When Lando Fans Created Landostand Online

"The Blobs Project" design by @landosixteen

It was 2025. Skyla, a 23-year-old Formula One aficionado from France, secured her ticket for the British Grand Prix. The ticket was not like any other. That year she got to support her favorite driver Lando Norris at his home race, from a seat in the Landostand, the new grandstand at the Silverstone Circuit in England dedicated to the British-Belgian driver.

The Landostand had been a long time coming. The official account of Silverstone had made the announcement months before the race. When the ticket sales finally went live, over 10,000 people, including Skyla, sold out the grandstand in mere minutes. But as the race weekend came closer, a realization dawned on her. "I saw so many mutuals on Twitter being sad because they could not be there." 

Norris was in a tight run to snatch the 2025 World Drivers' Championship title. His ambition was matched by the size of his global fanbase, which reached well beyond the fans who could easily get to Silverstone. "Well, we kind of have to make something to make everyone feel included, right?" Skyla told Twibbonize during our interview last Tuesday (7/7).

She got on her iPad and sketched an idea for something that anyone could do to support Lando no matter where they were. Thus, just ahead of the 2025 British GP, the first Blobs Project was born.

A random moment that sparked affection

Formula One was relatively new for Skyla. Her grandfather used to have the races on, but she never truly tuned in to them. Then, in a random moment in 2023, clips of Charles Leclerc from the Ferrari team made it to Skyla's X (formerly Twitter) timeline. The Monegasque driver caught her interest enough to start watching the races with full attention. "And from there I never stopped watching," she reminisced.

Skyla is no stranger to online fandom spaces, being a K-Pop and Ariana Grande fan herself. So Formula One Twitter isn't exactly her first rodeo. She got a new account for this new interest, @landosixteen, and she made new mutuals, the term for people who follow each other on social media. One of them, she said, even became her best friend.

But there is a reason why she started liking the McLaren driver Lando Norris, even though Leclerc and Ferrari were the ones who pulled her in. Norris, more often referred to as Lando by his fans, is committed to advocating for mental health awareness. He debuted as an F1 racer when he was only 19, and that took a toll on him. From such a young age he had to face judgments from the F1 audience, high expectations from others and himself, as well as the demands of the sport itself.

For Norris to unashamedly talk about his internal struggles resonates with people who live far from the circuits, people just like Skyla and us. "I struggled with it at some point in my life," Skyla spoke of her personal experience, "and having someone speaking about it so freely, it's really important." We witness a bond forming through visible authenticity. This is a connection that runs deeper than driver and audience. It is two people recognizing the human side of each other.

The first Blobs Project

Back to the opening scene, Skyla was packing her suitcase to attend the British Grand Prix 2025. She uploaded her Blobs design as a PNG file straight to her X profile, and then she was hit with questions and requests from other Lando fans who wanted to put the blobs on their profiles but didn't know exactly how.

Then one of her mutual F1 friends, lnfourwdc, reached out and offered some help. "She was like, I got you," recalled Skyla of their interaction, "[I'll] put it on Twibbonize and it will do it for you."

The shared link that helped the project blow up – @lnfourwdc

The result? Over 6,000 people joined in the campaign. Norris stood on the podium in first place, holding the British GP trophy. He even went on to win the World Drivers' Championship title in 2025.

Conveniently pre-made branding

The 1999-born driver is known as a sort of unfiltered person who likes to toss out offhand one-liners. His honest demeanor often comes off as comedic, and it seems to be a factor that either draws people in or throws them off. Nonetheless, Norris understands that his personality is a selling point, and he constructed his branding around it.

His pre-made palette, a distinct shade of fluorescent yellow that fans simply call Fluro, paired with the blobs, makes it convenient for fans to whip up paraphernalia in his signature look. In Norris's case, you could easily tell that someone is a "Lando fan". This easy identifiability does not automatically transfer to any other driver currently in F1.

Backlash and more Blobs Projects

For all the love, the first year was not entirely gentle. The 2025 Blobs Project had arrived in the middle of the championship. Everyone was tense, hoping for their favorite drivers to accumulate the most points and take the crown. Skyla remembers it plainly. Being a Lando fan last year, she said, was not for the weak.

