Formula 1 WAGs: Wives and girlfriends of racers show what happens when speed meets style

SINGAPORE – It was a twittering crowd that welcomed professional golfer Lily Muni He at a closed-door dialogue in Marina Bay Sands on Oct 6.

Over the course of an hour, the 27-year-old fielded questions about golf, fashion and her famous Formula 1 (F1) driver beau, Alex Albon, from around 80 curious attendees, the youngest and bluntest of whom were six-year-olds from the Singapore Golf Association.

Currently ranked 436 in women’s golf, He is an athlete and celebrity in her own right and one of the most high-profile romantic partners on the F1 grid.

“What is your boyfriend’s name? When will you have a baby?” asked one inquisitive child, to laughter from the adults in the audience who picked up on the innocent traditionalism of the questions.

The China-born, US-based putter answered sportingly that she would sooner get a dog.

Her fast-track career on the green began when she picked up the sport aged five. She qualified for the US Open at 15, went professional and won her first tournament at 19, and joined the LPGA Tour – the major league of women’s golf – at 20.

Speaking frankly about her decision to quit college and go pro early, He said: “Looking back, I was a bit young. (When I turned pro) I was no longer competing with the best girls under 18 or around my age, but people that I have looked up to my entire life, who have been on tour for over a decade. That was a really steep step... I could have enjoyed being an amateur golfer for a bit longer.”

The pressures faced by young women golfers were different then, He explained. There was the threat of early obsolescence relative to male golfers and the inability of college athletes to sign brand deals without losing their sports eligibility, a state of affairs now rectified by American sports law.

“I probably didn’t make the best judgment (call), but I don’t regret it at all because I’ve had a very fun journey on tour,” she said.

Kid golfers peppered her for specifics about her game: If she could use only one kind of club, what would it be? When did she bag her first hole-in-one? Her best-ever score in 18 holes?

Her answers: a wedge; when she was 15; 60 in a practice round and 61 in competition, respectively.

Mothers quizzed her for tips on doing sports tiger parenting right. But it was the non-golf questions from He’s young women fans in the audience, and the moderator’s interest in He’s stylish F1 race looks, that confirmed her celebrity cachet went well beyond the course.

Because when the phalanx of F1 drivers take to the Marina Bay street circuit for the Singapore Grand Prix on Oct 9, eyes will be trained not just on the men in the fast cars, but also their partners in the paddock – the wives and girlfriends of the racers, also known as WAGs.

WAG season

The WAG acronym first appeared in the British tabloids in the early aughts, attached to dishy accounts of profligate shopping and partying by the partners of the English football team, chief among them former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham.

These days, the sexist term has been reclaimed with a degree of playful camp, said Soh Kai Ruo, pop culture scholar and lecturer at the National University of Singapore’s Department of Communications and New Media.

The spotlight has also expanded from football to American basketball, F1 and tennis.

Vogue US called this summer, stuffed with the NBA playoffs, US Open and more, “WAG season”. Meanwhile, American influencer Jordyn Woods, girlfriend of Knicks basketball player Karl-Anthony Towns, went viral in June for her lucky handbag, said to guarantee wins for the Knicks.

On He’s part, the profile boost from F1 – and its attendant opportunities in fashion – is most welcome.

“F1 is such a glamorous sport and being able to work with different brands to come to races like Singapore is really fun. I never really thought of being a part of the fashion world, but now I’m getting all these cool opportunities and I feel like a nerd because I love clothes – the history behind them, how they’re made, the details. It makes my heart happy,” she told The Straits Times on the sidelines of her MBS dialogue.

He, who has been dating the Thai-British racer since 2019, has a reference point in golf. The sport, with its staid reputation, just does not have the same visibility or entertainment cachet, she added.

“I feel really lucky,” she said. “The number of young female fans I’ve gained in the past few years is something I’m really grateful for. I think everyone has benefitted from the (F1) attention and it is the coolest thing to get to support Alex and go around the world and watch him thrive.”

Her more than 1.5 million-strong Instagram following multiplied more than six times after she met Williams racer Albon.

Soh traces the ascent of F1 WAGs to the explosive popularity of Netflix documentary series Formula 1: Drive To Survive (2019 to present). Young female viewers became interested in motor racing and drivers’ partners, propelling them to tastemaker status, he said.

