This post was originally published on Audible.com.
Move over hockey, there’s a hot new sport taking over romance libraries. Formula One romances are booming right now. Maybe it’s the fact that F1 drivers are super hot, or the thrill of cars racing at dangerous speeds, or the exotic race locations such as Monte Carlo and Costa del Sol. Whatever it is, in the new Audible Original romance The Winning Formula, you get to experience all three.
Australian author Cara Veloce’s debut is a pulse-pounding love story between F1 engineer Sienna Skye and driver Finn Di Santis. Their reluctant working relationship turns into something more as they travel the world and fall in love while trying to win a Grand Prix, taking listeners on an exhilarating ride behind the scenes of one of the world’s top F1 teams. I asked Cara about the inspiration for her story, how she researched the technical aspects of F1 engineering, and what appealed to her about writing an audio-first romance.
Find more high-speed thrills in this collection of Formula One romances.
Margaret Hargrove: Cara, The Winning Formula is your romance debut. It follows a Formula One engineer and driver who have a reluctant working relationship that turns into something more. What inspired you to write a romance?
Cara Veloce: I’m a hopeless romantic stuck in the crosshairs of a love for F1, so it was a no-brainer. The high-octane setting of F1 is the perfect place for drama, tension, and passion. I love the idea of a sports romance that loves the sport as much as it loves the romance, and I hope those dual loves come across in The Winning Formula.
The audio for The Winning Formula is incredibly immersive. You can hear the cars whizzing around the track, the sound of the crowds cheering, and the crackle of radio comms between the engineer and driver. What appealed to you about writing an audio-first romance?
What’s not to love about this writing scenario? It’s real theater-of-the-mind stuff to think beyond just words on a page. You really get a sense of connecting directly to an audience with audio—your words will be communicated in a very specific way to the listener, and there’s so much freedom (and terror!) in that dynamic. Writing for audio was as adrenaline-fueled as the love story between Sienna and Finn. Knowing that the voices in my head were going to turn into real people through gifted actors was a blast. The production values and soundscapes in The Winning Formula are extraordinary, and only Audible makes such brilliant, immersive worlds for storytelling. F1 is full of thrum, verve, and the screech of hot rubber, and listening to our two lovers banter back and forth against this soundscape just heightens the stakes as it brings their story to life. This excitement and the world-building is pure listening pleasure for both the audience and this writer! It will be hard to go back to writing for the regular old page.
You have a wonderful full cast, led by content creator and podcast host Maddy MacRae and actor Ryan Corr. Did you have any involvement in the casting? Can you share any details behind the narration?
The casting was managed by Radhiah Chowdhury, the EP behind The Winning Formula. She initially had me writing with a dream cast in mind to really get into the characters of Sienna and Finn, especially. The cast we ended up with is a real who’s who of Aussie talent. With audio romance, it’s all about the voices, of course. Sienna is the voice listeners will project themselves into, so she needed to sound warm and inviting, someone the listeners will relate to and love. That really encapsulates everything about Maddy MacRae. Finn is the object of desire. I’m told the shorthand for that kind of voice is "pants voice"—it bypasses your brain and settles straight into your gut and stays there. There’s no better way to describe what Ryan Corr is doing with his performance.
"Writing for audio was as adrenaline-fueled as the love story between Sienna and Finn."
The casting was a joy, and hearing (and sometimes watching) the actors in full stride was simply next-level. Both Maddy and Ryan have taken the characters to new heights, and in turn made them incredibly real and fulsome people—the listeners will love the dynamics, the playfulness, and the intensity between them. We get to eavesdrop not only while they’re falling in love, but also while they’re chasing their dreams, coming to terms with their grief, and connecting with each other and the rest of the cast. The ensemble cast are stellar and brought so much to each character, creating something completely elevated from what was on the page even in the shortest scenes. I am in awe.
Your heroine, Sienna Skye, is a race engineer for one of the world’s top F1 teams. Can you talk about the research you did to learn about the technical aspects of her career?
Sienna Skye is quite simply my hero. She is serious about her pursuits and her career arc, just like every single woman I know. Race engineers have a fascinating role to play—I did a huge amount of research listening to some of the top engineers, both female and male. These deep dives into the team dynamics are part of the reason we all love the sport of F1. We did so much work crafting an entire backstory for her—where and how she grew up, who her parents are, who her mentors are, where she went to uni and what she did there in order to shape who she is when we first meet her. Her voice came to me loud and clear, and I feel like she’s someone with an entire life beyond the pages. I hope she’s a STEMinist icon for the ages.
To really get into Sienna’s head, I also researched aspects not only of engineering and car design, but power, torque, and the outstanding insights into data that engineers bring to their teams and their drivers. It’s given me a new appreciation for just how much goes into the machines and strategy beyond what you see on the racetrack. And paramount in all of that is the relationship between engineers and their drivers.
"I’m incredibly proud that the actual F1 part of "The Winning Formula" is as real and immersive as the romance ... The race radio conversations are ones you could easily hear during any Grand Prix, and the technical chatter could be ripped straight from an F1 strat room."
Who Sienna’s going to end up being is almost as important as who she is during the story, so that was definitely part of the research, too—what’s the career trajectory for truly gifted engineers in the F1 sport? Sienna’s ultimately gunning for that Technical Director gig, and I definitely think she’ll get there. Getting there with a sexy, talented driver who loves her as much as she loves him is just icing on the cake!
Sports romances are hugely popular, and Formula One romances are trending right now. In fact, according to a 2024 report, Formula One has emerged as the sixth-most-written-about subgenre in sports romance. What would you say sets The Winning Formula apart from other F1 romances?
I’m incredibly proud that the actual F1 part of The Winning Formula is as real and immersive as the romance between Sienna and Finn. Obviously, we have to take a bit of license for fiction, but you wouldn’t believe the level of detail and research that went into making the plot as real as it could possibly be. The race radio conversations are ones you could easily hear during any Grand Prix, and the technical chatter could be ripped straight from an F1 strat room. Just look at how Finn wins the final race in the story and how Lewis Hamilton won the 2024 British GP—I like to think we wrote that into existence!
And the reason we got so deep in the weeds with the research is to make the romance feel incredibly real and high-stakes as well. The world of Formula One isn’t just convenient set dressing that we’ve thrown into the mix; rather, it gave us a really strong frame in which to put the two lovers as they navigate the highs and lows of falling in love within the intense pressure of their respective professions.
The Winning Formula is the right story for right now, and the Audible storytelling world is a full immersion into everything we need from this subgenre! From the swoon-worthy banter between our star characters, to the incredibly real world of the pit and the paddock, this is going to be an F1 romance like you simply haven’t heard before!
What’s next for you? Would you write another F1 romance set in this same world?
I would love to continue in this world. The multiverse in The Winning Formula is ripe for further exploration, and there are a few other players that I would love to find love, maybe even with each other!
