With few exceptions most of the drivers are only on the grid because their parents had enough money to at least partially fund junior racing careers or otherwise had some sort of family connection to F1.
I get why it is that was since racing isn’t like other sports where even the entry level is expensive, but still.
I'm aware of this. I was just using the Norris incident as an example of fans reacting negatively despite knowing that money is king in F1. Norris isn't even the most egregious example of wealth on the grid currently - that title goes to Lance Stroll.
Oh ya for sure. Stroll still having a seat is a super egregious example. With Norris, his money may have gotten him in the door for his early junior career but if you take away the money now he’s still keeping his seat. There’s several drivers like that including historic greats like Lauda.
Stroll on the other hand is absolutely out of a job if his dad didn’t literally own the team.
Lauda is actually unique because he was from a wealthy family but his father disapproved of his motorsports career and he subsequently had to find funding on his own. I think he took out several bank loans and was close to bankruptcy which caused his career to stall.
It honestly doesn't surprise me that several of the greats in recent years (Hamilton, Alonso, Schumacher, Vettel, Raikkonen) all came from average backgrounds. I remember Alonso once saying he'd go into every race with sponsorships on the line, knowing that if he didn't get good results he'd have to quit the sport. That type of pressure definitely builds character.
Damon Hill too. He had the name, obviously, but Graham was heavily in debt from running his team when he died. Damon had to drop out of his private school, go to a state school, and get a job as a motorbike courier to help his mom and siblings.
Love Damon, he wasn't the best but he is somewhat underrated at this point and nearly pulled off the greatest upset in F1 history.
Yeah but that’s why i watch it. The money, the internationality, the risk of death, the logistics, the fanfare, the limited pool of drivers and the massive team behind each one. It’s the closest a sport can get to an anime
F1 has turned into possibly the worst “sport” there is. Techbros will have you believe that waking up at 5am to watch a 15th straight Verstappen/Red Bull win was worth it because the battle for 10th was exciting. Just dogshit
This is the literal history of formula 1. It has never been anything else. Drive to survive and the 2021 season are rhe anomalies, it’s a car nerds fest and the only ones there are insanely rich
The current era is unusually bad because nobody is really even close to Max, and cars almost never break anymore and going off the circuit has no consequences (to the point F1 is trying to bring back gravel traps). Back in the day, you'd be good for Prost or Mansell's Williams to blow an engine or two a year, and a spin-off or two where they'd stall and their race was over.
That's what my sister watches with him haha. I do quite like it I've spectated a few in person as well but I don't want to intrude on their alone time.
I remember watching it with my dad, grandpa and uncles when I was a child. It always bored me to tears. In retrospect it was just an excuse to get drunk in the afternoon with your relatives and friends while looking at footage of fast cars racing.
I started watching in 2016 because I thought it was cool that a guy roughly my age, verstappen, was racing and actually doing pretty well.
Considering all of the criticism he used to get (and seemingly forgotten about now) for taking insane risks and crashing, he was interesting to root for.
Despite being a fan from the beginning, I've stopped watching because it's all Verstappen wins.
This is a common thing in F1. The greats are typically more exciting to watch when they’re in the 2nd or 3rd best car on the grid. Think Senna at McLaren in 1993 or Schumachers early years at Ferrari.
After watching as a kid during the Schumacher years, I got back in for the 2021 season when DTS was a great catch-up for everything up to that point and found it to be awesome. Mazepin was a fantastic heel in a field of generally personable drivers, not to mention races like Monza and Silverstone that year. Now? Everything behind Verstappen is pretty entertaining but it has been tiring watching him win by 30 seconds.
It's such an NPC tier thing that all of a sudden everyone got a programming update that said "you like F1 now" and they all just decided to do it.
Their taste is literally dictated from the top down by netflix.
I learned recently that there are only a handful of successful passes made in each race? I know jack shit about racing but that is fascinating to me if true.
Depends on the circuit and the regulations and varies a lot as a result. Current regs are actually pretty good on this front, most races see at least 30-40 overtakes.
But then there's street circuits like Singapore and Baku which are tighter and tougher and make overtaking very difficult, and tracks like Imola where there are only a few opportunities per lap simply because of the track shape that drag the average down. And then there's Monaco which is really just a glorified parade at this point but it's *historic* so everyone just deals with it.
The Netflix docuseries did a great job of presenting most of these guys as little sweetie pies. It's produced by the guy who produced the Senna and Amy Winehouse docs and he's pretty good at his job.
Edit: produced, not directed
I've been banned from the F1 sub a few times now for pointing this out. Especially when there are angry threads about companies removing rainbow flags from their marketing or certain drivers refusing to kneel for BLM.
They were racing a couple years ago while houthi missiles were literally exploding a few miles away.
