and cinema, which the USA dominates.

          3. Down Under ‘race’ is perfectly fine!
            Can’t wait for the Melbourne Cup reviews ;)

    2. Ambrogio Isgro
      13th February 2018, 8:56

      Wow what a big issue. As an italian I’m sooooo worried about how british, American or australian a name sounds, really…

      1. Could’ve been RaceTifosi…

    3. @the-last-pope, but can you imagine making a name like that work in an url though? “Race” is nice and short.

      And yeah, since the website is not especially British (as Keith explained in one of the reasonings about what would change – losing the co.uk part), it just originates in the UK. But other contributors as well as us fans, off course, are from all over the world!

  10. Kinda wish you’d called it RaceFanatics, but I’ll definitely still be here. This has been my go-to F1 site for years & it’ll take more than a name change to make me run away. All the best!

    1. Yeah, I like it better too. Maybe it was already trademarked by a supremacists stock car fan.

    2. Yes. But also – it shuold be singular.
      RaceFanatic = the website
      RaceFanatics = the forumers/community members, it sounds like a name for a forum about fans.

  11. Keith, thanks for the explanations and transparency of your difficult decision making process. As a web designer/consultant I know how momentous web branding can be for any business, especially a web based business! This is not easy.

    Glad your site has grown as it has. It speaks to your excellent, consistent content and attitude in covering racing sports that we all love so much, or we wouldn’t be here.

    I am extremely grateful to have found your site probably around ten years ago. Years before that I scratched and scraped for F1 news wherever I could find it on the internets. Found quite by accident the now long defunct f1forums.com which was an old school BB forums site. Had a good many like minded F1 fans, some true hard core types and a few loonies. That was how I found autosport/atlas et al and read there until they shed the majority of their readers with a rather high paywall. Then tried some of the other sites who generally had so many animated GIFs as to make their content unreadable or some just had poor content or very infrequent updates. Then, F1Fanatic to the rescue.

    Best wishes for continued growth and development to benefit us, your readers and you too. I’m glad to be a supporter of this site and will continue to be in the future. Thanks for your dedication to racing and to your readers!

  12. Thanks for all the work all those years! I loved F1Fanatic and I’m sure I’ll love RaceFans. Big respect for not putting your content behind a paywall, as is the norm in other motorsport sites lately.

    Long overdue, but as a “welcome gift”, I’ve subscribed to Racefans Supporters! Best of luck!

  13. eager to watch this show,,,,

  14. So, is the new name homage to the legendary Brabham BT46B?

  15. Congratulations @keithcollantine Onward and upward and thank you so much for all you do.

    1. Rushed that a bit…meant to add I love the name change and your reasons for it.

  16. ace ans.net :-) cute.

  17. Why not RaceFanatics? Or something like that.

    1. Motorsport. I think racefanatic.com banned by my ISP. Why in the new age of equality we still applaud race anyway? :)

      1. Ah, good point about that one @ruliemaulana. And I saw someone mentioning many governments also scrutinizing everything with “fanatic” in it. I can see how combining it with “race” might pull a few of the wrong strings for attention!

        1. what?

          where do you guys live in?

    2. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
      13th February 2018, 5:06

      RaceRomantics to celebrate Valentine’s Day!

    3. RaceFanatic.net = PERFECT

  18. A huge step forward. Congrats! Updating the bookmark!

  19. Love it, let’s get this show on the road! :)

  20. I love it regardless of its name.
    But I am more of a F1 “Race fan” than an F1 “Fanatic”.
    Good Luck Keith.

    1. But I am more of a F1 “Race fan” than an F1 “Fanatic”.

      You’re also painfully literal about it.

      1. “Painfully”

  21. Yes (@come-on-kubica)
    13th February 2018, 1:29

    Will have stuck with this site even if I didn’t like the name. Good work as always @keithcollantine

  22. This will still be the only site I visit for F1 news. But now, it looks like it will include more news from other categories so it will become my one stop shop for motorsport. I’m less fussed about the name than the content, so looking forward to the new F1fanatics-slash-race fans website.

  23. Keith – I think the favourite icon (favicon.ico) is still showing F1 and not RF.

    Congratulations on the rebranding exercise – the new name is yet to sink in mentally (I didn’t find the round-up on the home page because I was mentally scanning for the phrase “F1 Fanatic Round-up”!).

