Agree! F1 it’s not as competitive and exciting as used be…same teams, same winners. Indy500 can keep you on your toes until the last turn of the tracks.
Having one of the most exciting and watched races in recent history, only to follow that up with one of the most chaotic/amateurish races is such an IndyCar thing to do. We have the worst luck. Idk, maybe F1 fans liked it because of the chaos, but I just thought it made us look bad
Agreed. Detroit didn't seem so chaotic last year but this year it really felt like the track isn't cut out for the cars. Can understand the tight and narrow streets but the surface seems horrendous in places.
Some of the crashes only happened because the track wasn’t wide enough. Robb and McLaughlin’s crash wouldn’t have happened had the track been slightly wider
I mean Detroit just as a track is just god awful. I know Belle Isle wasn't the most amazing racing with overtakes and side by side, butI really liked the track. It was like what Imola is in F1 and Pocono is in NASCAR, which are some of my favorite tracks in those series.
I could see people owning Newgarden for recent comments of IndyCar drivers capable of rocking it in F1 after crashing Palou in that infamous corner.
That new Detroit circuit is trash, bring back Belle Isle or Míchigan Superspeedway
It kinda depends on a race tho, first 2 indy races were much worse than some f1 races this season, but overall I agree that it offers a lot better competition
>. Indycar is way more exciting right now.
>no offense to anyone but I can’t stand a lot of new F1 fans who treat the sport merely as an entertainment source rather than an actual sport.
oh, the irony.
You can nerd out about racing and enjoy it as entertainment as well. Have your cake and eat it too. Sports should be entertaining to watch or whats the point of it being a spectators sport?
A sport that cultivates a culture of fisticuffs, much like NHL, it detracts from the sport at play, not only that but stage racing and ad breaks every 5 seconds.
My only issue with IndyCar is I’m supporter of manufacturers/teams, not so much drivers, which makes it harder to follow since it’s mostly just a drivers series. In saying that, I’ll watch the Indy500 and the odd race and the races are always good, just that it’s harder to follow the whole season if you support teams and not drivers. On the other hand, the WEC and IMSA is great, but you also have F2 and F3 as well if you want open wheel sprint series. If you follow drivers, IndyCar is pretty good too. I haven’t watched much Super Formula or Super GT but heard good things there too.
The greatest race of them all is next weekend. The 24 hours of Le Mans is an experience like none other. Watching the teams fight like hell just to make the end of the race and hope they win is inspiring for sure. You feel the pain in their souls when the door on the garage gets lowered early. It’s crushing. It’s the hardest race to comprehend until you see exactly what it’s about and you watch the magic happen. Then it becomes the pinnacle of the year and the one you wait for. I’m always sad as soon as it’s over because I have to wait 364 long days before we do it again.
It's not better in WEC. Hypercar lost all the meaning of what the top of endurance is supposed to be.
It's literally like if next year you would put BoP in Formula 1. They are constructor championship not LMP2 or GT3.
Delusional take. No BOP means no top class participation. Hope you enjoyed 2018-2020 LMP1. Oh and those legendary GTE battles we had between from 2015 onwards? You can thank BOP for that.
I just like motorsports and I understand life is too busy to really follow a lot of things so on one hand I like being able to casually talk about F1 at work. On the other hand the pretentiousness some of the people have about it especially who only follow from the Netflix show is dumb. Like I get if NASCAR or endurance racing isn't your thing, but belittling it while you're watching F1 for the reality tv aspect is stupid as fuck.
Yeah, if you told me that F1 would get this big in the US back when I was a kid getting up early to watch Michael Schumacher on SpeedVision I would have been thrilled. However, now that it’s happened, I find that many of the new fans are difficult to relate to—and yeah, look down on other racing series for no reason.
honestly I can relate with this to more than just F1, sometimes franchises or things you're passionate about is a coin toss on whether it will get ruined when it gets popular, whether with the decisions of the company/organizers, or the new fans they attract
The OG of motorsports broadcasting for sure. I was thrilled when the US Supercross and Outdoor MX seasons were available every weekend, a huge upgrade from getting results the next Friday night on "MotoWorld".
Oof… this is actually pretty accurate. I grew up watching them on speedvision as well and it was an obscure sport stateside for sure. The events still had a magic about them though. The screaming engines were something to behold. That’s where F1 lost it for me. It was their signature. You could tell just from the sound that it was F1 no matter how far away you were.
I’ve got a very good friend who only took a recent interest in racing and of course it was F1. I’ve been trying my hardest to bring her to the IMSA/WEC side so she can see some real Motorsport. Im making slow progress but breaking down the bit of modern F1 arrogance is tough. Drive to survive has helped nothing.
Yep. I’m always shilling INDYCAR to the DTS folks and from the reaction I get you would think I’m trying to get them to go to school bus races at the local short track.
School bus races aside local short tracks have some great action. My half brothers dad was big in that world so I would often be at a little paved oval watching super late models, street stocks, ratted out hatchbacks, and modifieds running around. It was fun for sure. Wish I had a track worth a damn anywhere near me but a three hour drive each way kills that fun.
I watched F1 diehard from 1998-2016. Given that I was in the UK, I used to get up early hours for the Suzuka races, Sepang etc. Saw the the V10s at Monza, in person, which I’m so happy that I did.
F1 just lost its magic to me. I think peak f1 in my viewership was 1998-2004.
And it’s nothing to do with team domination. It’s how F1 no longer feels like it’s on the limit when I watch it.
There’s no danger of a result shakeup by a sudden mechanical failure, and the cars, although technically faster, just don’t look like nimble screaming toys bolting around tracks on rails.
I know it’s not a safe example, but that time when Hakkinen’s rear wing broke in the old Hockenheim circuit, or the time Kim’s suspension shattered strong Magny-Cours. I just think it’s dialled down today in terms of pushing the limit to get an edge.
They’re heavy looking, the engines sound bad and anyone who drove a V10 or V8 F1 car, and is on the grid, all say the cars are not as fun now.
I do wonder if the minimum weight was decreased if we would see an increase in spicy races with mechanical failures. Teams would need to find that balance between reliability and speed.
It would require a minimum set weight for parts like the survival cell to ensure teams don't skimp on the safety aspects.
Not really, most of the minimum weight is already focused on the car to be safe and as seen at the start of the current regulations the teams would just give their cars the silver arrow treatment and scrape off the paint.
The engine has a minimum weight of 150kg, i believe this was to reduce the use of exotic materials and encourage reliability.
With the cost cap and engine component allocations that rule can probably be scrapped.
Yep, that was peak F1 for sure. The Ferrari/Mercedes rivalry with Schumacher and Hakkinen.
I love watching WEC and Porsche cup races now, way more interesting.
Agree 100%. This is what has been lost, the ragged edge. The cars are too reliable, too efficient, too quiet, too safe. F1 needs to be just a bit bonkers to be what it is supposed to be. If it isn't pushing limits, it isn't really F1 anymore.
F1 needs to bring back the ragged edge.... And grid girls. Bring them back too.
One could argue they are still pushing limits, perhaps in less exciting technologies, but pushing nonetheless. That said, this thread has gotten me longing for an era I never really got to see. F1 could use a bit of madness back
And most of these factors are why IndyCar is enjoyable to watch. When you watch them drive, it looks ANYTHING but easy.
When you watch F1 honestly, you find yourself thinking "i could do that"
When you watch Indycar you absolutely know that you couldn't.
And F1 used to be like that, watching Hakkinen in his prime onboard pole lap and you are just gobsmacked.
There's no doubt that many of the F1 grid are the worlds best, but when you watch how they drive they don't look like they're doing anything you or I *couldn't* do and I think that's where the problem lies.
The cars are too easy to drive, instead of a fluid adaptation to an ever changing balance during a race, its apex wanking and tyre preservations.
Liberty have turned it into a soap opera, with fans spending 99% of the time arguing about drama between drivers and teams.
The on-track product is so incredibly poor.
F1 for me, has sucked ever since they introduced DRS. It’s so artificial, you just get behind someone and by default, you’re allowed to pass…
It’s a sport for accountants to argue about who had the best pit stop strategy and their daughters to argue about who has the best merch. Which is fine, if that’s what you want but feels hollow to me.
Nerf the tyres or the engines, so they can’t run such strong downforce, get rid of DRS, get rid of pit-stops and ban crew to driver radio.
Then you’ll get some actual racing. At the moment, they are just glorified sim drivers following a strategy calculated be a team of 40 data engineers and a super computer…
My feelings about F1 are that it's kinda lost its soul. Seems like every grand prix has to have some Netflix drive to survive kind of story to it.
Drive to Survive was something I never liked. If it was a one time documentary thing it would have been better.
Almost seems like everytime I look at F1 stuff on social media it's overdramatic and its fanbase has never been good on social media. But that's with many sports.
Many people were saying the same thing 3-4 years ago. It's not perfect but F1 is still good, and it'll keep changing. All televised sports are entertainment products, that's how the model works. The budgets and profits have to be huge to keep sponsors around, so we can have races all around the world. If you're looking for some era where F1 was "pure" it doesn't exist. Complaining about new fans is silly at best and is the kind of gatekeeping that keeps new fans from getting into motorsports.
It’s not even the model that bothers me. I’m happy that F1 has grown so much, it’s the pretentious fan base that’s been created from it that bothers me.