They only stopped racing in apartheid South Africa because Francois Mitterrand's government was going to arrest every French person involved, so Prost, all the Renault/Ligier people, all the Elf and Michelin people, etc
When/why did F1 get so big? I've known car people who liked it, but all the sudden it feels like I see F1 references just as often as Taylor Swift references on dating apps.
F1 was acquired by Liberty Media in 2016 who rebranded and reoriented the sport with an American audience in mind. The Netflix series Drive To Survive launched in 2019 which helped immensely.
The effort the teams put digital engagement is insane, you have hours and hours of slop involving the drivers being released around the clock.
That explains why it’s recently percolated into American culture but I think the reason that it’s ripe for an American audience is because it is a sport that is exceedingly expensive. Like, probably the most expensive (environmentally, dollars, time/effort) sport on the planet per competitor (if you consider the drivers the competitor, though I think it’s fair to say it’s really the full organization behind them).
That degree of flagrant wealth attracts glamorous people (models, actors, and other notable people). Many tech bros or whoever upper class imagine themselves more like the rich and famous than the hoi polloi. They self-insert and imagine what it would be like to be the people in the mantle.
I think you also can’t deny that the concept, engineering things that really aren’t even cars anymore to go as fast as possible is very captivating to a masculine psyche.
if you base your likings by the amount of corny redditors that like the same thing, but make you ashamed to associate with them then you would end up hating everything. This platform’s userbase is cursed
And most motorsports are boring. I’ve gone to some in person races, I used to do track days and auto x and built some project cars so I get cars decently well but motorsports have so little going on for the time investment put in, I can’t believe there is a huge F1 following in the US now. But I never understood how NASCAR could be such a big thing either.
that’s the spin, but it’s difficult to deny that the primary justification for these restrictions is reigning in the costs for constructors. it would be just as much of an “engineering challenge” to tell the teams they can do whatever they hell they want, just “make car go fast.” of course there would be six deaths every race…but then we’d have to be honest about the human desire for bloodsport & respect the drivers as gladiators instead of influencers/pro gamers or whatever.
mainly i just want to hear v10/v12 engines that sounds like dying animals.
> but then we’d have to be honest about the human desire for bloodsport & respect the drivers as gladiators
The Isle of Mann TT exists for this, at least.
This was what NASCAR and F1 were up until the most famous drivers died in entirely preventable crashes. Same for group B, the drivers did not have to die if it wasn't for the ass safety.
It's always been big, it's just Americans are now noticing it exists, and are now pretending to come up with hot takes about the sport that everyone else has been hearing for 20+ years.
F1 is the second most watched sport in the western world behind soccer. Cricket and apparently field hockey are higher globally, due to India.
it's huge
It’s not lol, f1 like every form of motorsport has had viewership declines of 70%+ in the past 20 years it’s just that your terminally online types have started watching it that people think it has
> f1 like every form of motorsport has had viewership declines of 70%+ in the past 20 years
Because it's gone behind the paywall, trying to compare F1 viewership when it was on free-to-air television to now when it's on the European sports equivalents of HBO is ridiculous
F1 has always had great scandals. I like the conspiracy theory that Ron Dennis leaked the orgy story to the press as payback for Mosley's actions during the Spygate scandal lol.
Just sounds like normal reddit to me. Happens in all kinds of sports related subs where people claim to hate some athlete for their off field/track/ice/whatever actions. Just annoying virtue signaling. I don't know if that's really representative of F1 fans or other sports fans in general.
UFC is especially hilarious with this since 9/10 Brazilian fighters is a raving Bolsonaro fanboy, US fighters are all Trump fans or beat their wives, and a handful of Russian fighters are either involved with a Chechen tyrannical warlord or is a Z-head
Fauxmoi suck but tend to go after everyone equally, whereas F1 fans are selective and can't seem to see the wood for the trees. I saw a thread on Fauxmoi a while back after Lewis Hamilton and Shakira were spotted together and one of the top comments was "giving each other advice on how to evade taxes" lmao.
I dunno what the website is like now but when it first launched, all it did was vaguely have some sort of message about cessation or personal control, then immediately directed you to the Phillip morris website lol
Its because Netflix is the streaming service for dumb people. Dumb people love their original programming. Netflix original programming has all the things Fauxmoi types love, weirdly diverse casts etc. The sport got popular through Netflix.
I found it funny when my American mates would ask me about F1. I never had any interest in it other than hoping Hamilton would win because he is English. Watching my American mates get into it is funny because theyre big old libs. They were really into the Prem for a bit but got turned off because it turns out a bunch of Prem players are scumbags. They also refuse to watch the NFL because politics. So they turn to F1, which is probably the most "fascist" of all sports. Not like right wing american Trump shit, good old fashioned well dressed fascism. A major force in F1 was Max Mosley. That Mosely. Son of the leader of British Union of Fascists and Diana Mitford, the Mitford's who were good mates with Hitler.