  24. Works for me. As long as I’m redirected when I type in F1F….as I have every morning for the past 20 years!

    1. Your browser is ‘smart’ enough that after 1-2 visits it only requires ‘ra’ to suggest this site.

  25. racefans.com is still out there, not sure why the .net

    Anyway, I’ll be visiting the site every day no matter the name!

    1. racefans.com is still out there

      it’s taken (since 1999), and probably quite expensive.
      write them to find out: tj4rz6z78kf@networksolutionsprivateregistration.com

    2. in adition to what Egonovi mentions, I also think that the .net is more neutral and international. Afterall the .com originates from the extenstion for US commercial sites.

  26. Not loving the name but wont stop me from visiting :-)

  27. Live long and prosper, @keithcollantine!

  28. Interested to see how the site expands and what series end up getting covered.

    Best of luck with it all!

  29. Awesome!! I’ve been visiting this site since ‘09. The best place to get racing news and updates. Congratulations on your success Keith!

  30. Michael (@freelittlebirds)
    13th February 2018, 4:59

    @keithcollantine I like the new name but I’m curious as to what made you choose the plural version of fan over the singular which you had used before. I find the singular more compelling especially when it comes to racing but that’s just my personal opinion. The logo is also cool.

  31. Travis Oreali (@)
    13th February 2018, 5:13

    Keith, do we have to sign up for a new subscription to RaceFans or will the F1Fanatic one transfer over?

    1. I’ve just signed in via http://www.racefans.net using my f1fanatic sign-in, if that’s what you mean. I’m sure the ad-free subscriptions have been duplicated over as well.

      1. @travis @nickwyatt Yep there’s no change there and you’ll get an email to that effect shortly.

  32. Understand the change although not so nice to lose a dedicated F1 site.

    1. @balue The website itself hasn’t been lost, though.

  33. Well done and congratulations. This is a great name, and it will soon be as familiar as F1 Fanatic.

    Great choice (and explanation) Moving to a ‘global’ domain (. net).
    Personally, I am only really interested in F1. But if you want to continue to widen the reach, then this name is perfect. And as you mentioned that you will continue to focus on F1 I am sure that this will remain my home.
    Personally not a fan of the logo. Especially the byline does not seem to work (difficult to decipher on a mobile screen). But any logo (change) will turn the whole world into experts giving free advice; just remember the F1 Logo change or the upcoming discussions about car liveries.

    I might become an official supporter again. The issues I had when I decided to stop being a supporter, and when moving from a registered contributer to anonymous are maybe not resolved yet (@KeithCollantine knows the background). But hey, everybody deserved a second chance.

  34. Thanks Keith.

    While I am not the biggest fan of the new name, I understand the reasoning and will still be coming here as my first source for F1 news. I don’t come here for a name, but for the high quality content you and the other contributors put so much time and effort into.

    Keep up the good work!

  35. Excellent news. well done and more power to your (and Dieter’s and all the other’s) elbows.

  36. Good move Keith. Smart and elegant. I’ll keep on being a Fanatic of RaceFans ;)

  37. This is amazing! Love the new name. Also, here’s hoping you start introducing articles about motorcycle racing. Since the name now is not about just 4 wheeler sports anymore! All the best to you Keith! :)

  38. Don’t really care about the name, just the content, which I have been following for the past 10 years or so, although under a different name.

    As a website owner I know it is important to have a catchy name that conveys the intent to the visitor, so I do understand the name change.

    And I really do appreciate this still being an independent news source unlike some others I follow (ed) closely. Keep up the good work.

  39. @keithcollantine Congrats on the new name and rebranding. Keep up the good work!

  40. Is this also because of trademark or copyright claims from the F1 management? I can remember that f1technical had to make some changes to the logo by request of F1 management a few years ago.

  41. Congrats @keithcollantine… and goodluck.

    I am sure the rebranding will bring with it even bigger success !!!

  42. @keithcollantine

    Will f1fanatic.co.uk redirect to racefans.net indefinitely?

    Good luck with the re-brand, I hope it brings you even more success!

  43. Great Idea. I myself have moved from being an exclusive Formula 1 fanatic to being more and more interested in other racing series, namely Formula e and LeMans, mostly due to the coverage this site has given to the other series. I am looking forward to more racing coverage and community engagement. Cheers!

  44. I wish you the best with this big change, Keith!
    I discovered F1Fanatic 8 years ago, and even if now I’m just lurking and following F1 with less intensity – especially since live coverage moved to satellite and paid subscription plans – this site remains my #1 source of information to keep updated about F1. Like good wine, it gets better with ageing. :)

  45. Be sure to have my continued support, I’m sure there is exciting things ahead in this new chapter!

    Question though: there are quite a lot of changes, also in user profile. I don’t find any section about messages, personal and mentions. But probably this will be up at some point?

