The Few F1 Drivers Who Actually Do Pilates

Every season, the same loose line makes the rounds in some fitness article or social thread: “F1 drivers do Pilates.” It almost never comes with a name attached. It almost never comes with a quote. It’s exactly the kind of claim this magazine exists, in part, to not repeat without checking — so we checked it.

The one who actually says it, by name

One case holds up without qualification: Lewis Hamilton. In an interview with Men’s Health Australia about his off-season training, the driver said it in these exact words:

This isn’t a generic nod to “core work” — a phrase that shows up in dozens of driver profiles without anyone naming a method. It’s Pilates, by name, from the driver himself, published by an identifiable outlet. That’s enough to include it here; anything less, and we wouldn’t.

The best-documented case — and it’s not from the current grid

The second case that survives scrutiny is older but more detailed: Susie Wolff, former Williams F1 test driver and now managing director of F1 Academy. In a profile by British magazine The Gentlewoman, and in posts on her own social channels, Wolff has described a training week that includes 75-minute strength circuits on some days, 90 minutes of Pilates on others, and one session a week dedicated specifically to her neck. These are two distinct parts of the same routine, not one thing: Pilates handles core and mobility; the neck is trained separately, for a very specific reason explained below. It’s worth being this literal, because it’s easy — and would be inaccurate — to collapse both into the more clickable line “she does Pilates to handle the corners.”

What we won’t claim

This is the uncomfortable part, and the one that actually separates a feature from an aggregator headline. Looking beyond Hamilton and Wolff turns up names that keep getting linked to “F1 + Pilates” without surviving the same check:

• Sebastian Vettel: several fitness sites claim he “incorporates Pilates,” but none quote Vettel himself or his trainer, Antti Kontsas, naming the method. Without an attributable quote, we won’t state it as fact.
• Carlos Sainz: the only reference we found to “pilates reformer” came from a gossip-toned short video, with no journalistic sourcing behind it. Discarded outright.
• Logan Sargeant: there’s a quote from him about “core, glutes, and hamstrings” work, but no original text confirms whether that refers to Pilates or another discipline. Not assumed.
• Valtteri Bottas, Daniel Ricciardo, Kimi Räikkönen: their trainers (Antti Vierula, Michael Italiano, and Mark Arnall, respectively) have spoken publicly, and in detail, about neck strength and core stability — but none of them ever use the word Pilates. It’s core training, not Pilates by that name, and the difference matters.

None of these cases is a lie. They’re simply not enough to publish as confirmed. The generic trend — “many drivers train the core in ways similar to Pilates” — is reasonably widespread in the paddock; the specific claim that a given driver “does Pilates” only holds up, today, for two names.

Why a driver’s body asks for exactly this

The reason the neck occupies such a specific place in an F1 driver’s physical prep isn’t aesthetic: during heavy braking or a fast corner, the head and helmet — which together weigh around seven kilograms — end up carrying, in effective force, several times that, with lateral loads that F1-specialist outlets place at around five G. Withstanding that, race after race, without muscle fatigue or neck pain, demands exactly the kind of isometric work and postural control that Pilates has a long track record with outside motorsport. Performance consultancies like Hintsa Performance, which have worked with F1 drivers and teams, describe that same approach to movement control and core work in their programs — though, again, without using the word Pilates in their public materials.

It’s a logical, defensible connection, and probably more common in practice than two names can prove. But logic is one thing and published evidence is another. Movente would rather stand on two solid cases than ten rumored ones.