Influencer Alexandra Leclerc, wife of Ferrari racer Charles Leclerc, has built a following of more than eight million in total on Instagram and TikTok around her interests in art history and fashion. Rebecca Donaldson, girlfriend of Williams driver Carlos Sainz, has seen her modelling work “magnified on a viral scale”, added Soh.

But there is a patriarchal undercurrent when WAGs are reduced to the men they date or marry, said Soh.

“This creates a complex tension. On the one hand, these women deal with intense micro-scrutiny, where their individual careers get pushed into the back seat. On the other hand, they exert genuine agency by using a male-dominated sporting arena as their own creative platform.”

Fashion love

Much of the attention on this coterie is trained on their clothing. Magazines and style-stalker pages on social media cover what these women wear and fashion brands have pounced on dressing them, supplying outfits for races and appearances. Some WAGs even front brand campaigns.

Home-grown footwear brand Charles & Keith placed shoes and bags with four of these women during the Singapore Grand Prix 2025.

In 2026, it is co-hosting a private fireside chat on financial literacy with newly minted entrepreneur Carmen Montero Mundt, fiancee of Mercedes driver George Russell. In July, it named local F4 driver Kareen Kaur a muse.

“Motorsport’s fastest-growing audience today is Gen Z women – a shift that’s reshaping who brands like ours want to speak to and how,” said a brand spokesman.

WAGs give brands “access to a highly engaged, values-driven audience” through channels outside the conventional fashion marketing apparatus, said Charles & Keith. Visibility around race weekend is a “nice by-product”.

That WAGs operate and offer aspiration outside traditional fashion circles is the key to their brand friendliness, said Aaron Kok, fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar Singapore.

“You may never read a fashion magazine or follow fashion news, but if you follow football, F1 or basketball, these women are already appearing in your FYP,” he said, referring to TikTok’s For You Page, which pushes personalised content.

Without being the athletes themselves, these WAGs give brands access to the audiences around sport, while “retaining the freedom to foreground clothes, beauty, travel and lifestyle, in a way that the player often cannot because of contractual obligations”, said Kok.

The phenomenon is part of fashion’s growing embrace of sports. The recent run of fashion weeks, known colloquially as fashion month, is mighty proof.

Eight elite athletes, including women’s tennis world No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka, walked the Vogue World runway in September. Filipina tennis player Alex Eala attended the season’s hottest ticket, Chanel’s Paris fashion week show, on Oct 5.

Said Kok: “We see athletes such as Naomi Osaka, Alex Eala, Lily Muni He, Eileen Gu and Angel Reese become increasingly credible fashion figures, rather than simply sportspeople who happen to wear clothes.

“WAGs are an extension of that same ecosystem.”

As the city-state gears up for some head-spinning F1 this weekend, The Straits Times rounds up a cheat sheet of the women you might spot in town.

Lily Muni He

Lily Muni He is a professional golfer and fiancee of Williams racer Alex Albon. The 27-year-old first picked up a club aged five and has played on the premier women’s professional golf circuit, the LPGA Tour, since 2019. She qualified for the US Open at 15.

She was born in Chengdu, China, and relocated to Vancouver, Canada, with her family when she was seven, before they settled down in San Diego, America. She attended the University of Southern California, where she also played varsity golf.

On the green, He has a reputation for composed and sound technical play. Off the green, she is a rising style star, featured in fashion glossy Vogue Hong Kong’s August 2025 issue. She gained a following online for outfits she posted to Instagram even before she went pro as a golfer, she told style site Who What Wear. That following now stands at nearly 1.6 million on Instagram.

He’s love for vintage designer threads is well documented, with a particular passion for sporty late 1990s to early noughties Prada and Miu Miu. She has worked with American jeweller David Yurman and done an advertisement for fashion brand Calvin Klein.

She even tapped Singaporean fashion photographer Zantz Han to shoot her in one of her most precious archival finds, a 2003 Roberto Cavalli qipao.

Alexandra Leclerc

Alexandra Leclerc (nee Saint Mleux) is a big-time fashion influencer, art lover and, since February, wife of Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc, who races for Ferrari. The 25-year-old is based in Monaco and has French and Mexican roots.

Her following is massive: 5.6 million on Instagram and 2.7 million on TikTok. Her paddock looks are closely watched, with Alexandra Leclerc gamely altering her wardrobe to suit the so-called theme of Grand Prix host cities. In 2025, she wore a Chinese-style Roberto Cavalli Spring/Summer 2003 dress with a Judith Leiber dragon bag and Christian Louboutin kitten heels at the Singapore Grand Prix.