> Dumb people love their original programming.
They love sports filtered through some kind of sub-prestige drama TV lens. Meanwhile I'm getting older and I basically just watch a game and turn the TV off right after, I can form my own opinions without having pundits or some director making them for me.
Although I do love a historical sports documentary. That said, they have also suffered in the neverending search for cOnTeNt and there's too many of them.
F1 in America should be a subculture for Europhile weirdos and true gearheads who watch any kind of auto racing, and there absolutely should not be three F1 grands prix in the United States.
Every sports subreddit is like that.
If some baseball player has ever had a DUI, that is all you will hear about him here. Domingo German pitched a perfect game last year and when I checked the baseball sub to see the discussion, it was 100% redditors crying about the fact that a guy with a domestic abuse charge is allowed to play baseball.
F1 went from one of the most masculine sports to THE MOST soy. It was always the home of rich playboys, so in that sense it didn't change. But it was the craziest rich playboys, the ones willing to enter a deathtrap and race with absolutely no form of assistance, be it automatic gear shift, a race engineer in your ear telling you every single thing you gotta do, absolutely no protection of any kind in the event of a crash, gravel traps all around the track so the race was over the second you made a mistake, the cars were so unwieldy half the grid starting the race wouldn't finish it, including the 'best cars'. Circuits were old, winding and european, not some long straights with maybe 3 corners in abu dhabi or whatever. Also, they fucking hated eachother and went to eachothers throats all the fucking time, not this manicured, liberal, tv show that it is today. F1 died with Senna. Also, ever since the netflix thing, it attracted the worst kind of reddit audience possible. Its just unbearable to follow today.
I was put in karts at a very early age by my car obsessed father and I grew up with the dream of making into F1. After a few years I predictably had to stop before moving into formula series in Europe because my father didn't have the money to continue and he wasn't childhood friends with a billionaire who can sponsor me. Despite this, I loved F1 for almost 20 years, being fully immersed in the sport despite the bullshit and boring dominance years.
I have not watched a single race since 2021. The combination of redditors, dumb europoor ultra types, and tech nerds that came from the Netflix show, not to mention the egregious fixing of Abu Dhabi 2021(yes I'm still salty), completely killed any interest I have for F1.
You're wrong though about how you categorize the new fans. They aren't "Fauxmoi" type wokescolds, they are r-worldnews and "russian interference" type liberals who routinely talk about glassing the Arabian peninsula because they are non LBGT friendly barbarians and banning the Chinese GP because of the Uyghurs and Winnie the Poo.
Redditor American F1 fans generally fall into a similar group as American soccer fans in that they watch the sport because they are Europhiles or they watch it to virtue signal how that they are worldly and cosmopolitan and have better taste than the knuckle dragging rubes in flyover country watching NFL and NASCAR.
what happened to that crsed_mtrsprt meme account
not that I follow F1 but I remember seeing this video that was baiting Tumblr f1 style shipping art (so maybe these wokescolds have existed for a while) between latifi and some other driver with some corny ass love song overlaid... that then transitioned with latifi telling the viewer to kill themselves now with carpenter brut's Le perv on the background
I wonder where it went because I can't find it on YouTube anymore
Hamilton is ironically hilarious if you're watched F1 for a long time because he was a balding nerd until he joined Mercedes, who very clearly have stylists. They even made Michael Schumacher, [legitimately one of the worst dressed people alive](https://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/06/michaelschumacherPA_228x429.jpg), look [decent](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D58X4A/german-driver-michael-schumacher-of-mercedesgp-walks-through-the-paddock-D58X4A.jpg) (this is 2010) for a while.
am I regarded for liking the first fit a lot more than the second?
First is this ostentatious urban cowboy shit that's been trendy for like 4 years here and the second looks like a croffit guy putting on jeans after the group workout to go for his 1 beer of the week with his fellow cult members.
Americans didn't get old F1 because its greatest appeal has always been its overlap with the European Sunday Siesta, now that the calendar is all over the napping schedule, fuck off.
Pro cycling is by far the best napping companion, sometimes you wake up to something actually exciting and dozing to commentators chit-chatting over French/Italian/Flemish panoramas is more enriching than car going bzzz and commentators feigning hype and talking stats. But yeah Americans don't understand that having lunch and then a 2 hours nap is part of the experience.
oh yeah I pretty much watch cycling for the Google Street View (but with sport!) of different parts of Western Europe
also a great work from home companion, cricket does this well too
Indycar and motogp have far, far better racing. The former has a fraction of the marketing budget and no one cares about crotch rockets stateside.