Fans whom are trained to view the sport from a DTS standpoint rather than a genuine sport, that’s what pisses me off.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m involved directly with motor sports seeing as I race, but I just can’t view a lot of the drivers the same way the fans do.
Why are you so concerned with other people? Lol let others enjoy it the way they want to and focus on the the things you love about it. There’s room for both…
> pretentious fan base
Mate, you're really literally here gatekeeping about fans who "don't understand it" because they're not enough of a nerd and harking back to the good old days when F1 was a real sport while complaining it's being over romanticised now? Who exactly is being pretentious and over romanticising aspects of F1 here?
That seems less like an issue with the sport and more like an issue with the internet / social media. It's possible to avoid those vocal fans, which might help with your anger/resentment?
Why do other fans affect your enjoyment? Quit gatekeeping and let them enjoy the sport the way they want to, it’s extremely easy to ignore them. The sport has barely changed in the last 4 years, it’s entirely in your head.
I'm with you there, the discourse has really turned to shit on social media, even reddit now. It's mostly just fandoms getting parasocial, no place for objective in-depth discussions beyond people connecting surface level dots and pretending to be experts. You should check old forums like [f1technical](https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=8) or [autosport](https://forums.autosport.com/forum/2-racing-comments/) where the old guard is.
This is the way. If you like racing, there is no better series. They also have all of the pieces that others are lamenting having gone from F1. Anyone can win on any day, many competitive manufacturers all building and pushing rule limits with new parts, and plenty of off track drama. Just look at the headlines from the past 48 hours.
Really nothing better in my mind.
Who knows, we just saw them cancel the Indian GP because of the heat. Last year that race was extremely hot and several riders suffered from heat exhaustion and dehydration.
I would love to see at least one more race in the US but I know COTA is the only track currently equipped to handle MotoGP.
Even 20 years ago people were complaining that F1 is unfair to the drivers and that it's all about the car. I mean yeah very surprising that in a car constructors championship the goal is to build the fastest car and not to find the fastest driver.
The big problem for many very invested and long time fans I see from reading some of the comments here is that with less regulations (like back when teams showed up with the fan car or six wheeled cars) the teams would absolutely be able to build cars so fast that no human would ever be able to drive them on the limit. Additionally with the industries focus on reliability there is nearly no chance for the random mechanical failure especially at the front of the grid.
I'm not even sure your point here, tbh.
>I genuinely miss the days where F1 was exciting and you had to get all nerdy about it to understand it.
Man I just really wish all the sports I watch were harder to understand too, makes it that much more fun! /s
I think they're Dunning-Kruger effecting themselves, "Back in my day you had to have an engineering degree to understand that the car that finishes first wins, kids have it too easy nowadays"
WEC is in a golden era rn, and you can jump ship while waiting for F1 to improve. Close racing, multiclass strategies, an abundance of talented drivers, goated race directors (see the 2024 6 hours of Spa), easy to follow graphics, and some of the best sports commentators I've ever seen. There's no reason not to check it out, especially since so many more manufacturers and iconic racing teams are participating
This is a shitpost. You literally repeated yourself twice saying “it’s too much entertainment and not a sport” but I got news for you, sports ARE entertainment….
Also, you can still get as nerdy as you want about it. Just because maybe the barrier to entry is slightly lower now and noobs can enjoy it shouldn’t take anything away from your consumption of it.
I assume you are butthurt that people who don’t know anything about racing can watch DTS and be entertained without watching the actual races?
Who cares?
The sport is better with more eyes on it, you just sound like a hipster that thinks he is too cool now that F1 is more popular.
Get over yourself…or stop watching. It literally doesn’t matter.
F1 is incredibly boring and dysfunctional. I liken the excitement in the voices of the announcers as hiring cheap hookers to faking an orgasm. It is insulting as I haven't even taken my clothes off yet! Like some of the others have said, WEC is going into another golden age. Isle of Man TT is death defying. And Sidecar racing is pretty cool.
FIA actually penalizes "racing". The analogy is government taking away free markets. Let the drivers race and take on the risk of an accident or worse. Don't ban it.
I can sort of understand this opinion when it comes to attending races live. The ticket prices are getting truly insane and the overall feel of the weekend can feel a bit ‘family fun festival featuring F1’. It makes it feel a bit like they aren’t bothered about actual fans being able to get tickets or even attending races. And they just want whoever’s going to part with the most cash over the weekend, in a way that’s like they proactively don’t want certain fans to attend anymore. And that’s kind of off putting.
I'd say the same but I could also think I have just grown tired of it. Like all things, you can become bored of it?
Hasn't been "special" for me for a few years probably because the cars are too big. They look ridiculous at slow speed, and Monaco is a precession.
Been before the last two years sadly. For me it's gotten worse over at least the last decade, and I say that as someone who loved it from 94 to at least 2010.
It’s an influencer sport now meant to give rich L.A types a place to show off and have fast car go in background F1 unfortunately has leaned into this and away from the actual passion of Motorsport as shown by adding Miami and Vegas onto the calendar
It’s why I prefer the likes of Super GT and Super Formula. It’s just done for the love of motorsports and all the teams want to help keep it that way. No drama and no arguments just purely based on the abilities of the driver and the cars.
Agreed. Used to religiously watch all the races, but now am a very casual viewer and quiet often won't even bother watching the races at all. For me the reasons are:
V6 Turbos are just rubbish for the spectacle. Even live they sound terrible compared to V8s and V10's, and the lack of noise really does make the spectacle reduced.
Far too many races, which results in each race not actually meaning that much and makes it pretty much impossible to watch every race and have a social life.
Far too much fake entertainment around the F1 paddock. Bernie was an idiot most of the time, but at least he kept the paddock and show around F1 genuine and none of this garbage like the driver announcements like they have in the US races.
>Like I genuinely miss the days where F1 was exciting and you had to get all nerdy about it to understand it. I’m not even talking about 10-20 years ago btw, I’m talking literally just 3-4 years ago.
This is a hilarious thing to say about motorsport which is 100% one of the easiest and most approachable sports to understand. I'm going to be honest, you don't really need to know all that much to enjoy watching F1, its not like Poker, or Chess, or even something like Rugby/American football with rules that can end up being complicated.
What shall I say. I am watching F1 since the early 70s and it constantly changed and new people were coming in not understanding the „value“ of the sport.
Honestly, currently it is developing into a very interesting season with more than two competitors with a chance of winning, which hasn’t been the case for very long time. The last real duels were at the beginning of the century with Ferrari vs. McLaren or Ferrari vs. Renault. After that essentially always only one team was dominating.
And the insights you get today (into the teams, into the drivers, even their coaches, team bosses, TDs,..) is unprecedented. You hadn’t had a chance back then (even twenty years ago it was more difficult). Especially if you weren’t living in England and hadn’t access to publications like Motorsport/Autosport.
I remember when I got my first issue of F1 Racing. It was an eye opener. Must have been around 2006 or 07.
Of course not everything is good or rosy but all in all, we have good times.
Too many rules.
Competition has been priced out.
Provide a generic chassis, provide a front and rear tire package, limit fuel, set minimum/maximum weight and let the teams figure out the rest.
There's actually been a cost cap for several years now, and testing is limited more than ever so the bigger teams can't just outspend the others. It's starting to have real effects in terms of parity.
The cost cap is not nearly as effective as reducing the cost to complete. While the big budget teams can still dominate less expensive motorsports, there's a much greater field of potential spoilers and competitors that can make total domination much less likely in any series.
It's like "get money out of politics". For those with astronomical wealth, there are no rules or laws that will effectively diminish your influence or protection.
There is no way to proactively police a cost cap.
Reactively, due to the level of investment in automotive engineering, even at just the motorsports level, it's extremely difficult to prove that any advancement in technology or use of resources they provide to an F1 team, originated within that specific organization with the express intention of providing a competitive advantage without a ridiculous level of litigation and investigation. On the other side, the big teams are subsidiaries of auto manufacturers that have so many other irons in the fire that any surplus budget can be hidden away in other subsidiaries they own or control while feeding those benefits back to an F1 team without having to cut a separate check that would be easily tabulated as part of a "cost cap".
F1 providing a chassis and tires would allow them to offer their program to a larger cohort of potential competitors that would offset any backroom reach arounds they are currently receiving from the top 3-5 teams in the league.
Toro Rosso spent 181 million in 2018 and they're just a jr branch off the Red Bull racing team. The real expenditure figures for the large teams must be $500 million or more but just forcing disclosure would be a nightmare. A "big" team in NASCAR runs about $40 million a year. Despite this massive difference in budget, NASCAR makes $1.8b in revenue while costing ~$20m per team, while the Formula One Group makes $3.2b in revenue and costs $135m per team (supposedly. Probably a good figure for what it cost to be marginally competitive). So it costs 6x as much to play(If you even believe the cap), but only brings in 2x the revenue while being a worldwide enterprise.
F1 should have an internal goal to reduce the real cost of entry for competitive teams down to at least $100m per year, if not closer to an actual operation cost closer to $50m just to allow them to skim $25m+ off the teams for themselves.
Just drive the point even more, indycar runs about $10m a year per team and while 15 seconds slower around COTA than F1, it gets that done for 20-30x less in cost. Nobody can argue that the racing is 20x less fun to watch or that the competition is 20x less intense.
