Formula 1 looks glamorous on TV, but the job is relentless in real life. Drivers live in airports, spend hours in simulators, and get judged on tenths of a second. Point being, the off-track stuff surely matters.
Below are a few hobbies that keep F1 drivers sharp and a couple of well-known F1 names around the paddock.
Casino Nights, Card Tricks, And Switching The Brain Off
David Coulthard has been linked to charity poker events during the Las Vegas GP week. He spoke after a charity poker event that was linked to an F1 sponsor activation in 2023. For Verstappen, leaving Las Vegas with a win might change how he feels. It's a nice reminder that the paddock doesn't just turn off when people play golf or watch Netflix. Though sometimes it's still a race, this time with chips instead of tires.
That’s where the idea of a high limit casino lands as more than a throwaway flex in motorsport culture. These are sites that remove caps on deposits and withdrawals and leave most of the responsibility on the player, instead of the platform enforcing guardrails.That mindset maps cleanly onto F1 people, because drivers and top-level racers live in a world where the margins are tiny. And just like F1 still has hard limits, the same applies to individual casino games with built-in maximum bets.
Interestingly enough, Fernando Alonso is famously into magic. Specifically, card tricks and sleight-of-hand. Formula 1 has even highlighted Alonso’s magician hobby and how he treats it like racing. It needs preparation, concentration, and making something difficult look easy in the moment. You can see the official rundown here: hidden talents and off-track skills of F1 drivers.
Music, Fashion, And Creative Outlets That Aren’t “Race Brain”
Lewis Hamilton notes how deep his interests run outside the car. He co-chaired the Met Gala in 2025 and used the event to bring attention to Black designers. He also runs his own record label called +44. Some of the money that comes in goes directly to his Mission 44 foundation.
As an activist, he started The Hamilton Commission and released a full report in 2021 that was all about getting more Black people into motorsport and engineering careers in the UK.
Drivers with creative hobbies often describe the same benefit. It’s one of the few places where they’re not the driver. They’re just a person building a skill from scratch, with no stopwatch attached.
Sim Racing And The “I Can’t Stop Competing” Crowd
Not everyone relaxes by slowing down. Some relax by doing the same thing in a different format. Max Verstappen is the poster child here. He's known for putting in a lot of hours in sim racing, even when he's not at a Grand Prix. There is still racing, making choices, and looking for small gains. Only now it can be done while travelling or doing work for the media. For a driver like Verstappen, this is something he does for fun.
Also, F1 today feels different from how it did 15 years ago here. Sim racing isn't just a game anymore. It's close to training. It's a group with a lot of competition. And drivers can race there without having to worry about their safety.
The “Fit Freak” Hobbies That Keep The Engine Running
Some hobbies are less surprising because they’re basically cross-training with better scenery.
A lot of drivers lean into endurance sports and outdoor time because it’s practical. F1 demands neck strength, cardio, heat tolerance, and mental stamina. Cycling, running, hiking, and other athletic hobbies help maintain that baseline when you’re bouncing between time zones.
Carlos Sainz is a good example of a driver who is often called "sport-mad." F1 has talked about how his outdoor activities, such as cycling and golf, fit in with his other interests and keep him mentally and physically fit. To say it again, it's not about "being sporty" for Instagram. It's about making your body strong enough to last a season.
DJs, Social Hobbies, And Being Human In A Closed World
Lando Norris is a good example here since his off-track stuff tends to be social and interactive. Formula 1’s own feature on drivers’ hidden talents says Norris had a short DJ phase and even played a set at the official afterparty after the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix.
He did the same thing online, too. During the downtime during the pandemic, F1 showed Norris streaming to fans and taking part in charity events on Twitch, such as raising money for Stream Aid. He's also said that when the noise level gets too high, he'll not use the internet at all and instead do simple, grounding things like golf and training, because the mental reset is just as important as the physical one.
Conclusion
F1 drivers don’t have hobbies because it’s cute. They have hobbies because the job is intense, repetitive, and emotionally loud. The best hobbies do one of two things. They either slow the mind down or they move the pressure somewhere safer, like sim racing, endurance sports, and controlled competition like poker nights. If anything, the real takeaway is that even the fastest people in the world still need an off-switch. They just tend to pick hobbies that keep the edge sharp.