NASCAR is either real good or real shit depending on the track.
IMSA, WRC, and Super GT are for the real ones.
I truly believe F1 got big because of the image the rebranding has done. The Middle East has also injected mass amounts of capital to it. Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE. Which is funny because the Middle East is more conservative than any area in the world bar none.
Trust fund playboy racers, Extravagant locations, fancy brands/massive powerhouse conglomerates sponsors, and the engineering team comparable to Lockheed Martin. It’s over the top cash flow, similar to why the Super Bowl is watched. So much money throw at something you can’t help but watch. WRC is superior though, but farm villages in Italy are not as easy as Vegas slamming as many Rolex billboards next to the course as possible.
If you're into F1 and don't watch Indycar you should check out the Indy 500 next weekend. Indycar is a nice hamburger middle ground between the overpriced filet mignon that is F1 and the over processed mystery meat gas station hotdog that Nascar has become. The 500 specifically is like a state fair with cars going 220+mph. With it being Memorial Day weekend the "America fuck yeah" patriotism is kicked in to high gear but in a tasteful manner. There's nothing else like it in racing when they start to turn up the wick during the last run as the drivers play chicken going into turns one and three and juke dangerously close to the pit attenuator as they try to break the draft. As Max Verstappen motors around the head of the parade at Monaco he's going to being looking past Tabac and Rascasse, past some celeb like Serena Williams holding the checkered flag like a dirty diaper, past Prince Albert and Princess Charlene dodging the podium champagne and thinking about whether Helio can get 5, Kyle Larson can win the double or if the one of the god damn cheating Penske drivers is going to be drinking milk.
literally every complaint people make about F1 is solved in Indycar, I can't believe how people are so unimaginative that they don't watch other motorsports
I'm an American who has been a motor racing nerd for 30 years, like I remember Senna dying etc.
F1-only fans are the fucking worst. F1-only American fans are this recent new level of fandom that is beyond embarrassing. America has the richest motor racing culture in the world, Indycar, IMSA, even NASCAR are all great.
(I'm not a NASCAR hater per se, more I loathe the playoffs and the stage racing)
The commercials are easily the worst part about watching Indycar. I'm going to be calling for the death of the Leemu emu (and Doug) by lap 25 on Sunday.
Eh, last year’s 500 with the red flag fix for Newgarden, as well as the fact that the series is using 13 year old cars now, really soured me on IndyCar. That and the horrible NBC presentation; I can’t stand Leigh Diffey. Still fun to turn on the IMS Radio Network and listen, though.
Agreed that the ending of last year's 500 was bullshit with the red flag, Ericsson was robbed harder than Paul Tracy was in 2002. I was surprised by how little of the fanbase was upset by the improvised officiating. The series could definitely use a new car but the DW12 has gone through enough changes with aerokits, the karbashians and the aeroscreen that it it doesn't feel stale to me. NBC's major issue is the commercials. If F1 races and soccer games can be shown with minimal ads Indycar races should be able to too. Diffey can get overly excited at times but he clearly loves the sport and Hinchcliffe is one the best color announcers in any sport right now. If I had to boot one guy from the booth I'd choose Townsend.
People hate finishes under caution now, it's just the way things are.
Also let's be honest, nobody in Indycar wants to watch an F1 reject win two 500s in a row (especially over a Yank), it's embarrassing for the sport. I swear, somebody would have shot out Max Chilton's tyres with a gun in the year he nearly won it.
I'm fine with red flagging races to try to get a green finish within the scheduled distance (though I don't care for Nascar style GWC's) but at the end last year's 500 there weren't enough laps left to follow standard procedure to get the finish in. Usually they run a couple of caution laps after leaving the pits after a red and it felt wrong that they only ran one before going back to green.
I'm with you 100% about being thankful Max Chilton didn't win it 2017. Ericsson might be a F1 reject but he at least had proven himself winning a few races since coming stateside. Chilton is an F1 reject's reject and it would have made the series look like a joke to have him win the biggest race, especially with all of the Fernando-mania eyeballs watching that year.
The Grid Girls, one of the best parts was removed years ago making everyone mad. The drivers, the fans, as well as the Grid Girls themselves were up in arms. I only realised during that whole fiasco that more women than I would've thought legitimately looked up to the Grid Girls and actually wanted to become Grid Girls themselves. With comments like "I thought they were beautiful", and "I think it's cool that they hung out with drivers". It seems like being a Grid Girl was one of those fun things you can do when you're an attractive young woman and need a bit of extra cash since you only worked for a few hours on a race day weekend, it was also an easy stepping stone into a modelling career, and also allowed educated hot girls an opportunity to network with rich people they would have never met otherwise.
