Before there were camera phones, influencers, or TikTok paddock content — there was a young kid from Manchester winding 35mm film at the side of a Formula 1 track, praying he’d caught the shot. That kid was Mark Sutton. And in Episode 1 of The Motion Report Podcast, he tells the whole story.
Sitting down with host David Schneider, Mark takes us all the way back to 1983 — his very first race, a fierce battle between a young Ayrton Senna and Martin Brundle that ended with one car literally landing on top of the other. No halo, no digital review, just one shot on a manual wind camera. Those images went around the world. And a career was born.
From setting up Sutton Photographic with his brother in 1985, to building one of the most recognisable agencies in motorsport history with over 4.5 million images, to eventually selling to Motorsport Images in 2017 and signing with Getty Images — Mark’s journey is as gripping as anything that’s happened on track over the past four decades.
In this episode you’ll hear about:
- How Sutton Images went from a dark room in Manchester to 25 staff and 1.4 million photos online
- The early sponsorship deal with a totally unknown driver called Jenson Button — and how that decision paid off in 2009
- What it’s actually like to photograph world leaders, Hollywood celebrities and F1 champions from just metres away at the front of the grid
- The mental and physical demands of 24 race weekends a year — and why Mark genuinely wouldn’t change a thing
- What he saw at the Bahrain pre-season tests that has him pumped for 2026
This is the first episode of a long-form series dedicated to the people behind the F1 lens — and there is genuinely no better place to start than here.
🎧 Listen on iTunes / Spotify | ▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube
The Motion Report is an FIA media-accredited Formula 1 journalism channel. Subscribe for weekly paddock reports, technical analysis, and in-depth podcast conversations throughout the 2026 season.
Follow Mark on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/f1sutton/
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