During his traditional pre race grid walk ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix on 7 June, Brundle approached Kim Kardashian with a microphone and his usual opening line: "Kim, Martin Brundle, Sky F1. How are you today? Are you enjoying F1?" Kardashian did not respond. Before Brundle could continue, members of her security team moved between them and steered him away from the group. Brundle, audible on the broadcast, said: "You don't need to push me, mate."
The clip went everywhere within hours. Kardashian had been in the paddock supporting Lewis Hamilton, with whom she has been romantically linked, and was seated with her sister Khloe. Whether she ignored Brundle entirely or simply did not hear him over the noise of a Monaco grid an hour before lights out became the entire debate. The footage shows her appearing to look past him and gesture in another direction before security closed the gap.
The reaction split along predictable lines. A significant portion of the F1 fanbase treated it as confirmation of a long running complaint: that the sport's celebrity culture, accelerated by the Drive to Survive era and Netflix's wider reach, has imported a kind of guest who does not understand or particularly care about the sport's own traditions. Brundle's grid walk is one of those traditions, beloved partly because it occasionally produces exactly this kind of awkwardness with people who do know who he is. Being physically moved by a security detail on a 28 metre wide grid is a different matter to the usual brush off.
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Others pushed back on the framing entirely. Some pointed out that Kardashian brings a level of mainstream attention to F1 that the sport's own marketing department could not buy at any price, and that a few seconds of an ignored greeting did not merit the volume of outrage it received. Former F1 driver David Coulthard publicly defended Kardashian in the days that followed, pushing back against the scale of the backlash. The debate, in other words, was not really about Kardashian or Brundle individually. It was the ongoing argument about what Formula 1 is for and who it is for, playing out over a four second clip.
The more concrete consequence arrived the following weekend. At the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona, Brundle was absent from the gridwalk entirely. Sky Sports sent Karun Chandhok and Nico Rosberg to cover the segment instead, with Brundle shifting to commentary alongside Harry Benjamin. Sky Sports has not given a public explanation for the change, and Brundle remained part of the broadcast team for the race itself.
This is not the first time a Brundle gridwalk has produced this exact storyline. Megan Thee Stallion's security stopped him mid interview at the United States Grand Prix in Austin in 2021, an incident that led F1 to formally ban bodyguards from the grid entirely, on the stated grounds of space rather than etiquette. Usher avoided him in Saudi Arabia. Mbappe's security told him to back off in Monaco the year before. Brundle's own response to all of it, on social media after the Austin incident, was characteristically good natured: he said he did not mind being ignored, pushed, or called names, and had not asked for any change to grid protocol.
The grid walk survives because these moments happen. Whether Formula 1's current audience wants it to keep surviving is the more interesting question buried underneath the clip.
Sources
- Yahoo Sports — Kim Kardashian's Viral Monaco GP Moment with Martin Brundle Divides F1 Fans
- GPFans — Sky F1 scrap Martin Brundle gridwalk after Kim Kardashian controversy
- GPFans — Fans call for Kim Kardashian F1 ban as row rages over Brundle snub
- Motorsport.com — David Coulthard defends Kim Kardashian after Martin Brundle Monaco GP grid walk backlash
- ESPN — F1 bans bodyguards from grid after Martin Brundle, Megan Thee Stallion interview
- AOL — Martin Brundle shunned by Usher on F1 grid walk in Saudi Arabia