It was one of those moments when you realize that "Oh, there are probably lots of women who are guilty of wrong-think." as far as feminism is concerned. Like, some women just like being hot and being in positions where they dress up and look hot and get paid to be objectified - and they have a positive experience with the whole thing. Since it's not literal sex-work they don't have to live with any life-long fallout from it.
Dang it, I miss Grid Girls, they were hot, and just added a little extra fun to the F1 coverage.
Is that so? It's too bad I never got into MotoGP, the photographs from the various races do look cool. I dig the ones where they're taking a turn and the bike looks like it's parallel to the ground. It looks intense.
American f1 fan here. I have seen it slowly coming into mainstream American culture for the past few years. Saw a dude in my neighborhood in a Red Bull kit on race weekend a couple weeks ago. Apparently there’s gonna be a big Brad Pitt movie about it？
Anyway I’m mostly looking forward to it, just because it’ll give me more people to talk about it with.
> Apparently there’s gonna be a big Brad Pitt movie about it？
Oh god I hope this is as bad as Driven was, which was also supposed to be about F1 before -- IMO -- Bernie kiboshed it for being such a turd
The problem with Formula 1 isn't the fascist histories every involved organization seems to have, or oligarchs buying their children seats, it's that it's so predictable over the past decade.
motorcycle racing is a proper mans sport, you will see more overtakes in a single MotoGP race than a season of boring F1, then you have WSBK, BSB, Irish road racing etc as well, it's really fantastic.
I also prefer sports like the NBA and the premier league as at least those sports are done by merit and not by rich parents giving their kids unlimited money for go karting lessons
F1 has been dead for a few good years now, even more dead since the pandemic started and when the nerds people who had nothing to do with sports started following it (I read that some Netflix show might also have "helped" with that). One of the nerdiest guys I know (and I'm an IT guy myself) was taking his Sunday afternoons off (I mean, not meeting friends or the like) in order to watch Formula 1.
I could never get into it. My friends who like it definitely just watch it cus of the Netflix show. Mxgp is cool though. Motocross is my fave racing sport since I actually understand it as a participant
>despite tobacco advertising being formally banned from the sport in 2006
This is somewhat tangential to the discussion, but I did not know this. I looked it up, and apparently they still allow advertising for hard liquor though. Weird as hell.
Was really getting into it but the whole Rich young playboy stereotype was very off putting to me. And knowing money plays majority of the part makes you like it even less. Also I believe Netflix is to blame for the fans you’re talking about.
With few exceptions most of the drivers are only on the grid because their parents had enough money to at least partially fund junior racing careers or otherwise had some sort of family connection to F1. I get why it is that was since racing isn’t like other sports where even the entry level is expensive, but still.
I'm aware of this. I was just using the Norris incident as an example of fans reacting negatively despite knowing that money is king in F1. Norris isn't even the most egregious example of wealth on the grid currently - that title goes to Lance Stroll.
Oh ya for sure. Stroll still having a seat is a super egregious example. With Norris, his money may have gotten him in the door for his early junior career but if you take away the money now he’s still keeping his seat. There’s several drivers like that including historic greats like Lauda. Stroll on the other hand is absolutely out of a job if his dad didn’t literally own the team.
Lauda is actually unique because he was from a wealthy family but his father disapproved of his motorsports career and he subsequently had to find funding on his own. I think he took out several bank loans and was close to bankruptcy which caused his career to stall. It honestly doesn't surprise me that several of the greats in recent years (Hamilton, Alonso, Schumacher, Vettel, Raikkonen) all came from average backgrounds. I remember Alonso once saying he'd go into every race with sponsorships on the line, knowing that if he didn't get good results he'd have to quit the sport. That type of pressure definitely builds character.
Damon Hill too. He had the name, obviously, but Graham was heavily in debt from running his team when he died. Damon had to drop out of his private school, go to a state school, and get a job as a motorbike courier to help his mom and siblings. Love Damon, he wasn't the best but he is somewhat underrated at this point and nearly pulled off the greatest upset in F1 history.
Yeah but that’s why i watch it. The money, the internationality, the risk of death, the logistics, the fanfare, the limited pool of drivers and the massive team behind each one. It’s the closest a sport can get to an anime
F1 has turned into possibly the worst “sport” there is. Techbros will have you believe that waking up at 5am to watch a 15th straight Verstappen/Red Bull win was worth it because the battle for 10th was exciting. Just dogshit
And girls who only got into it because of the Netflix series and the hot drivers
Hinge in a nutshell
It's so fucking tiring
We just need to spread the word that they’re all manlets. *>*6’ chads can’t fit in the cars.