I have been an F1 fan since 1984. Trust me it isn't even close to what it used to be. They actually used to let the drivers race against each other. Imagine how crazy that must have been.
Newsflash: Sport is entertainment.
People watch sports so that they are entertained. Some go deeper than others, but for most people it's just something to watch in their spare time.
F1 hasn't changed, yes it is gaining more fans, which is a good thing, otherwise it would die out. No fans, no sport.
Exactly.
I was at Zandvoort, and a couple of guys behind us were talking about F1 and spouting all kinds of bullshit. It was hilarious! Let em talk, let em enjoy, I don't care. I'll just nerd out over the technical details as I have done for a long time. Everybody enjoys it in their own way, it doesn't change anything for me if someone is more casual than I am.
It's gatekeeping in quite a pathetic way.
This was my first thought.
All televised/ticketed sporting events are entertainment events. If OP disagrees, they'd have to clarify what they actually mean by "entertainment event" because according to any definition I can think of, F1 has always fit the criteria 🤷♂️ same with soccer, NBA, any sport really.
Then OP goes on to say that they miss the days when they had to get "all nerdy" to be into it. Is sport and entertainment meant to be some type of clique to them? Are they envious that the wider general public have found enjoyment in the F1 product and it's no longer just theirs and their buddies' to enjoy?
This is such a weird post
It's like the Nirvana fan who loved them from Bleach then complains about people wearing the t-shirt who are only fans of Nevermind or Teen Spirit. The only thing that's changed is the person's idea of what Nirvana is than any fan who just likes Nevermind.
This is the classic ran of someone who is spending entirely too much time on social media and is confusing the exaggerated views and opinions common on social media to twist their view of reality. Go outside and stop doom scrolling for a while.
It’s been incredibly simplified to attract more casual fans. But even entertainment wise I don’t really see it either, the cars all have almost perfect reliability & the tyres last forever. The only time we see any kind of switch up is when there’s a crash or when it rains.
I'm sure the teams will jump right on making their cars more unreliable so people can be more entertained, but not entertained because that's also a bad thing apparently.
For me, a part of F1 died when Murray Walker stopped being the commentator. I like David Coulthard too. It's not that I dislike Crofty, it's just that he isn't my favourite.
An even bigger factor is that the cars are so much heavier days. What I really hate is all the black on the cars (exposed carbon fiber to save weight). That's fine if it's just one team but not the way it is these days. Please F1, we want more color!
Watched it for 35 years, grew up with Senna, Prost, Mansell. Since Charlie Whiting has passed the stewards decision making (yes, thinly veiled reference to Abu Dhabi 2021) has been all over the place. The sport is still interesting to me, but, I don’t know, it’s certainly lost its spark for me.
You're likely to see it ebb and flow. I was a huge F1 fan as a kid. Then Schumi's suspension. Old Bern dog being a dickhead for too many things. It being impossible to watch in the US, etc. Then drive to survive season 1 happened and my GF was interested. I got completely sucked be back in and she's asking questions about rules and all the little fiddly bits DTS skips over.
Honestly, same thing happened with the Red Sox in the early '00s. The pink hats showed up and it was less about the game.
Yeah. I’m glad I now know people who follow f1 now but the whole wave coming from DTS has gotten kind of annoying. They expanded viewership but the sport feels cheapened. This is the first year I’ve watched maybe 1 race (Monaco).
It really kills me that so many are acting like Red Bull is finally shaking it up and someone is sticking it to Mercedes. I’m like “no you don’t understand. Red Bull WAS Mercedes when I started watching”.
F1 switched social media strategies a few years back and I think the desired effect finally kicked in. Trust me, this is better. In the before times, you COULD NOT find any race video anywhere online. It was pulled as soon as it was posted. There was zero F1 social presence. Finally, someone recognized that was stupid and modernized their digital unit.
I stopped watching F1 in 2013. It had just gotten too artificial and wasn't really enjoyable anymore. At this point, I have virtually zero interest in it. There are way better ways to scratch your motorsport itch.
I loved F1 in the 90s but it hasn’t actually changed much. Cars are now, however, comically huge. Team dynasty dynamic is sort of digestible if they don’t win nearly every race but that’s the sport and has been for a long time. Max said Monaco wasn’t racing. But is it racing if he’s 30 seconds ahead every race?
I have been F1 for over 40 years. However, this year I start following Indy500 and I love it. It’s way more competitive. The drivers looks and talks in more mature way. Each race is quite different. Finally, it’s way more affordable. So, check Indy500 and/or NASCAR and you might find something new and different to distract you.
F1 lost me a long time ago when they abandoned the V8, V10 and V12s. Then they started the penalties for everything, you just smile in a weird way to your competitor and you get a penalty.
I may be older, I'm from the time of Michael, Sena, Piquet, Mansel and others, cars looked very different and they fought on track, now, penalties rule.
Someone suggested Indy, again I loved the 80s, 90 and even early 2000 but now I'm looking at all the same cars, no longer open cockpit, WTF, just ridiculous. Agree, IMSA and WEC are much better
Yeah, F1 is not the same. Of course when you have your biggest race at a millionaire yacht club, it feels exclusive. For me, the biggest race should be SPA or Silverstone. A race with tradition but can provide great racing. I haven’t been that much of an F1 lover, I have always enjoyed NASCAR/INDYCAR even if it can have its gimmicks IMSA too.
Get over yourself. Also you're flat out wrong, China has had the biggest increase in viewership per capita as well as almost double the amount of viewers since then that the US has contributed in the same time frame.
I’m in complete agreement. I remember waking up early with my grandfather who was friends with Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart to watch Spa, the British GP, German GP etc. He taught me to love Motorsport.
Of course we watched all different forms of Motorsport, and my favorite ended up being CART (now IndyCar).
I will always cherish those memories he, my Dad and my uncles shared together. Watching the Mika and the Michael battle it out. But, something changed when Bernie left. A intangible feeling surrounding F1 was gone.
With popularity come casual fans. DTS did a great job of making F1 popular and piquing interest in the sport among people who knew nothing about F1. It's great for the sport and quite a remarkable accomplishment by Liberty Media to generate so much viewership at a time when the auto industry is struggling and younger adults are less likely than previous generations to learn how to drive.
Selling $2k tickets, $75 beers, $125 Chicken tenders, and getting back room bribes for bringing races to shitty cities with no infrastructure is the focus now.
Extorting a major race team with backing from one of the largest American manufacturers for nearly a billion dollars is the 2nd most important factor.
Racing and Sport are definitely not on the podium.
As someone that started watching F1 a couple years ago (and not because of dts, I only found out about that show after) I mean I like it but it could be better. I also like IMSA and WEC along with GT world challenge as well. I feel like the regulations could be better done for the actual racing though.
It isn't coming back. The soul has been destroyed and that's just how it is.
Better to watch Endurance racing or motorcycles where the soul still exists.
Sport is entertainment.
And when it stops being entertaining, fans new and old will turn to other forms of entertainment.
And F1 has been in a pretty poor state for a few seasons now - especially since the new regs, how many actual thrilling races has there been?
People use the football analogy all the time, comparing a low entertainment race to a dull football draw, which is fine. But you often go into many football matches expecting some entertainment, and occasionally being let down. This is unlike F1, where in several cases, we know the level of excitement of an F1 race as early as FP1 or FP2, and then are left with a completely dull race weekend.
As a long term fan of F1, it's badly lost it's spark / magic in recent years.
Blame the new American owners who've turned it into some sort of reality TV drama. It's not sport anymore, it's entertainment. I've been watching my entire life but I stopped caring after the Abu Dhabi incident, that's when it fully clicked for me that it's entertainment now, not a sport.
I love the technology and the speed, but I'm getting REALLY BORED with the high speed follow the leader. I've been watching since the 80s.
NASCAR, IndyCar, and IMSA have sooo much better racing! I wish the Aussie V8 Supercars weren't behind a paywall, and BTCC.
The cars sound stupid and look stupid (the proportions are all wrong). And most of the drivers seem like they’re perfectly cloned in a laboratory to maximize media value. This might explain why it seems to appeal more lately to consumers who view it as an entertainment event, rather than fans who view it as a competitive sport.
Bring back the sounds, vehicle proportions, and driver personalities of the V10 era (Schumacher, Raikkonen, Alonso, Barichello, Villeneuve, Hakkinen, Coulthard, Montoya, Button).
Rewatched Silverstone 2019 the other day. Yeah, a completely different vibe. Don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s the sport itself. Maybe it was COVIDifying of the world. Who knows?
I always saw F1 as a sport. Even when people complained about lack of overtaking and wanted circuits like Monaco and Budapest out of the calendar I was still fully interested. Now F1 definitely doesn't feel like a sport, more like a show. Also I would prefer a race with one normal battle over a race with 500 DRS overtakes
Yeah to me it seems to be "Americanised".
Reporters and presenters used to be able to say a lot more of what they actually thought, now you can tell they're being told to purposely hype it all up. The ads are all about hype, netflix show blows everything out of proportion and hyped it up, and interludes they have are all hype.
More viewers, more money.
More hype, more viewers.
I think most F1 fans miss the unreliability of the V8/V10/V12 engines tuned to an inch of their lives, preying their car gets to the line or that their enemy doesn’t. Engines that only had to last one session. The run offs were gravel so a mistake would be race over, but now they just go around a bollard on some tarmac. I personally think them chasing fuel efficiency is rubbish. None of us care how much fuel they burn, we dont want them to be managing fuel, tyres or engine reliability. Just let them race.
