Reagan Hamilton: My Driver Card Story

As part of Fan Appreciation 2024, we’ve reached out to some of our most engaged fans to find out why they follow Williams Racing.

Fans have been invited to share with us their Driver Card designs on social media. We’ve reached out to some of those that have and they have been so generous with their time, sharing their stories with us.

We feel it’s right that the wider motorsport world should get to hear them as well, so welcome to the “My Driver Card Story” series.

Williams has played a huge role in my Formula 1 fan experience! I had followed the team for a while, but my first big interaction with the team itself was at the 2024 Season Launch in New York City. It was at the launch where I met my best friends. We were there from 7am, hoping to see the car unveiled in person, to 9pm after an unforgettable day with the team and the drivers.

Throughout the day, the team were so incredibly kind to all of us. They regularly came out to check on us to see how we were doing (since we were sitting on the sidewalks of New York City in early February weather). We had fun chats with team members and spoke to them about working in Formula 1, as we were all interested in it. At one point the team even brought us out Williams-themed donuts!

The group of us made friends with a kid named Will who we were in line with the whole morning and the team allowed him to come into the launch and watch from the front row! He met the drivers and even got to sit in the car itself. We were so incredibly excited for our new friend and so impressed with how much the team cares about their fans.

We were able to meet the drivers later in the day and were still so impressed with how organised and kind all of the team members were. Ever since that day, we became known as “The Williams Girls” since we constantly talked about how amazing the team was for fans! We even started the catchphrase “Where there’s a Williams there’s a way”.

Our Williams story continued via interactions with the team on social media up until the Miami GP. In Miami, our group visited the Williams Fan Zone daily and got to know the team members even more. Once again, we were so impressed and pleased with the way the fans were treated by the team!

For many of us in our friend group, this was the first Formula 1 Grand Prix we had ever attended and the team made us feel so welcome. It was amazing to see the two drivers that had created our friendship drive in person. During the Miami GP weekend, I also had the opportunity to meet F1 Academy driver Lia Block! This was a huge moment for me as I have followed Lia forever and I was so excited when it was announced she had joined the team!

Since then, we have continued to support the team, going to other races like Silverstone, and we’ll soon be at COTA, as well as showing our continued support on social media. After the season launch, our friend group created a motorsport podcast called The Pit Lane Yappers, where we discuss and recap the race every weekend. Some of us met Alex in Miami and were lucky enough to have him film a video shouting out the podcast which was very full circle for us considering we met because of the team!