  46. @keithcollantine

    So might MotoGP be covered here at one point as well? ;)

    1. Only when Alonso attends.

      1. The Quadruple crown. Includes winning the Spanish motoGP ;-)

  47. Don’t understand what’s going on. Can’t access forum pages or my messages without being directed to the dashboard. Don’t know how to fix this

  48. Why not something like “triplecrown” “theflyinglap” “hotlap” “racinginstinct” “racersedge” “fanspirit” racefans is okay. Racinglap

    1. I quite like “theflyinglap.net” or just “flyinglap.net” (I wouldn’t have to worry about breaking the habit of typing “f” into my browser address bar), but am guessing we’re way beyond suggesting names now.

  49. Good luck with the new direction Keith.

    Maybe chuck a forum competition to design a better logo though?? Not having a dig but there’s lots of us who would like to contribute in our own little way and you might just like what we come up with. ;)

  50. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
    By any other word would smell as sweet”

    Its the content that’s important, what’s there to be upset about?

  51. @keithcollantine, good luck with the new era. That’s a very nice new logo. And the name is short and straight to the point, so perfect. I haven’t branched out into following any other motorsport than F1 – probably because I fear getting as hooked! – but all your thinking makes a lot of sense. And I do read all your output, so I am slowly learning about other stuff.

    To those arguing about what else the site could have been called, I say: it really does not matter – you get used to any name because you associate it to the thing you love. Who ever thought “Virgin” was a good name for a company, or “The Beatles” for a band. It’s irrelevant. They could have been called “The Ladybirds” and they would have been equally as successful.

    And to those of you who are not contributing to the site and can afford to, then you really should. Let’s help RaceFans grow whilst keeping it’s top-notch quality! This point is worthy of a separate post, @keithcollantine. I am sure no-one would begrudge a little self-marketing. In fact, it’s in all our interests that the site gets more funding.

  52. The new logo is excellent! Good luck :)

  53. Try signing to F1 access, What is that you can’t because it’s undergoing maintenance….. I wonder what that could possibly be about ;)

    Hint, https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*xGNVMFqXXTeK7ZyK2eN21Q.jpeg

  54. Cool but split the title evenly (4 letters each side) and add IST you have a good description of Russian Football supporters.

  55. Well done Keith, completely understand why you have done this. Now, make everyone who posts register! This will ultimately root out the trolls who post under multiple user names. You haven’t been particularly targeted but it will happen, it seems the underlying nature of the internet. Best of luck in your endeavours mate. Long live the Keiths!

    1. Sorry, should have added @keithcollantine

  56. I wish you a good start and good luck!

    One more thing, don’t change your account picture Keith , just for the “old” days.

  57. Name change or no name change, the intentions (or rather, the heart) of this website and the guy who created have always been in the right place. Good luck and proud to be a supporter :)

    1. Oh and the reason I visited F1F for the first time in 2007? I was specifically told by the owner of http://www.thescuderia.net to go running to a certain @keithcollantine if I felt that his website was too heavily biased and that Ferrari could certainly do without more “critical” fans like me :)

      Never regretted that one bit since that day.

  58. That management is gone now ;)

  59. Change is scary. Been visiting since 2008, hope to still be around in 2028. Good luck Keith.

  60. At least their are still a few reminders of how things used to be in the good old days before it turned into a generic sport news site : https://www.racefans.net/favicon.ico

  61. I don’t like the name itself, but if the content remains the same the name doesn’t matter.

  62. I love the site but I’m not sure I like this new name. It is a bit similar to racefans.ru and also race-fan.com Hey-ho we will probably get used to it.

  63. Good luck with the change! This site is one of few that I have visited almost every day for the last 5 years. Really nice work so far.

    I don’t know why, but since the change of domain name the the text size of articles and comments have become annoyingly big and it’s not possible to zoom out either. Is this something that will be addressed?

  64. Hmm. The new name doesn’t have a nice ring to it like f1 fanatics did. Any reason why “race fanatics” was not chosen?

  65. I can’t access any of the forums – any ideas folks?

  66. Very confused when I landed on your homepage just now. Had to reload the page to make sure I didn’t go to the wrong place!

    Congratulations on the rebrand though. Hope people like it more than the new F1 logo (which personally I don’t mind. Some people just don’t like change)

  67. Much success Keith.

Comments are closed.