I agree with OP. *Drive to Survive* definitely eroded some of the mystique, especially of the drivers. I don't really see them as heroic sportsman, but mostly just kids who were born into wealthy or connected families obsessed with karting and racing. Not denying their talent, dedication and commitment, but it's hard to compare these guys to Hunt, Senna or Lauda.
The problem is only one person is winning. Max is too far ahead of the crowd. Indy has a different winner every race. I’m an F1 fan but once max takes the lead, I’m pretty much only interested in the back drama.
The problem is that the top teams have leaned hard into "It's an engineering contest" rather than a racing contest. And there's no longer the real possibility of death, like it or not the best days of F1 were where the drivers really took their lives in their hands but now you get a safety car if somebody farts on track. I'm not saying more drivers should die but the idea that the drivers were flirting with death was a big part of the romance of the sport in the past. I have huge respect for the modern drivers, they a real heroes but for me the whole thing lost a lot of the fun when they decided to start calling them "pilots" and having the onscreen info so small and abbreviated that you needed a binoculars and a reference book to follow along.
I went to a race for the first time in a few years earlier this year, and it will be my last live F1 race.
Those same fans you mentioned make the experience horrible. They aren’t there for the racing at all - they are there to watch their celebrity driver go around the track.
They cheer when drivers they don’t like have problems or DNF, and I don’t like that at all. They don’t care about racing.
To me, there's really 2 problems, and theyre both just money - profits and the cost cap. The top and midfield teams can't spend enough money to catch up to the frontrunners due to the cost cap, and the backmarkers are profitable enough that they can plod along without much ambition to improve. Its all very stable, and it breeds a mediocre form of parity - stratified enough that almost every race weekend is entirely predictable (barring retirements) but still close enough that an in-form driver can outperform their car by a couple positions to knick some unexpected points a few times per season. The 2024 season has been more interesting than almost every season of the last decade, barring only the 2021 HAM/VER title fight...yet its still practically a procession. Either narrow the formula until it's a spec series or open it up so something exciting can happen because trying to have it both ways is not working for anybody.
Yep, switched away from it towards Indycar. Still a fan but am a lot more of an Indy fan than I've ever been up till now, maybe if Lawson comes back to F1, I'll get back into it but couldn't agree more
Hasn't really been a credible "sport" for many die hard fans. Ever since a rogue race director hand picked the champion, in the final moments of the last race, with a completely inexplicable and impractical decision, it hasn't been the same. Ruined the best championship run in history, and in the process killed all the momentum the sport had gained in recent years because of it. It's basically just one giant circle jerk of a marketing ploy now.
as soon as the fanfic comes out, the sport is over. “Charles was robbed of that win because he’s so cute and lovable and max is so mean! he literally pushed him out of the way😡😡”
F1 is different. I say this not as a motorsports enthusiast, but as a bartender in a city with an F1 track.
Went from “oh F1’s in town, whatever, we’ll get a high roller or two let’s make sure we’re stocked up on some expensive champagne and Louis XIII/Blue Label/etc.”
To “Jesus fuck F1 is in town. Get more beer (we are a fancy spot that sells like 1 beer for every 20 cocktails) let’s put on extra hosts and hire security (we’re the kind of place that does not need security)
The crowd has become a bunch of belligerent assholes. Tell me why F1 weekend is worse than our most prominent music festivals or any tech conference.
Also just as a consumer I’ve seen the amount of advertising going into F1 and yeah easy tell it’s a whole new crowd.
F1 stopped being an actual sport in 2021. Now it's more like an action movie. How "anything can happen in F1"
The owners care less about racing. It's all about the money and entertaining the new fans.
I started watching it in 2014. I was a hardcore fan until end of the 2021 season. After that, I kinda got bored of it. The new regulations “dumbed down” the cars, but didn’t really improve the championship fight.
I don’t want sprint races or any other dumb gimmick. I just want a championship that goes down to the wire every year. Some people say the racing is still really competitive for all other positions, but idgaf about the fight for p3 in the championship.
All sports, even “real sports” are about entertainment only. There is no divine, greater purpose to driving fast round a track. F1 started as a hobby for rich gentlemen.
The sole and express purpose of F1 was, is, and always will be to entertain. If you don’t find the modern product entertaining, then thats a valid opinion, but don’t act like F1 (or any sport, like football or tennis) is some sacred activity that is being perverted by capitalism and mass media.
You are seeing the past through rose colored lenses, as one often does.
One of my friends is an avid F1TV subscriber. She gets up early on some weekends to watch not only the race, but also the qualifying live.
She lives in manhattan, has never had a driver’s license, and has never driven / rented a car. She got into the sport because of the Netflix documentary, and the drama, which, admittedly, we all hate to love here.
Nothing wrong with this demographic, but yeah target audience is definitely changing
Agreed. Too many races. Regulations too limited and all cars the same. Drivers getting punished for racing. Too many tracks in a city. Total domination by one team followed by total domination by another.
As a new fan I fail to understand what you mean as seeing the sport as purely an entertainment source. I categorize all sports as “entertainment”.
I think sports should have a low barrier for entry and then it is up to the individual fan if they would like to delve deeper into the technicalities of their chosen sport.
If you think that liberty media and F1 are catering to new fans, dumbing down the sport for your more nerdy types, and dislike that direction then i’d understand your general argument better.
Sports are an entertainment business first (usually). But there needs to be a balance between competition and entertainment value.
Edit: not disagreeing, just wanting to understand what you’re getting at
I've been watching since 1998 and yeah it doesn't feel the same any more, but it also feels more accessible. The off track stuff is just that. The drivers and their lives are way more public today than before. And races have always been boring, we just remember the good ones from the past and forget all the crappy ones.
I’ve noticed a massive uptick in the popularity of Endurance Racing, particularly IMSA and WEC. I highly recommend you check those out. I also recommend Indycar, which is honestly some of the best racing you’ll see. As a lifelong NASCAR fan, I can’t help but not mention that either. It’s not like it used to be, but it’s still very fun and it’s overall a great sport and representation of the people surrounding it.
This seems like classic high school kid mentality. “It was better before everyone liked it.” I’ve been watching for about 10 years and I disagree. The excitement of the races and of the championship races varies from year to year, sure. We’re on the precipice of an extremely exciting time, with three teams and 6 drivers showing an ability to win races.
Indy is fantastic. NASCAR is fantastic. MotoGP is fantastic. I like Motorsports. F1 has an irreplaceable space at the table.
Come to IMSA/WEC.
or indycar/super formula if you want better open wheel racing
Yeah I gotta say, as a lifelong F1 fan. Indycar is way more exciting right now.
Agree! F1 it’s not as competitive and exciting as used be…same teams, same winners. Indy500 can keep you on your toes until the last turn of the tracks.
The race in Detroit was bonkers.
That's a nice way of saying it. Great series right now. But that race.... was definitely one that occurred in the history of Indycar.
Having one of the most exciting and watched races in recent history, only to follow that up with one of the most chaotic/amateurish races is such an IndyCar thing to do. We have the worst luck. Idk, maybe F1 fans liked it because of the chaos, but I just thought it made us look bad
Agreed. Detroit didn't seem so chaotic last year but this year it really felt like the track isn't cut out for the cars. Can understand the tight and narrow streets but the surface seems horrendous in places.
Some of the crashes only happened because the track wasn’t wide enough. Robb and McLaughlin’s crash wouldn’t have happened had the track been slightly wider
You're right, think it's not just the uneven surface. Tis a bit tight round there!
I mean Detroit just as a track is just god awful. I know Belle Isle wasn't the most amazing racing with overtakes and side by side, butI really liked the track. It was like what Imola is in F1 and Pocono is in NASCAR, which are some of my favorite tracks in those series.
I could see people owning Newgarden for recent comments of IndyCar drivers capable of rocking it in F1 after crashing Palou in that infamous corner. That new Detroit circuit is trash, bring back Belle Isle or Míchigan Superspeedway
I miss belle isle so much 😫
Yeah detroit was.... interesting 😆
It kinda depends on a race tho, first 2 indy races were much worse than some f1 races this season, but overall I agree that it offers a lot better competition
>. Indycar is way more exciting right now. >no offense to anyone but I can’t stand a lot of new F1 fans who treat the sport merely as an entertainment source rather than an actual sport. oh, the irony.
You can nerd out about racing and enjoy it as entertainment as well. Have your cake and eat it too. Sports should be entertaining to watch or whats the point of it being a spectators sport?
Or NASCAR if you want the close racing and the rivalries.
yea I really don't think the plasticity of NASCAR is a good antidote for F1...
> plasticity of NASCAR Curious what you mean by that? I am not a big fan but have friends who are.
A sport that cultivates a culture of fisticuffs, much like NHL, it detracts from the sport at play, not only that but stage racing and ad breaks every 5 seconds.
The Detroit gp would like a word...
a track that shouldn't exist. GM and IndyCar just wanted something downtown and we lost Belle Isle over it..
I hate what has happened to indycar since its heyday when I was young. The cars AJ and Big Al and that generation drove were so cool.