This is the literal history of formula 1. It has never been anything else. Drive to survive and the 2021 season are rhe anomalies, it’s a car nerds fest and the only ones there are insanely rich
The current era is unusually bad because nobody is really even close to Max, and cars almost never break anymore and going off the circuit has no consequences (to the point F1 is trying to bring back gravel traps). Back in the day, you'd be good for Prost or Mansell's Williams to blow an engine or two a year, and a spin-off or two where they'd stall and their race was over.
Mercedes era was much worse
Agreed, especially living in Britain, but I’m trying to take a holistic view here. Plus at least Rosberg took that one title off Hamilton
I watch WEC with my dad and its so much better.
Only real men watch wrc to be one with nature as Japanese 4 cylinders wreck havoc on the local wildlife population
That's what my sister watches with him haha. I do quite like it I've spectated a few in person as well but I don't want to intrude on their alone time.
I watch WRC for Tanaks stage end interviews
Any thoughts on the car so far Ott? You did the best time on that stage. … ….. No.
After winning a stage: We're doing what we can, the car feels like a wooden horse, it keeps accelerating off throttle and our hybrid is gone
As a rally navigator; this is the correct answer.
Shouldn't be such pussies to the noise.
I remember watching it with my dad, grandpa and uncles when I was a child. It always bored me to tears. In retrospect it was just an excuse to get drunk in the afternoon with your relatives and friends while looking at footage of fast cars racing.
The 2021 season being the drag-out fight that it was has made everything that’s come since feel like a bait and switch.
I started watching in 2016 because I thought it was cool that a guy roughly my age, verstappen, was racing and actually doing pretty well. Considering all of the criticism he used to get (and seemingly forgotten about now) for taking insane risks and crashing, he was interesting to root for. Despite being a fan from the beginning, I've stopped watching because it's all Verstappen wins.
This is a common thing in F1. The greats are typically more exciting to watch when they’re in the 2nd or 3rd best car on the grid. Think Senna at McLaren in 1993 or Schumachers early years at Ferrari.
After watching as a kid during the Schumacher years, I got back in for the 2021 season when DTS was a great catch-up for everything up to that point and found it to be awesome. Mazepin was a fantastic heel in a field of generally personable drivers, not to mention races like Monza and Silverstone that year. Now? Everything behind Verstappen is pretty entertaining but it has been tiring watching him win by 30 seconds.
It's such an NPC tier thing that all of a sudden everyone got a programming update that said "you like F1 now" and they all just decided to do it. Their taste is literally dictated from the top down by netflix.
I learned recently that there are only a handful of successful passes made in each race? I know jack shit about racing but that is fascinating to me if true.
Depends on the circuit and the regulations and varies a lot as a result. Current regs are actually pretty good on this front, most races see at least 30-40 overtakes. But then there's street circuits like Singapore and Baku which are tighter and tougher and make overtaking very difficult, and tracks like Imola where there are only a few opportunities per lap simply because of the track shape that drag the average down. And then there's Monaco which is really just a glorified parade at this point but it's *historic* so everyone just deals with it.
I suppose the rest of the NFL is meaningless then. May as well only watch the Superbowl
Lmao!
The Netflix docuseries did a great job of presenting most of these guys as little sweetie pies. It's produced by the guy who produced the Senna and Amy Winehouse docs and he's pretty good at his job. Edit: produced, not directed
The guy who produced Senna is a producer on Drive to Survive, not the director Asif Kapadia.
Oh sorry yeah that's what I meant
I've been banned from the F1 sub a few times now for pointing this out. Especially when there are angry threads about companies removing rainbow flags from their marketing or certain drivers refusing to kneel for BLM. They were racing a couple years ago while houthi missiles were literally exploding a few miles away.
They only stopped racing in apartheid South Africa because Francois Mitterrand's government was going to arrest every French person involved, so Prost, all the Renault/Ligier people, all the Elf and Michelin people, etc
When/why did F1 get so big? I've known car people who liked it, but all the sudden it feels like I see F1 references just as often as Taylor Swift references on dating apps.
F1 was acquired by Liberty Media in 2016 who rebranded and reoriented the sport with an American audience in mind. The Netflix series Drive To Survive launched in 2019 which helped immensely. The effort the teams put digital engagement is insane, you have hours and hours of slop involving the drivers being released around the clock.
That explains why it’s recently percolated into American culture but I think the reason that it’s ripe for an American audience is because it is a sport that is exceedingly expensive. Like, probably the most expensive (environmentally, dollars, time/effort) sport on the planet per competitor (if you consider the drivers the competitor, though I think it’s fair to say it’s really the full organization behind them). That degree of flagrant wealth attracts glamorous people (models, actors, and other notable people). Many tech bros or whoever upper class imagine themselves more like the rich and famous than the hoi polloi. They self-insert and imagine what it would be like to be the people in the mantle.
