Running an AI photo booth at a Formula 1 Grand Prix

Here's what a fan wants at a Grand Prix: to feel, for one photo, like they're sitting in the car. That's the opening a sponsor has on an F1 weekend, and most stands walk straight past it. They hand out a lanyard or a foam finger and hope the logo sticks.

An AI photo booth does the thing the fan came for. A guest steps up, gets their photo taken, and in around a minute and 45 seconds they're holding a card that puts them in the cockpit in full team livery, with your sponsor logo on the sleeve and the bodywork at print quality. They keep it, they photograph it, and they show it to whoever's standing next in line. If you want the background on how the technology works, we cover it in our definitive guide to AI photo booths.

An F1 season is 24 chances on five continents

The calendar runs about 24 races a season across five continents, from Melbourne and Suzuka to Miami, Monaco, Silverstone, Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi. Every weekend hands you three different crowds. Trackside fan zones are packed and fast. The F1 Fan Festival drops the sport into a city center and pulls in people who never bought a ticket. Paddock Club is the VIP room, smaller and slower, where a guest expects something that feels premium.

One booth format covers all three, because the guest experience stays the same while the setup flexes. Same card, same speed, different room.

How companies are running F1 activations

Walk a Grand Prix and you see every approach at once. PUMA and Ferrari turned a historic Milan tram into a rolling 20-minute fan experience through the city before the 2025 Monza race, the PUMA Tifosi Tram. Formula 1 has dropped the entire grid into a city center, like the ten teams that packed Trafalgar Square for F1 Live London in front of a six-figure crowd. ExxonMobil works the hospitality side, with VIP guest experiences, driver Q&As and on-track access for partners. And as official partner of the British Grand Prix, Santander built an interactive stand at Silverstone with a replica F1-car sofa and games that put fans up against real drivers, along with an AI photo booth that put the fans in a picture with the driver.

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What we've run at motorsport events

We build these for a living, and motorsport is where the cockpit-card idea earns its keep. We ran the AI booth for Lenovo's F1 activation, a motorsport brand activation with Paramount+, and a dedicated F1 hospitality booth for the paddock-club end of the weekend. On the trading-card side we put IndyCar fans in their own driver cards for the IndyCar AAA activation, and built a Motorsport Driver card engagement for the Black Book Motor sport forum. The pattern holds every time: the fan does the thing they came to the track to feel, and the sponsor's logo goes home in their pocket instead of a bin.

Livery, cockpit, logo: styling that looks like the sport

Generic AI filters look generic. This one is built from the sport's own look: the car, the cockpit, the team colors, and your logo placed where your brand team signed off rather than wherever an app decides. The finished card prints in a display case and sends as a share-ready file, so a fan gets the thing on the shelf and the thing they post. A foam finger ends up in a bin by Monday. A card with the fan in the cockpit stays on a desk.

Speed is what makes it survive a queue. Figure on around a minute and 45 per guest end to end, with the AI image itself generated in about 30 seconds and staffed booths built for high throughput, so the line keeps moving even when a grandstand empties all at once. The generation happens on-site, so nobody waits for a card to arrive by email a week after the race. If a photo booth isn't the right fit, the same idea works as a printed AI trading card activation, which is what most of our motorsport work is built around.

The card is a data capture fans actually want

A foam finger tells you nothing about who took it. A card does. The fan enters an email or a phone number to get the share-ready file sent to them, so the thing they most want to keep is also the thing that hands you an opted-in contact. You leave a Grand Prix with a list of people who chose to engage with the brand, not a clicker count of how many walked past. For a sponsor measuring return on an F1 weekend, that's the difference between "we had good footfall" and "here are the fans who asked us to stay in touch."

Choosing the format for your weekend

The three crowds want three slightly different things, and the booth flexes to each:

• Trackside fan zone: high throughput is everything. Staff it heavy, keep the styling on one or two hero looks, and let the line move.
• F1 Fan Festival: you're reaching casual fans in a city center, so lean into shareability. The file that posts matters as much as the card that prints.
• Paddock Club: fewer guests, higher expectations. Slow it down, add a premium display case, and let VIPs sit with the result.

Same technology, same two-minute experience, three setups. That's why one partner can cover a whole season without rebuilding the activation for every race.

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Data, rights and brand safety

Motorsport brands live and die on their marks, so nothing about the output should be left to chance. Logos, liveries and team colors are placed to a locked brief, not an app's guess, and the generation runs on infrastructure built for enterprise activations rather than a consumer app. Guest images are handled with consent and clear data terms, which matters when your booth is sitting under a global sponsor's name. We wrote up how we approach this in enterprise-grade security for AI brand activations.

Frequently asked questions

How long does each guest take?

The AI image generates in about 30 seconds, and the full photo-to-printed-card workflow runs end to end in around a minute and 45, all on-site so no one waits for an email after the race.

Can the cards match a specific team's livery and our sponsor branding?

Yes. The look is built from the sport's own cars and colors, and your logo is placed to a brand-approved brief rather than dropped wherever an app decides.

Does it work trackside as well as in hospitality?

One format covers trackside fan zones, the F1 Fan Festival and Paddock Club. The guest experience stays the same while the staffing and setup flex to the crowd.

What does the sponsor actually get out of it?

A share-ready card that fans keep and post, plus an opted-in contact for every guest who asks for their file, which turns footfall into a measurable list.

Planning your own activation? See our AI photo booth and AI trading cards.

Bring it to your Grand Prix

If you're planning an F1 activation, whether it's a trackside fan zone, a Fan Festival stand or the Paddock Club, we can put your guests in the cockpit and your logo in their pocket. Talk to us about your event and we'll show you a sample card in your own branding.