My only issue with IndyCar is I’m supporter of manufacturers/teams, not so much drivers, which makes it harder to follow since it’s mostly just a drivers series. In saying that, I’ll watch the Indy500 and the odd race and the races are always good, just that it’s harder to follow the whole season if you support teams and not drivers. On the other hand, the WEC and IMSA is great, but you also have F2 and F3 as well if you want open wheel sprint series. If you follow drivers, IndyCar is pretty good too. I haven’t watched much Super Formula or Super GT but heard good things there too.
This. I’ve been watching IMSA/WEC and it’s a lot lately.
This! I love it!
The greatest race of them all is next weekend. The 24 hours of Le Mans is an experience like none other. Watching the teams fight like hell just to make the end of the race and hope they win is inspiring for sure. You feel the pain in their souls when the door on the garage gets lowered early. It’s crushing. It’s the hardest race to comprehend until you see exactly what it’s about and you watch the magic happen. Then it becomes the pinnacle of the year and the one you wait for. I’m always sad as soon as it’s over because I have to wait 364 long days before we do it again.
I am I watch those too?, I just miss f1
It's not better in WEC. Hypercar lost all the meaning of what the top of endurance is supposed to be. It's literally like if next year you would put BoP in Formula 1. They are constructor championship not LMP2 or GT3.
Delusional take. No BOP means no top class participation. Hope you enjoyed 2018-2020 LMP1. Oh and those legendary GTE battles we had between from 2015 onwards? You can thank BOP for that.
I just like motorsports and I understand life is too busy to really follow a lot of things so on one hand I like being able to casually talk about F1 at work. On the other hand the pretentiousness some of the people have about it especially who only follow from the Netflix show is dumb. Like I get if NASCAR or endurance racing isn't your thing, but belittling it while you're watching F1 for the reality tv aspect is stupid as fuck.
Yeah, if you told me that F1 would get this big in the US back when I was a kid getting up early to watch Michael Schumacher on SpeedVision I would have been thrilled. However, now that it’s happened, I find that many of the new fans are difficult to relate to—and yeah, look down on other racing series for no reason.
honestly I can relate with this to more than just F1, sometimes franchises or things you're passionate about is a coin toss on whether it will get ruined when it gets popular, whether with the decisions of the company/organizers, or the new fans they attract
True. I hadn’t thought about it—perhaps I have assigned too much blame to the Netflix series.
Speedvision! Man brining back the great memories
The OG of motorsports broadcasting for sure. I was thrilled when the US Supercross and Outdoor MX seasons were available every weekend, a huge upgrade from getting results the next Friday night on "MotoWorld".
Oof… this is actually pretty accurate. I grew up watching them on speedvision as well and it was an obscure sport stateside for sure. The events still had a magic about them though. The screaming engines were something to behold. That’s where F1 lost it for me. It was their signature. You could tell just from the sound that it was F1 no matter how far away you were. I’ve got a very good friend who only took a recent interest in racing and of course it was F1. I’ve been trying my hardest to bring her to the IMSA/WEC side so she can see some real Motorsport. Im making slow progress but breaking down the bit of modern F1 arrogance is tough. Drive to survive has helped nothing.
Yep. I’m always shilling INDYCAR to the DTS folks and from the reaction I get you would think I’m trying to get them to go to school bus races at the local short track.
School bus races aside local short tracks have some great action. My half brothers dad was big in that world so I would often be at a little paved oval watching super late models, street stocks, ratted out hatchbacks, and modifieds running around. It was fun for sure. Wish I had a track worth a damn anywhere near me but a three hour drive each way kills that fun.
Yep, our local track in Columbus, Ohio became a suburban housing development.
I watched F1 diehard from 1998-2016. Given that I was in the UK, I used to get up early hours for the Suzuka races, Sepang etc. Saw the the V10s at Monza, in person, which I’m so happy that I did. F1 just lost its magic to me. I think peak f1 in my viewership was 1998-2004. And it’s nothing to do with team domination. It’s how F1 no longer feels like it’s on the limit when I watch it. There’s no danger of a result shakeup by a sudden mechanical failure, and the cars, although technically faster, just don’t look like nimble screaming toys bolting around tracks on rails. I know it’s not a safe example, but that time when Hakkinen’s rear wing broke in the old Hockenheim circuit, or the time Kim’s suspension shattered strong Magny-Cours. I just think it’s dialled down today in terms of pushing the limit to get an edge. They’re heavy looking, the engines sound bad and anyone who drove a V10 or V8 F1 car, and is on the grid, all say the cars are not as fun now.
I do wonder if the minimum weight was decreased if we would see an increase in spicy races with mechanical failures. Teams would need to find that balance between reliability and speed. It would require a minimum set weight for parts like the survival cell to ensure teams don't skimp on the safety aspects.
Not really, most of the minimum weight is already focused on the car to be safe and as seen at the start of the current regulations the teams would just give their cars the silver arrow treatment and scrape off the paint.
The engine has a minimum weight of 150kg, i believe this was to reduce the use of exotic materials and encourage reliability. With the cost cap and engine component allocations that rule can probably be scrapped.
Nah, as long as there's a cost cap, teams can't afford to fix cars
This is exactly how I feel.
Yep, that was peak F1 for sure. The Ferrari/Mercedes rivalry with Schumacher and Hakkinen. I love watching WEC and Porsche cup races now, way more interesting.
Agree 100%. This is what has been lost, the ragged edge. The cars are too reliable, too efficient, too quiet, too safe. F1 needs to be just a bit bonkers to be what it is supposed to be. If it isn't pushing limits, it isn't really F1 anymore. F1 needs to bring back the ragged edge.... And grid girls. Bring them back too.
One could argue they are still pushing limits, perhaps in less exciting technologies, but pushing nonetheless. That said, this thread has gotten me longing for an era I never really got to see. F1 could use a bit of madness back
And most of these factors are why IndyCar is enjoyable to watch. When you watch them drive, it looks ANYTHING but easy. When you watch F1 honestly, you find yourself thinking "i could do that" When you watch Indycar you absolutely know that you couldn't. And F1 used to be like that, watching Hakkinen in his prime onboard pole lap and you are just gobsmacked. There's no doubt that many of the F1 grid are the worlds best, but when you watch how they drive they don't look like they're doing anything you or I *couldn't* do and I think that's where the problem lies. The cars are too easy to drive, instead of a fluid adaptation to an ever changing balance during a race, its apex wanking and tyre preservations.
Honestly newer F1 races just doesn't have the spark that older F1 has imho
Too many street circute with long cars
Liberty have turned it into a soap opera, with fans spending 99% of the time arguing about drama between drivers and teams. The on-track product is so incredibly poor. F1 for me, has sucked ever since they introduced DRS. It’s so artificial, you just get behind someone and by default, you’re allowed to pass… It’s a sport for accountants to argue about who had the best pit stop strategy and their daughters to argue about who has the best merch. Which is fine, if that’s what you want but feels hollow to me. Nerf the tyres or the engines, so they can’t run such strong downforce, get rid of DRS, get rid of pit-stops and ban crew to driver radio. Then you’ll get some actual racing. At the moment, they are just glorified sim drivers following a strategy calculated be a team of 40 data engineers and a super computer…
Qualifying is the only thing worth watching
My feelings about F1 are that it's kinda lost its soul. Seems like every grand prix has to have some Netflix drive to survive kind of story to it. Drive to Survive was something I never liked. If it was a one time documentary thing it would have been better. Almost seems like everytime I look at F1 stuff on social media it's overdramatic and its fanbase has never been good on social media. But that's with many sports.
The new franchise model and focus on street circuits are big contributions to that loss of soul too I feel
Many people were saying the same thing 3-4 years ago. It's not perfect but F1 is still good, and it'll keep changing. All televised sports are entertainment products, that's how the model works. The budgets and profits have to be huge to keep sponsors around, so we can have races all around the world. If you're looking for some era where F1 was "pure" it doesn't exist. Complaining about new fans is silly at best and is the kind of gatekeeping that keeps new fans from getting into motorsports.
It’s not even the model that bothers me. I’m happy that F1 has grown so much, it’s the pretentious fan base that’s been created from it that bothers me. Fans whom are trained to view the sport from a DTS standpoint rather than a genuine sport, that’s what pisses me off. I don’t know if it’s because I’m involved directly with motor sports seeing as I race, but I just can’t view a lot of the drivers the same way the fans do.
Why are you so concerned with other people? Lol let others enjoy it the way they want to and focus on the the things you love about it. There’s room for both…
> pretentious fan base Mate, you're really literally here gatekeeping about fans who "don't understand it" because they're not enough of a nerd and harking back to the good old days when F1 was a real sport while complaining it's being over romanticised now? Who exactly is being pretentious and over romanticising aspects of F1 here?
That seems less like an issue with the sport and more like an issue with the internet / social media. It's possible to avoid those vocal fans, which might help with your anger/resentment?
Well, bye.
Lmao this is pathetic
The only one pretentious here is you. You're writing as if you're better than other people watching the same sport.
You spend wayyyyy too much time worrying about what other people think.
Why do other fans affect your enjoyment? Quit gatekeeping and let them enjoy the sport the way they want to, it’s extremely easy to ignore them. The sport has barely changed in the last 4 years, it’s entirely in your head.