The hostility was not just between the drivers. It came for the fans, and it came for her. "Last year, I received so many hate messages and death threats just for making the frame," she said, still sounding a little stunned. "This is a bit much, to send actual death threats to people just because they made their profile picture for a race."

Fans of another driver even took her blobs, pasted their own driver on top, all without a word to her. "I was kind of icky about it," she admitted. It was not making a similar campaign that bothered her. It was being passed over for a design that she made. "At least you could have asked. I would have said yes, because [the Twibbon]’s not a competition. But, you know, just the principle of asking."

So this year she designed her way around the problem. Instead of one frame that fans could fight over, she made a half version, a frame built to be combined. If someone wanted to support two drivers at once, this design would let them. "[Making Twibbons] is not about competing against each other," she said. "It's just about community and being close to one another and feeling connected to each other."

By the time the second Blobs Project came around in 2026, a few days before the most recent British Grand Prix, the mood had shifted. Norris is now the reigning World Drivers’ Champion, after securing the title in Abu Dhabi last season. "This year there's less hate, I would say, about him and about his fans in general," Skyla said.

It was a calmer thing to run in other ways too. She had time to sit with the design until she was happy with it, and she now knew the platform she had stumbled into the year before. "I made the frame. I know when to post it on Twibbonize," said Skyla, laying out her plan, "so it aligned with the race weekend." Where the first launch had caught her mid-packing and overwhelmed, this one she could simply post. "This year, everything went very smoothly, so I'm really happy."

The project drew recognition. "Max Fewtrell, he's one of Lando's best friends, he saw [the Twibbon] and mentioned it," Skyla recalled of the campaign’s 2025 run. Fewtrell is also the managing partner of Quadrant, a gaming and lifestyle brand co-founded by Norris. This year, Skyla got to meet him during the British GP 2026. "So it was, like, a big, big achievement."

How the Blobs circulate

The campaign did not begin with the platform. It began with a problem and a drawing. Skyla’s first instinct, a PNG posted to her timeline, was the version that was, quite frankly, inconvenient. People had to download the file, open an editor, and paste it onto their photo by hand. The other option was to ask Skyla or others for help. This technical barrier undercut the whole point: that the blobs were meant to include every Lando fan.

It took a mutual dropping the design into a Twibbonize link and sharing that link to turn a picture into something a stranger could join in a single tap. "I don't think that many people would have joined," Skyla admitted, "if everyone had to paste it on their profile."

Six thousand supporters in 2025, two thousand in 2026, when read simply as a graph, it looks like decline. But the first was a debut that caught fire in the middle of a championship war. The second was a community that came back on purpose, for a race that mattered to them. That shift in mood may be the reason why the campaign keeps coming back. Its pull was no longer the fervor to see Lando win, but the wish to relive the fun they had started together.

In fact, more Blobs Projects followed. Skyla made another one on her own account to mark Norris's 2025 championship win. More rippled out across the years: one made just before Norris took the trophy, one for his Race Against Dementia support, and one for the Las Vegas GP, just to name a few.

“That’s my people!”

The Blobs Project was created to alleviate the feeling of not being there. Yes, one can join Formula One Twitter, forums, or group chats as if sharing the same space with those watching from grandstands. Skyla's Twibbon, however, deepens that sense of belonging with an identifiable sign.

“Anyone can join!” – @lnfourwdc

The Blobs Project, true to its name, was one big group project where everyone felt they belonged. It's no wonder that after the Silverstone race many people on X felt like they were leaving a physical place behind when changing their profiles back to Fluro-less ones. Even bre and diana, two of Skyla's mutuals, made collages of people who supported the project and helped make it a success. Skyla, too, wrote a heartfelt message to recap the project.

"From Landostand and around the world" – @sportybreezy

These Fluro blobs that undeniably read as Norris brought together Formula One enthusiasts who wanted to see the man succeed. The recognition runs both ways, it seems. Skyla recalled how every time she saw anyone in Fluro during the race weekend, she would think they were just like her.

“Who said Landostand can’t happen on here too” – @flurofour

Skyla felt it linger even on her journey back from Silverstone. A train to London, another to Paris, then a plane home, and at every leg of it the color kept appearing. "Every single step of the way, I was seeing people in Fluro," she said. "Even after the race ended, I was like, that's my people. That's my people!"