"The drivers are the superheroes": How the team is brought to life in a Marvel comic
Writer Ethan Sacks on why Iron Man was the perfect teammate for Carlos Sainz and Alex Albon
Published
07 JUL 2026
Est. reading time
5 min
Comic spoilers ahead!
There's a moment in the new Atlassian Williams F1 Team x Marvel comic where a driver's car is attacked by Doctor Doom mid-race. With nowhere to go, they leap and a superhero catches them in midair. For writer Ethan Sacks, it's the panel he's most proud of, and it perfectly captures what he set out to do from the very beginning.
"It isn't just a dramatic beat," he says. "It's the two worlds coming together, them working as one."
That sense of collaboration is at the heart of the project, but getting there required Sacks - a New York-based comic writer who, until recently, had only a passing familiarity with Formula 1 - to do something he hadn't quite expected: fall in love with the sport.
"My introduction to F1 is very recent," he admits. Like many new fans, his gateway was Netflix's Drive to Survive, which he joined at the time Carlos Sainz was deciding which team to sign for midway through 2024.
"I did not really know Williams that well, certainly not the rich history yet. But the personalities of James, Carlos and Alex, were so interesting to me that I just latched onto that human drama."
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From there, the deep dive began. He watched races, researched the team and he discovered something that genuinely surprised him: just how many people go into what happens on track.
"When you're watching as a very casual fan, you don't fully appreciate it," he says. "The technical director's role, everything that goes into it before the races start, that was a real education. You think it's two drivers, and then you realise there are thousands of people back at a factory putting together two race cars."
Why Iron Man? Why Doctor Doom?
With the comic confirmed, Sacks faced a creative challenge: which Marvel characters could realistically share a world with an F1 team? His answer came quickly.
"Iron Man is the perfect hero to team with an F1 team. He's got the engineering, the cutting-edge technology, and there's an element of class that comes with F1, the champagne and the glamour - that's very much Tony Stark. Iron Man plus F1, and half the job is done."
For the villain, Doctor Doom made equal sense. "He's got wealth and technical know-how. If he was going to put together a rival team, that would be exactly the villain you'd want, someone who craves a world championship and has the means to pursue it."
There was also a practical reason, as the final race needed to be set in a fictional location, because, as Sacks puts it, "we were going to trash it. He comes with his own country, so he can have his own racetrack."
The drivers had to be heroes too
From the outset, Sacks was determined that Carlos and Alex would not be bystanders in their own story.
"As you get more into F1, you realise the drivers are the superheroes for the fans," he says. "If you see Carlos wading through a line of autograph seekers in Spain, you realise that's their Robert Downey Jr., that's their Iron Man. They are larger-than-life figures."
To honour that, he gave each driver two significant action moments in the book, including what he describes only as a "superhero upgrade" at a key point in the story. "I really wanted them to be heroes too. You don't want it to be 90% one driver and 10% the other. There's a lot of engineering that goes into that balance."
James Vowles is also a central character - not a background figure or a cameo, but a proper part of the story.
Getting the voices right
Perhaps the most unexpected part of Sacks's preparation had nothing to do with racing at all. He spent hours watching interviews with Carlos, Alex and James, not just to understand the sport, but to understand the people.
"I really wanted their voices to not sound like generic characters in a comic book," he says. "For example, I knew Alex had to have a cat reference in there somewhere, so I threw in a tiger. Things like that. I wanted their voices to be accurate to who they are. It's not a biography, but you want them to sound like the real people."
He's hoping the three of them recognise themselves in the finished book, beyond just the likenesses. "Fingers crossed," he laughs.
Built for everyone
The comic is designed to work whether you've watched every race this season or never seen a chequered flag. Race sequences don't get too bogged down in technical jargon, and the Marvel characters were chosen specifically because they're recognisable from the films.
"I wanted this to be accessible to both fanbases," Sacks explains. "I didn't want to make it confusing for the F1 fan who's never read a Marvel comic, and I didn't want to intimidate the comic reader who's never watched a race. I wanted to write it for a smart 15-year-old, and if you do that, you get the parents too."
The goal, he says, was something with real weight to it. "I wanted it to feel like walking out of a Bond movie. Some element of legitimacy. I want you to get lost in those pages."
Asked to sum it up in a single sentence, Sacks gives it his best shot.
"This is a comic that captures both the speed and thrill of Williams F1 with the scope and bombast of a kick-ass Marvel comic book. You'll be thrilled at the finish line."
Get your copies now:
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AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Miami Special Edition Cover
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AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Monaco Special Edition Cover
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Limited Edition
AWF1 Team x Marvel - Iron Man: Racing Towards Doom Silverstone Special Edition Cover
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