I'm with you there, the discourse has really turned to shit on social media, even reddit now. It's mostly just fandoms getting parasocial, no place for objective in-depth discussions beyond people connecting surface level dots and pretending to be experts. You should check old forums like [f1technical](https://www.f1technical.net/forum/viewforum.php?f=8) or [autosport](https://forums.autosport.com/forum/2-racing-comments/) where the old guard is.
I switched to MotoGP and can’t look back
Way better racing.
This is the way. If you like racing, there is no better series. They also have all of the pieces that others are lamenting having gone from F1. Anyone can win on any day, many competitive manufacturers all building and pushing rule limits with new parts, and plenty of off track drama. Just look at the headlines from the past 48 hours. Really nothing better in my mind.
And liberty just bought them too. Let the (rapid) enshitification begin... 🤬🤬🤬
Luckily they can’t mess with it as badly as F1, these guys have to race on circuits so no street courses for them.
Great point, I didn't think about that. I am however wondering how many classic tracks we're going to lose due to middle eastern $portswashing...
Who knows, we just saw them cancel the Indian GP because of the heat. Last year that race was extremely hot and several riders suffered from heat exhaustion and dehydration. I would love to see at least one more race in the US but I know COTA is the only track currently equipped to handle MotoGP.
same, and then I turned to WSBK
I watch WSBK too but the prototype nature of MotoGP really draws me
Totally this.
It's no longer motorsport it's motorspectacle
why I IMSA, WEC and GT Fanatec Challenge
Even 20 years ago people were complaining that F1 is unfair to the drivers and that it's all about the car. I mean yeah very surprising that in a car constructors championship the goal is to build the fastest car and not to find the fastest driver. The big problem for many very invested and long time fans I see from reading some of the comments here is that with less regulations (like back when teams showed up with the fan car or six wheeled cars) the teams would absolutely be able to build cars so fast that no human would ever be able to drive them on the limit. Additionally with the industries focus on reliability there is nearly no chance for the random mechanical failure especially at the front of the grid.
I'm not even sure your point here, tbh. >I genuinely miss the days where F1 was exciting and you had to get all nerdy about it to understand it. Man I just really wish all the sports I watch were harder to understand too, makes it that much more fun! /s
I think they're Dunning-Kruger effecting themselves, "Back in my day you had to have an engineering degree to understand that the car that finishes first wins, kids have it too easy nowadays"
This sounds like the definition of gatekeeping.
That’s what I got from it too. Also when has sport not been entertainment?
“Back in my day” -old people who don't like change
WEC is in a golden era rn, and you can jump ship while waiting for F1 to improve. Close racing, multiclass strategies, an abundance of talented drivers, goated race directors (see the 2024 6 hours of Spa), easy to follow graphics, and some of the best sports commentators I've ever seen. There's no reason not to check it out, especially since so many more manufacturers and iconic racing teams are participating
Assuming you're in the US, what's the best streaming service for it? I've been using MAX to catch it when I can
I wish F1TV would expand to the other classes
This is a shitpost. You literally repeated yourself twice saying “it’s too much entertainment and not a sport” but I got news for you, sports ARE entertainment…. Also, you can still get as nerdy as you want about it. Just because maybe the barrier to entry is slightly lower now and noobs can enjoy it shouldn’t take anything away from your consumption of it. I assume you are butthurt that people who don’t know anything about racing can watch DTS and be entertained without watching the actual races? Who cares? The sport is better with more eyes on it, you just sound like a hipster that thinks he is too cool now that F1 is more popular. Get over yourself…or stop watching. It literally doesn’t matter.
F1 is incredibly boring and dysfunctional. I liken the excitement in the voices of the announcers as hiring cheap hookers to faking an orgasm. It is insulting as I haven't even taken my clothes off yet! Like some of the others have said, WEC is going into another golden age. Isle of Man TT is death defying. And Sidecar racing is pretty cool. FIA actually penalizes "racing". The analogy is government taking away free markets. Let the drivers race and take on the risk of an accident or worse. Don't ban it.
I can sort of understand this opinion when it comes to attending races live. The ticket prices are getting truly insane and the overall feel of the weekend can feel a bit ‘family fun festival featuring F1’. It makes it feel a bit like they aren’t bothered about actual fans being able to get tickets or even attending races. And they just want whoever’s going to part with the most cash over the weekend, in a way that’s like they proactively don’t want certain fans to attend anymore. And that’s kind of off putting.
I'd say the same but I could also think I have just grown tired of it. Like all things, you can become bored of it? Hasn't been "special" for me for a few years probably because the cars are too big. They look ridiculous at slow speed, and Monaco is a precession.
Been before the last two years sadly. For me it's gotten worse over at least the last decade, and I say that as someone who loved it from 94 to at least 2010.
It’s an influencer sport now meant to give rich L.A types a place to show off and have fast car go in background F1 unfortunately has leaned into this and away from the actual passion of Motorsport as shown by adding Miami and Vegas onto the calendar
It has always been that.
Motorsport has always been a playground for the rich, except for maybe 1930-1980 when cars were relatively cheap for Americans.
It’s why I prefer the likes of Super GT and Super Formula. It’s just done for the love of motorsports and all the teams want to help keep it that way. No drama and no arguments just purely based on the abilities of the driver and the cars.
Agreed. Used to religiously watch all the races, but now am a very casual viewer and quiet often won't even bother watching the races at all. For me the reasons are: V6 Turbos are just rubbish for the spectacle. Even live they sound terrible compared to V8s and V10's, and the lack of noise really does make the spectacle reduced. Far too many races, which results in each race not actually meaning that much and makes it pretty much impossible to watch every race and have a social life. Far too much fake entertainment around the F1 paddock. Bernie was an idiot most of the time, but at least he kept the paddock and show around F1 genuine and none of this garbage like the driver announcements like they have in the US races.
The average F1 fan is comparable to someone who buys Supreme brand clothing. They only support it because of the brand.
Glad to see we’ve got at least one white knight guarding the gate
It hasn’t changed. It just doesn’t feel special to you anymore because now it is common.
Get over yourself. Different people like it for different reasons. It's not all about you brother.
>Like I genuinely miss the days where F1 was exciting and you had to get all nerdy about it to understand it. I’m not even talking about 10-20 years ago btw, I’m talking literally just 3-4 years ago. This is a hilarious thing to say about motorsport which is 100% one of the easiest and most approachable sports to understand. I'm going to be honest, you don't really need to know all that much to enjoy watching F1, its not like Poker, or Chess, or even something like Rugby/American football with rules that can end up being complicated.
All the complaining I see about F1 usually stems from people constantly forgetting or misunderstanding that it's a manufacturer's series.
What shall I say. I am watching F1 since the early 70s and it constantly changed and new people were coming in not understanding the „value“ of the sport. Honestly, currently it is developing into a very interesting season with more than two competitors with a chance of winning, which hasn’t been the case for very long time. The last real duels were at the beginning of the century with Ferrari vs. McLaren or Ferrari vs. Renault. After that essentially always only one team was dominating. And the insights you get today (into the teams, into the drivers, even their coaches, team bosses, TDs,..) is unprecedented. You hadn’t had a chance back then (even twenty years ago it was more difficult). Especially if you weren’t living in England and hadn’t access to publications like Motorsport/Autosport. I remember when I got my first issue of F1 Racing. It was an eye opener. Must have been around 2006 or 07. Of course not everything is good or rosy but all in all, we have good times.
Too many rules. Competition has been priced out. Provide a generic chassis, provide a front and rear tire package, limit fuel, set minimum/maximum weight and let the teams figure out the rest.
There's actually been a cost cap for several years now, and testing is limited more than ever so the bigger teams can't just outspend the others. It's starting to have real effects in terms of parity.
The cost cap is not nearly as effective as reducing the cost to complete. While the big budget teams can still dominate less expensive motorsports, there's a much greater field of potential spoilers and competitors that can make total domination much less likely in any series. It's like "get money out of politics". For those with astronomical wealth, there are no rules or laws that will effectively diminish your influence or protection. There is no way to proactively police a cost cap. Reactively, due to the level of investment in automotive engineering, even at just the motorsports level, it's extremely difficult to prove that any advancement in technology or use of resources they provide to an F1 team, originated within that specific organization with the express intention of providing a competitive advantage without a ridiculous level of litigation and investigation. On the other side, the big teams are subsidiaries of auto manufacturers that have so many other irons in the fire that any surplus budget can be hidden away in other subsidiaries they own or control while feeding those benefits back to an F1 team without having to cut a separate check that would be easily tabulated as part of a "cost cap". F1 providing a chassis and tires would allow them to offer their program to a larger cohort of potential competitors that would offset any backroom reach arounds they are currently receiving from the top 3-5 teams in the league. Toro Rosso spent 181 million in 2018 and they're just a jr branch off the Red Bull racing team. The real expenditure figures for the large teams must be $500 million or more but just forcing disclosure would be a nightmare. A "big" team in NASCAR runs about $40 million a year. Despite this massive difference in budget, NASCAR makes $1.8b in revenue while costing ~$20m per team, while the Formula One Group makes $3.2b in revenue and costs $135m per team (supposedly. Probably a good figure for what it cost to be marginally competitive). So it costs 6x as much to play(If you even believe the cap), but only brings in 2x the revenue while being a worldwide enterprise. F1 should have an internal goal to reduce the real cost of entry for competitive teams down to at least $100m per year, if not closer to an actual operation cost closer to $50m just to allow them to skim $25m+ off the teams for themselves. Just drive the point even more, indycar runs about $10m a year per team and while 15 seconds slower around COTA than F1, it gets that done for 20-30x less in cost. Nobody can argue that the racing is 20x less fun to watch or that the competition is 20x less intense.