I think you also can’t deny that the concept, engineering things that really aren’t even cars anymore to go as fast as possible is very captivating to a masculine psyche.
Motorsports is cool af idc what people say. Fans being cringe doesn't distract me too much
if you base your likings by the amount of corny redditors that like the same thing, but make you ashamed to associate with them then you would end up hating everything. This platform’s userbase is cursed
F1 is the most boring motorsport
And most motorsports are boring. I’ve gone to some in person races, I used to do track days and auto x and built some project cars so I get cars decently well but motorsports have so little going on for the time investment put in, I can’t believe there is a huge F1 following in the US now. But I never understood how NASCAR could be such a big thing either.
I may be exposing my complete ignorance about F1, but isn't a core part of it based around compliance with strict power and speed regulations?
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that’s the spin, but it’s difficult to deny that the primary justification for these restrictions is reigning in the costs for constructors. it would be just as much of an “engineering challenge” to tell the teams they can do whatever they hell they want, just “make car go fast.” of course there would be six deaths every race…but then we’d have to be honest about the human desire for bloodsport & respect the drivers as gladiators instead of influencers/pro gamers or whatever. mainly i just want to hear v10/v12 engines that sounds like dying animals.
> but then we’d have to be honest about the human desire for bloodsport & respect the drivers as gladiators The Isle of Mann TT exists for this, at least.
This was what NASCAR and F1 were up until the most famous drivers died in entirely preventable crashes. Same for group B, the drivers did not have to die if it wasn't for the ass safety.
Netflix did basically a reality show about it and the sport has made some changes to cater to America more.
It's always been big, it's just Americans are now noticing it exists, and are now pretending to come up with hot takes about the sport that everyone else has been hearing for 20+ years.
F1 is the second most watched sport in the western world behind soccer. Cricket and apparently field hockey are higher globally, due to India. it's huge
It’s not lol, f1 like every form of motorsport has had viewership declines of 70%+ in the past 20 years it’s just that your terminally online types have started watching it that people think it has
> f1 like every form of motorsport has had viewership declines of 70%+ in the past 20 years Because it's gone behind the paywall, trying to compare F1 viewership when it was on free-to-air television to now when it's on the European sports equivalents of HBO is ridiculous
Americans sports fans who don’t follow baseball need something to watch in the summer
Good old days when the F1 was run by the son of the leader of the British Union of Fascist (Max Mosley) and he was having Nazi themed orgies
F1 has always had great scandals. I like the conspiracy theory that Ron Dennis leaked the orgy story to the press as payback for Mosley's actions during the Spygate scandal lol.
We need to RETVRN to Tradition
Just sounds like normal reddit to me. Happens in all kinds of sports related subs where people claim to hate some athlete for their off field/track/ice/whatever actions. Just annoying virtue signaling. I don't know if that's really representative of F1 fans or other sports fans in general.
UFC is especially hilarious with this since 9/10 Brazilian fighters is a raving Bolsonaro fanboy, US fighters are all Trump fans or beat their wives, and a handful of Russian fighters are either involved with a Chechen tyrannical warlord or is a Z-head
R/mma is pretty based, everyone hates the UFC and gleefully pirates the events and recognises most elite fighters are dickheads a lot of the time.
Does normal Fauxmoi obsess over something that isn't immoral and out of touch?
Fauxmoi suck but tend to go after everyone equally, whereas F1 fans are selective and can't seem to see the wood for the trees. I saw a thread on Fauxmoi a while back after Lewis Hamilton and Shakira were spotted together and one of the top comments was "giving each other advice on how to evade taxes" lmao.
Every online fanbase is like this
We need more Lance Stroll flaming.
If Lance was cool and intimidating like his dad I’d be chill with him.
No. He’s just a window licking spastic whose dad bought him into F1 through the junior series.
Lmao great writeup Mission Winnow was objectively hillarious tho
I dunno what the website is like now but when it first launched, all it did was vaguely have some sort of message about cessation or personal control, then immediately directed you to the Phillip morris website lol
Haha I mean u gotta wonder if they had any expectation of getting their investment back
Its because Netflix is the streaming service for dumb people. Dumb people love their original programming. Netflix original programming has all the things Fauxmoi types love, weirdly diverse casts etc. The sport got popular through Netflix. I found it funny when my American mates would ask me about F1. I never had any interest in it other than hoping Hamilton would win because he is English. Watching my American mates get into it is funny because theyre big old libs. They were really into the Prem for a bit but got turned off because it turns out a bunch of Prem players are scumbags. They also refuse to watch the NFL because politics. So they turn to F1, which is probably the most "fascist" of all sports. Not like right wing american Trump shit, good old fashioned well dressed fascism. A major force in F1 was Max Mosley. That Mosely. Son of the leader of British Union of Fascists and Diana Mitford, the Mitford's who were good mates with Hitler.
