After 2025 brought us an entire Formula 1 movie soundtrack, 2026 has now delivered a brand-new F1-themed song debuted at the Barcelona Grand Prix.
DJ Alan Walker, whose most famous track Faded (you’ll probably recognise it if you’ve seen a lot of gaming compilations or cinematic edits) has accumulated over 2.4 billion streams on Spotify, is the man behind the new track The Sting Within Me, inspired by F1.
Here’s a taste of the lyrics…
The Sting Within Me
Charged like lightning, the spark igniting
Final lap, keep fighting, we’re not at the end of the road
Race against the universe
We’ll drive until the tyres burn
We’ll make our hearts unite, our voices heard.
The crowd is gonna love when they see it.
The sting within me
The sting within me
Lights are shining in perfect timing
Speed like we’re flying, we’re not at the end of the road
Race against the universe, we’ll drive until the tyres burn
We’ll make our hearts unite, our voices heard
The crowd is gonna love when they see it
The sting within me
The sting within me
The sting within me
The sting within me
The track artwork features an electrified hooded figure facing four F1 cars descending from a corner with some serious elevation change.
Walker has “drawn inspiration from the roar of the engines, the atmosphere of a race weekend”, and had F1’s help in doing so.
“When the idea came up for the initial request, then the idea was to sample sounds of Formula 1, like what makes F1, F1,” Walker said when The Race asked how he went about this unique challenge.
“That’s a challenge in itself, but we got in touch with F1, we got sent a bunch of samples, like recordings of the race tracks and a lot of little soundbites that you can put in the digital audio workshop, and then start tweaking and sooner or later you have a song.
“But we were going back and forth a lot with Sting [the Indian drinks company that’s owned by F1 partner PepsiCo] and the team trying to find the sound that we wanted, the direction of the music, how do we want it to sound?
“I think it’s turned out pretty well.”
Asked for the timeline, Walker said: “Very short, but not too short, we had a lot of lead time.
“But it was alongside the different ideas, the direction that was wanted and tweaks that was intended to be done.
“Sooner or later, it all works out. We got the lyrics written, we got a great vocalist to sing it, and in the end, we got a great product.”
This is all part of F1 and Sting’s push to speak to a younger audience of fans – Sting being one of multiple brands represented by PepsiCo’s partnership with F1, which also includes Doritos and Gatorade.
“We are now up to 830 million fans worldwide, a huge amount of that new fanbase is coming in from a younger, more female-led audience, and so we’ve been targeting that younger fan base, because they are the future fans of F1,” Joe Selfe, F1’s head of partnership management, said.
“From the very beginning, it was clear that Sting was a brand that was also focused on that Gen Z younger audience wanted to be culture-first and we’re going to use the partnership to target that audience in a very creative and new way.
“A lot of the new audience is engaging or entering our sport in a new and different way as well, and we’re a sport first, but we’re also an entertainment platform across culture across food, across fashion and across music.”
The song was released on the Friday of the Barcelona GP weekend, with Walker performing the song for the very first time live after F1 qualifying in the Fanzone.
Speaking before qualifying, Walker, a Valtteri Bottas fan, tipped George Russell to win the Barcelona GP but spoke of how impressed he was with championship leader Kimi Antonelli.
While in completely different fields, having shot to fame in his teenage years and embarked on world tours, Walker knows what it’s like to be under the spotlight from a very young age.
“It’s crazy there’s probably so much to wrap your head around, but he seems to be [having] a really good composure living in the moment,” Walker said.
“He doesn’t let the pressure get to him, so if he keeps doing what he does, I think he can go really far.”
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-race.com ’