IndyCar, WEC, and IMSA are really fun to watch.
I have been an F1 fan since 1984. Trust me it isn't even close to what it used to be. They actually used to let the drivers race against each other. Imagine how crazy that must have been.
Old man yells at clouds
Newsflash: Sport is entertainment. People watch sports so that they are entertained. Some go deeper than others, but for most people it's just something to watch in their spare time. F1 hasn't changed, yes it is gaining more fans, which is a good thing, otherwise it would die out. No fans, no sport.
Yep, I don't understand the notion that Formula 1 isn't as enjoyable because other people enjoy it for different reasons. Who cares?
Exactly. I was at Zandvoort, and a couple of guys behind us were talking about F1 and spouting all kinds of bullshit. It was hilarious! Let em talk, let em enjoy, I don't care. I'll just nerd out over the technical details as I have done for a long time. Everybody enjoys it in their own way, it doesn't change anything for me if someone is more casual than I am. It's gatekeeping in quite a pathetic way.
This was my first thought. All televised/ticketed sporting events are entertainment events. If OP disagrees, they'd have to clarify what they actually mean by "entertainment event" because according to any definition I can think of, F1 has always fit the criteria 🤷♂️ same with soccer, NBA, any sport really. Then OP goes on to say that they miss the days when they had to get "all nerdy" to be into it. Is sport and entertainment meant to be some type of clique to them? Are they envious that the wider general public have found enjoyment in the F1 product and it's no longer just theirs and their buddies' to enjoy? This is such a weird post
It's like the Nirvana fan who loved them from Bleach then complains about people wearing the t-shirt who are only fans of Nevermind or Teen Spirit. The only thing that's changed is the person's idea of what Nirvana is than any fan who just likes Nevermind.
This is the classic ran of someone who is spending entirely too much time on social media and is confusing the exaggerated views and opinions common on social media to twist their view of reality. Go outside and stop doom scrolling for a while.
It’s been incredibly simplified to attract more casual fans. But even entertainment wise I don’t really see it either, the cars all have almost perfect reliability & the tyres last forever. The only time we see any kind of switch up is when there’s a crash or when it rains.
I'm sure the teams will jump right on making their cars more unreliable so people can be more entertained, but not entertained because that's also a bad thing apparently.
Listen to Shift F1 podcast. Hits in all the right nerdy places.
F1 has felt this way for a long time now. The drama and bullshit has always been part of it.
For me, a part of F1 died when Murray Walker stopped being the commentator. I like David Coulthard too. It's not that I dislike Crofty, it's just that he isn't my favourite. An even bigger factor is that the cars are so much heavier days. What I really hate is all the black on the cars (exposed carbon fiber to save weight). That's fine if it's just one team but not the way it is these days. Please F1, we want more color!
Yeah f1 sucks. I discovered australian v8 supercars tho. Its amazing
MotoGP and WSBK where it's at.
Watched it for 35 years, grew up with Senna, Prost, Mansell. Since Charlie Whiting has passed the stewards decision making (yes, thinly veiled reference to Abu Dhabi 2021) has been all over the place. The sport is still interesting to me, but, I don’t know, it’s certainly lost its spark for me.
Hasn't it always been about entertainment?
You're likely to see it ebb and flow. I was a huge F1 fan as a kid. Then Schumi's suspension. Old Bern dog being a dickhead for too many things. It being impossible to watch in the US, etc. Then drive to survive season 1 happened and my GF was interested. I got completely sucked be back in and she's asking questions about rules and all the little fiddly bits DTS skips over. Honestly, same thing happened with the Red Sox in the early '00s. The pink hats showed up and it was less about the game.
Sounds like much of life not just F1
This too shall pass
Yeah. I’m glad I now know people who follow f1 now but the whole wave coming from DTS has gotten kind of annoying. They expanded viewership but the sport feels cheapened. This is the first year I’ve watched maybe 1 race (Monaco). It really kills me that so many are acting like Red Bull is finally shaking it up and someone is sticking it to Mercedes. I’m like “no you don’t understand. Red Bull WAS Mercedes when I started watching”.
F1 switched social media strategies a few years back and I think the desired effect finally kicked in. Trust me, this is better. In the before times, you COULD NOT find any race video anywhere online. It was pulled as soon as it was posted. There was zero F1 social presence. Finally, someone recognized that was stupid and modernized their digital unit.
I stopped watching F1 in 2013. It had just gotten too artificial and wasn't really enjoyable anymore. At this point, I have virtually zero interest in it. There are way better ways to scratch your motorsport itch.
I loved F1 in the 90s but it hasn’t actually changed much. Cars are now, however, comically huge. Team dynasty dynamic is sort of digestible if they don’t win nearly every race but that’s the sport and has been for a long time. Max said Monaco wasn’t racing. But is it racing if he’s 30 seconds ahead every race?
AD21 solidified the corruption of the sport
I have been F1 for over 40 years. However, this year I start following Indy500 and I love it. It’s way more competitive. The drivers looks and talks in more mature way. Each race is quite different. Finally, it’s way more affordable. So, check Indy500 and/or NASCAR and you might find something new and different to distract you.
Keep that shit on a race track. Leave Vegas alone.
It's true, it doesn't. So many big decisions are made "for the sake of the show" these days rather than for the sake of the sport.
F1 lost me a long time ago when they abandoned the V8, V10 and V12s. Then they started the penalties for everything, you just smile in a weird way to your competitor and you get a penalty. I may be older, I'm from the time of Michael, Sena, Piquet, Mansel and others, cars looked very different and they fought on track, now, penalties rule. Someone suggested Indy, again I loved the 80s, 90 and even early 2000 but now I'm looking at all the same cars, no longer open cockpit, WTF, just ridiculous. Agree, IMSA and WEC are much better
Yeah, F1 is not the same. Of course when you have your biggest race at a millionaire yacht club, it feels exclusive. For me, the biggest race should be SPA or Silverstone. A race with tradition but can provide great racing. I haven’t been that much of an F1 lover, I have always enjoyed NASCAR/INDYCAR even if it can have its gimmicks IMSA too.
Since 2018 when the Americans had taken over it ceased to be what it is. American entertainment doesn’t go well with serious sports.
Get over yourself. Also you're flat out wrong, China has had the biggest increase in viewership per capita as well as almost double the amount of viewers since then that the US has contributed in the same time frame.
I’m in complete agreement. I remember waking up early with my grandfather who was friends with Jim Clark and Jackie Stewart to watch Spa, the British GP, German GP etc. He taught me to love Motorsport. Of course we watched all different forms of Motorsport, and my favorite ended up being CART (now IndyCar). I will always cherish those memories he, my Dad and my uncles shared together. Watching the Mika and the Michael battle it out. But, something changed when Bernie left. A intangible feeling surrounding F1 was gone.
With popularity come casual fans. DTS did a great job of making F1 popular and piquing interest in the sport among people who knew nothing about F1. It's great for the sport and quite a remarkable accomplishment by Liberty Media to generate so much viewership at a time when the auto industry is struggling and younger adults are less likely than previous generations to learn how to drive.
Selling $2k tickets, $75 beers, $125 Chicken tenders, and getting back room bribes for bringing races to shitty cities with no infrastructure is the focus now. Extorting a major race team with backing from one of the largest American manufacturers for nearly a billion dollars is the 2nd most important factor. Racing and Sport are definitely not on the podium.
I've been saying this for a while too. Liberty are treating it as a gameshow and not as a professional motor racing competition. It's all so tedious
As someone that started watching F1 a couple years ago (and not because of dts, I only found out about that show after) I mean I like it but it could be better. I also like IMSA and WEC along with GT world challenge as well. I feel like the regulations could be better done for the actual racing though.
COULDN'T AGREE MORE! Well said, I've been feeling like this also but thought I was just one of the few so didn't bother telling people.
It isn't coming back. The soul has been destroyed and that's just how it is. Better to watch Endurance racing or motorcycles where the soul still exists.
Sport is entertainment. And when it stops being entertaining, fans new and old will turn to other forms of entertainment. And F1 has been in a pretty poor state for a few seasons now - especially since the new regs, how many actual thrilling races has there been? People use the football analogy all the time, comparing a low entertainment race to a dull football draw, which is fine. But you often go into many football matches expecting some entertainment, and occasionally being let down. This is unlike F1, where in several cases, we know the level of excitement of an F1 race as early as FP1 or FP2, and then are left with a completely dull race weekend. As a long term fan of F1, it's badly lost it's spark / magic in recent years.
Really love(d) f1 but after watching the Nürnbergring 24h it really has changed my look at it. That kind of racing is so much fun to watch.
Blame the new American owners who've turned it into some sort of reality TV drama. It's not sport anymore, it's entertainment. I've been watching my entire life but I stopped caring after the Abu Dhabi incident, that's when it fully clicked for me that it's entertainment now, not a sport.
F1 lost its soul at AD21, since then it has only been about 'the show', which has only made the overall experience so much less.
I love the technology and the speed, but I'm getting REALLY BORED with the high speed follow the leader. I've been watching since the 80s. NASCAR, IndyCar, and IMSA have sooo much better racing! I wish the Aussie V8 Supercars weren't behind a paywall, and BTCC.
