Formula E boss reflects on viral crash involving MrBeast

Formula E boss reflects on viral crash involving MrBeast

Formula E has come under fire for letting influencers race

Originally written by Sheona Mountford. This version is a translation.

Thursday 23 April 2026 19:00

Jeff Dodds has spoken about the impact of high-profile influencer appearances in Formula E machinery, including incidents involving MrBeast and Izzy Hammond.

The all-electric championship has been making a push to reach a younger audience, inviting online personalities and creators to get behind the wheel of its race cars.

Back in March 2025, MrBeast took to the track in a GEN3 Evo car but lost control early in his run, spinning and hitting the barriers just moments into his second lap.

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Again, in February 2026, YouTuber and daughter of Top Gear star Richard Hammond, Izzy Hammond, crashed as part of a Formula E influencer event in Saudi Arabia.

Speaking on the Business of Sport podcast, Formula E CEO Dodds defended the decision to include influencers and argued their relationship with influencers was good for sport.

How Formula E are attracting a younger audience

"If I spent my life just trying to convert motorsport traditionalists to come and give us a go, one, it would be very expensive and two, candidly, probably quite unfulfilling for us as an organisation.

"When we have this really raw, green potential fanbase out there who love sport, are interested in tech, interested in sustainability, interested in innovation, but maybe haven't considered this as something they would enjoy watching. We can either try and talk to those people directly, or we can talk to them through the things they care about and the things they care about are, often, influencers who they have a connection with.

"Last year we did the very first EVO session, the concept was pretty simple, which was we want to expose the sport to a new audience and we're going to get to that audience through some of the most followed people in the world.

"And we're going to get them to tell the story to their audience in a way that we know their audience connects with, because no one knows their audience better than these influencers. They're amazing at building communities.

"Last year, we had people like MrBeast involved in the championship, so the world's most followed YouTuber. MrBeast had a low speed crash last year, which was very good for us, so hundreds of millions of video views of our sport, through the eyes of people that have been given an opportunity to try a sport at an elite level with all the infrastructure that goes with that for the first time.

"Now look. What I would say is, the benefits were we grew our fanbase pretty considerably, we exposed the sport to new people, we exposed it to people who are potential fans of sport that just didn't know very much about us. We did it in a way that allowed us to maintain our personality and to be disruptive. Lots of benefits. We've decided to do it again. But there were lots of learnings as well."

Formula E