fanatic

ESPN F1 app

Who we worked with:
ESPN
What we did:

Strategy UX Design Build

ESPN F1 app

Formula 1 is the highest form of motor racing & attracts a global audience of almost half a billion people, making it one of sports broadcasting giant ESPN’s key pillars of content.

ESPN wanted to make a sexy new mobile app for die-hard Formula 1 fans. Something that went beyond merely reporting results and rankings. It needed to have depth and beauty. It had to bring the entire story of Formula 1 into the hands of its users.

User-centric design wasn’t enough - this had to be FAN-centric. This was not a problem as several of the NV are massive F1 fans & to them this was as close to a dream project as it comes!

To start, we refined the established ESPNF1 brand for mobile with an elegant design & a slick coat of official ESPNF1 red.

We know that the love of sport goes beyond the bare statistics. With its modern interface delivering the entire F1 story from leaderboard to behind-the-scenes, the new ESPNF1 app delivers exactly what racing fans crave: happy immersion in the passion that they live and breathe daily. 

Driver and Team rankings look gorgeous. We chucked out the typical boring table of numbers’ approach and lined up drivers’ cars like an F1 starting grid. 

The Home Screen is a fluid canvas, prioritising whats relevant right now. Next race imminent? You’ll see the race calendar with details of the upcoming event. Between races? It shows the latest editorial.

True fans watch races live on TV; in Live Mode the app is your second screen’ with additional race commentary, a photo stream from ESPN photographers and live race data & track conditions reports.

Stuck in a meeting & dying for an F1 fix? A sneaky peek at the Home Screen shows whos in the top three positions and what lap they’re on.

Race schedules are even converted to your local time zone - indispensable as races are held across 19 countries!

Truly an F1 fans’ best friend.

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The stories behind the stats

Between races, get your daily F1 fix with rich editorial following the human drama, personalities and controversies of F1 racing.

  • High quality ESPN content updated daily.
  • News, articles and video.
  • Magazine-style features with slick photography.
  • Easy to scan in mobile-friendly, readable chunks.

Live mode

We recognised that true F1 fans are going to have their eyes on the TV during live races, so we designed the app to function as a useful ‘second screen.’ Content is grouped into Hubs, and is easy to navigate via intuitive left/right swiping controls: e.g. in Calendar view swipe backwards to see the previous race results, or forwards for upcoming race details.

Stuck in a meeting? A sneaky peek at the Home Screen shows whos in the top three positions & what lap theyre on.

Circuit diagrams

We even re-drew the official circuit diagrams in a more elegant style, removing superfluous elements to reveal the unique shape and personality of each track.