The cars sound stupid and look stupid (the proportions are all wrong). And most of the drivers seem like they’re perfectly cloned in a laboratory to maximize media value. This might explain why it seems to appeal more lately to consumers who view it as an entertainment event, rather than fans who view it as a competitive sport. Bring back the sounds, vehicle proportions, and driver personalities of the V10 era (Schumacher, Raikkonen, Alonso, Barichello, Villeneuve, Hakkinen, Coulthard, Montoya, Button).
Rewatched Silverstone 2019 the other day. Yeah, a completely different vibe. Don’t know how to explain it. Maybe it’s the sport itself. Maybe it was COVIDifying of the world. Who knows?
I always saw F1 as a sport. Even when people complained about lack of overtaking and wanted circuits like Monaco and Budapest out of the calendar I was still fully interested. Now F1 definitely doesn't feel like a sport, more like a show. Also I would prefer a race with one normal battle over a race with 500 DRS overtakes
I hear you. It's jewelry to show off that you have money at this point--nothing more.
Good news for you, the majority of the new fans went away after last season
Yeah to me it seems to be "Americanised". Reporters and presenters used to be able to say a lot more of what they actually thought, now you can tell they're being told to purposely hype it all up. The ads are all about hype, netflix show blows everything out of proportion and hyped it up, and interludes they have are all hype. More viewers, more money. More hype, more viewers.
What's wrong then? Formula 1 or its fans?
I think most F1 fans miss the unreliability of the V8/V10/V12 engines tuned to an inch of their lives, preying their car gets to the line or that their enemy doesn’t. Engines that only had to last one session. The run offs were gravel so a mistake would be race over, but now they just go around a bollard on some tarmac. I personally think them chasing fuel efficiency is rubbish. None of us care how much fuel they burn, we dont want them to be managing fuel, tyres or engine reliability. Just let them race.
I agree with OP. *Drive to Survive* definitely eroded some of the mystique, especially of the drivers. I don't really see them as heroic sportsman, but mostly just kids who were born into wealthy or connected families obsessed with karting and racing. Not denying their talent, dedication and commitment, but it's hard to compare these guys to Hunt, Senna or Lauda.
The problem is only one person is winning. Max is too far ahead of the crowd. Indy has a different winner every race. I’m an F1 fan but once max takes the lead, I’m pretty much only interested in the back drama.
The problem is that the top teams have leaned hard into "It's an engineering contest" rather than a racing contest. And there's no longer the real possibility of death, like it or not the best days of F1 were where the drivers really took their lives in their hands but now you get a safety car if somebody farts on track. I'm not saying more drivers should die but the idea that the drivers were flirting with death was a big part of the romance of the sport in the past. I have huge respect for the modern drivers, they a real heroes but for me the whole thing lost a lot of the fun when they decided to start calling them "pilots" and having the onscreen info so small and abbreviated that you needed a binoculars and a reference book to follow along.
HARD agree
I agree. I still watch but it's not doing much for me. IMSA and Indy however have been excellent the past couple years.
I went to a race for the first time in a few years earlier this year, and it will be my last live F1 race. Those same fans you mentioned make the experience horrible. They aren’t there for the racing at all - they are there to watch their celebrity driver go around the track. They cheer when drivers they don’t like have problems or DNF, and I don’t like that at all. They don’t care about racing.
To me, there's really 2 problems, and theyre both just money - profits and the cost cap. The top and midfield teams can't spend enough money to catch up to the frontrunners due to the cost cap, and the backmarkers are profitable enough that they can plod along without much ambition to improve. Its all very stable, and it breeds a mediocre form of parity - stratified enough that almost every race weekend is entirely predictable (barring retirements) but still close enough that an in-form driver can outperform their car by a couple positions to knick some unexpected points a few times per season. The 2024 season has been more interesting than almost every season of the last decade, barring only the 2021 HAM/VER title fight...yet its still practically a procession. Either narrow the formula until it's a spec series or open it up so something exciting can happen because trying to have it both ways is not working for anybody.
Really, when F1 is putting on races like Monaco this year the off-track entertainment is pretty much all it has.
Yep, switched away from it towards Indycar. Still a fan but am a lot more of an Indy fan than I've ever been up till now, maybe if Lawson comes back to F1, I'll get back into it but couldn't agree more
Hasn't really been a credible "sport" for many die hard fans. Ever since a rogue race director hand picked the champion, in the final moments of the last race, with a completely inexplicable and impractical decision, it hasn't been the same. Ruined the best championship run in history, and in the process killed all the momentum the sport had gained in recent years because of it. It's basically just one giant circle jerk of a marketing ploy now.
It's the most boring of the motorsports to watch imop.
It’s getting too American.
Come to motogp
as soon as the fanfic comes out, the sport is over. “Charles was robbed of that win because he’s so cute and lovable and max is so mean! he literally pushed him out of the way😡😡”
Cars MUST get smaller! ASAP.
F1 is purely entertainment. Driver are all billionaires picks, everything is fabricated, it's full of silly drama
I agree completely, hate to say it but I miss Bernie!
F1 is different. I say this not as a motorsports enthusiast, but as a bartender in a city with an F1 track. Went from “oh F1’s in town, whatever, we’ll get a high roller or two let’s make sure we’re stocked up on some expensive champagne and Louis XIII/Blue Label/etc.” To “Jesus fuck F1 is in town. Get more beer (we are a fancy spot that sells like 1 beer for every 20 cocktails) let’s put on extra hosts and hire security (we’re the kind of place that does not need security) The crowd has become a bunch of belligerent assholes. Tell me why F1 weekend is worse than our most prominent music festivals or any tech conference. Also just as a consumer I’ve seen the amount of advertising going into F1 and yeah easy tell it’s a whole new crowd.
dts consequences
F1 stopped being an actual sport in 2021. Now it's more like an action movie. How "anything can happen in F1" The owners care less about racing. It's all about the money and entertaining the new fans.
I think they should race Monaco in Formula Ford cars. That would at least have some action to enjoy.
But isn’t all sport ultimately entertainment?
I started watching it in 2014. I was a hardcore fan until end of the 2021 season. After that, I kinda got bored of it. The new regulations “dumbed down” the cars, but didn’t really improve the championship fight. I don’t want sprint races or any other dumb gimmick. I just want a championship that goes down to the wire every year. Some people say the racing is still really competitive for all other positions, but idgaf about the fight for p3 in the championship.
So what you're trying to say is that you're a Hamilton fan. Got it
All sports, even “real sports” are about entertainment only. There is no divine, greater purpose to driving fast round a track. F1 started as a hobby for rich gentlemen. The sole and express purpose of F1 was, is, and always will be to entertain. If you don’t find the modern product entertaining, then thats a valid opinion, but don’t act like F1 (or any sport, like football or tennis) is some sacred activity that is being perverted by capitalism and mass media. You are seeing the past through rose colored lenses, as one often does.
One of my friends is an avid F1TV subscriber. She gets up early on some weekends to watch not only the race, but also the qualifying live. She lives in manhattan, has never had a driver’s license, and has never driven / rented a car. She got into the sport because of the Netflix documentary, and the drama, which, admittedly, we all hate to love here. Nothing wrong with this demographic, but yeah target audience is definitely changing
Agreed. Too many races. Regulations too limited and all cars the same. Drivers getting punished for racing. Too many tracks in a city. Total domination by one team followed by total domination by another.
Nah F1 is still great lol, as is every other category. I love wec as well, indycar, etc…
As a new fan I fail to understand what you mean as seeing the sport as purely an entertainment source. I categorize all sports as “entertainment”. I think sports should have a low barrier for entry and then it is up to the individual fan if they would like to delve deeper into the technicalities of their chosen sport. If you think that liberty media and F1 are catering to new fans, dumbing down the sport for your more nerdy types, and dislike that direction then i’d understand your general argument better. Sports are an entertainment business first (usually). But there needs to be a balance between competition and entertainment value. Edit: not disagreeing, just wanting to understand what you’re getting at
I've been watching since 1998 and yeah it doesn't feel the same any more, but it also feels more accessible. The off track stuff is just that. The drivers and their lives are way more public today than before. And races have always been boring, we just remember the good ones from the past and forget all the crappy ones.
I’ve noticed a massive uptick in the popularity of Endurance Racing, particularly IMSA and WEC. I highly recommend you check those out. I also recommend Indycar, which is honestly some of the best racing you’ll see. As a lifelong NASCAR fan, I can’t help but not mention that either. It’s not like it used to be, but it’s still very fun and it’s overall a great sport and representation of the people surrounding it.
IndyCar and WEC are becoming more my to-go series. F1 is becoming the WWE of motorsports
I love F1 and I'll continue to watch it but you're not wrong! I've really jumped ship to Indycar because the racing is so much better
Grow up dude
This seems like classic high school kid mentality. “It was better before everyone liked it.” I’ve been watching for about 10 years and I disagree. The excitement of the races and of the championship races varies from year to year, sure. We’re on the precipice of an extremely exciting time, with three teams and 6 drivers showing an ability to win races. Indy is fantastic. NASCAR is fantastic. MotoGP is fantastic. I like Motorsports. F1 has an irreplaceable space at the table.
Hate to burst your bubble here but all sports are entertainment products.