She is pregnant with her first child and making waves for her dressy baby bump looks, including an archival newsprint Dior dress.

Unsurprisingly, she is a fashion and beauty brand darling. Leclerc has collaborated with American socialite-model Hailey Bieber’s beauty brand Rhode Beauty and Australian fashion label Meshki on limited-edition collections and was on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar Turkey in April. In addition, she attended French brand Jacquemus fashion shows in 2025 and 2026.

She studied art history at L’Ecole du Louvre in Paris, specialising in 20th-century art. Before becoming a content creator, she reportedly worked as an art assistant at an auction house. She has served as a moderator during Art Basel Hong Kong and done public relations for an art gallery in Monaco. She currently runs a personal, art-focused Instagram page.

She launched a fund to support women artists and Mexican children through education, music, and arts programming in 2025 called The Corazones Unidos Fund.

Rebecca Donaldson

Scottish model and entrepreneur Rebecca Donaldson, 31, is the girlfriend of Spanish driver Carlos Sainz, who competes for Williams. They have been dating since 2023.

When she was 17, her mother secretly entered her into a regional beauty contest. She went on to win the Face of 2011 competition, kickstarting a professional modelling career that has landed her on runways and the covers of Vogue Ukraine and Marie Claire Mexico.

She launched an activewear brand called Muse in 2020. “I was spending many days and hours during (the Covid-19 pandemic) lockdown feeling a little purposeless,” she said in a 2021 interview with Vestd. “So I decided to pursue my dream of starting a clothing brand.” Its current status is uncertain as the brand’s Instagram page appears to have gone dark.

She briefly dated American reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian’s ex-partner Scott Disick in 2022. Though her partner is one of the biggest names in F1, the couple are private about their relationship.

Carmen Montero Mundt

Carmen Montero Mundt is the business-minded fiancee of British driver George Russell, who races for Mercedes. The 28-year-old Spaniard, who worked in investor relations and consulting, is a style influencer and founder of Barriers, a skincare brand.

According to her LinkedIn profile, she graduated from the University of Westminster in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in business management and finance. She also holds a diploma in asset allocation and risk management from the University of Geneva.

She has spoken about how her father’s bankruptcy during her childhood sparked her interest in finance.

“I decided to learn as much as possible to never be in this position again,” she said in a video for financial literacy platform Female Invest.

Tiffany Cromwell

Tiffany Cromwell is an Olympic cyclist and girlfriend of Cadillac racer Valtteri Bottas. The 38-year-old Australian is one of her country’s most experienced professional cyclists, racing at an elite level for close to two decades, a period during which women’s cycling matured from a nascent sport to an organised international competition system.

Cromwell has raced major European classics, represented Australia at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and later expanded her career from road racing into gravel racing, becoming a gravel pioneer.

She finished 26th in road racing at the Olympics, the best-placed rider of the Australian squad at the event.

Sixteen years after going pro in 2010, Cromwell is now calling time on her road racing career, announcing in early September that this racing season would be her last.

She owns a vineyard home with her Finnish boyfriend in McLaren Vale, South Australia.

Kim Kardashian

One of the most famous people in the world is technically a WAG. Kim Kardashian, 45, the American reality TV star-turned-business mogul and founder of shapewear brand Skims, confirmed her relationship with Ferrari racer Lewis Hamilton in June after their first public appearance together in February.

In the early 2000s, Kardashian had a modest public profile as a closet organiser for hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton and as the daughter of Robert Kardashian Sr, the defence attorney in the O.J. Simpson trial.

She and her family launched to mainstream fame in 2007 with the premiere of their reality TV show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians (2007 to 2021).

Her third marriage, to American rapper Ye in 2014, eased her entry into high fashion. That same year, she famously “broke the internet” with her nude Paper magazine cover, generating 15.9 million views in a single day.

Kardashian, who divorced Ye in 2022, is now better known as a business magnate. In 2019, she launched Skims, which has evolved from a trendy shapewear brand into a lifestyle business.

According to fashion industry publication Business of Fashion, the firm hit a valuation of US$5 billion (S$6.4 billion) as at November 2025, outstripping traditional competitors. Skims has since expanded into activewear through a partnership with Nike.