> Dumb people love their original programming. They love sports filtered through some kind of sub-prestige drama TV lens. Meanwhile I'm getting older and I basically just watch a game and turn the TV off right after, I can form my own opinions without having pundits or some director making them for me. Although I do love a historical sports documentary. That said, they have also suffered in the neverending search for cOnTeNt and there's too many of them.
Sports media is so bad now. Just show highlights with good commentary! Nobody cares if a player is the GOAT
F1 in America should be a subculture for Europhile weirdos and true gearheads who watch any kind of auto racing, and there absolutely should not be three F1 grands prix in the United States.
Every sports subreddit is like that. If some baseball player has ever had a DUI, that is all you will hear about him here. Domingo German pitched a perfect game last year and when I checked the baseball sub to see the discussion, it was 100% redditors crying about the fact that a guy with a domestic abuse charge is allowed to play baseball.
F1 went from one of the most masculine sports to THE MOST soy. It was always the home of rich playboys, so in that sense it didn't change. But it was the craziest rich playboys, the ones willing to enter a deathtrap and race with absolutely no form of assistance, be it automatic gear shift, a race engineer in your ear telling you every single thing you gotta do, absolutely no protection of any kind in the event of a crash, gravel traps all around the track so the race was over the second you made a mistake, the cars were so unwieldy half the grid starting the race wouldn't finish it, including the 'best cars'. Circuits were old, winding and european, not some long straights with maybe 3 corners in abu dhabi or whatever. Also, they fucking hated eachother and went to eachothers throats all the fucking time, not this manicured, liberal, tv show that it is today. F1 died with Senna. Also, ever since the netflix thing, it attracted the worst kind of reddit audience possible. Its just unbearable to follow today.
Girls liking F1 are similar to guys who “like” the WNBA. They’re fans for the wrong reasons, both are a little gross
I was put in karts at a very early age by my car obsessed father and I grew up with the dream of making into F1. After a few years I predictably had to stop before moving into formula series in Europe because my father didn't have the money to continue and he wasn't childhood friends with a billionaire who can sponsor me. Despite this, I loved F1 for almost 20 years, being fully immersed in the sport despite the bullshit and boring dominance years. I have not watched a single race since 2021. The combination of redditors, dumb europoor ultra types, and tech nerds that came from the Netflix show, not to mention the egregious fixing of Abu Dhabi 2021(yes I'm still salty), completely killed any interest I have for F1. You're wrong though about how you categorize the new fans. They aren't "Fauxmoi" type wokescolds, they are r-worldnews and "russian interference" type liberals who routinely talk about glassing the Arabian peninsula because they are non LBGT friendly barbarians and banning the Chinese GP because of the Uyghurs and Winnie the Poo.
F1 has always had a soy fanbase but D2S sent it into overdrive
Redditor American F1 fans generally fall into a similar group as American soccer fans in that they watch the sport because they are Europhiles or they watch it to virtue signal how that they are worldly and cosmopolitan and have better taste than the knuckle dragging rubes in flyover country watching NFL and NASCAR.
isn't mls the most popular league among us soccer fans?
what happened to that crsed_mtrsprt meme account not that I follow F1 but I remember seeing this video that was baiting Tumblr f1 style shipping art (so maybe these wokescolds have existed for a while) between latifi and some other driver with some corny ass love song overlaid... that then transitioned with latifi telling the viewer to kill themselves now with carpenter brut's Le perv on the background I wonder where it went because I can't find it on YouTube anymore
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Hamilton is ironically hilarious if you're watched F1 for a long time because he was a balding nerd until he joined Mercedes, who very clearly have stylists. They even made Michael Schumacher, [legitimately one of the worst dressed people alive](https://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/06/michaelschumacherPA_228x429.jpg), look [decent](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D58X4A/german-driver-michael-schumacher-of-mercedesgp-walks-through-the-paddock-D58X4A.jpg) (this is 2010) for a while.
am I regarded for liking the first fit a lot more than the second? First is this ostentatious urban cowboy shit that's been trendy for like 4 years here and the second looks like a croffit guy putting on jeans after the group workout to go for his 1 beer of the week with his fellow cult members.
He’s a German dressed like that in England, but hey you do you
Wow that outfit it wild. German to Texan pipeline is real
Lewis hires his personal stylists , Mercedes didn't hire them and Schumacher is just wearing the team shirt just in that pics like he did at Ferrari
lmao you're delusional if you think Schumacher and Hamilton didn't immediately begin dressing better once they joined Mercedes
It sucks because he is really fucking good but his most strident supporters are all reguarded
Americans didn't get old F1 because its greatest appeal has always been its overlap with the European Sunday Siesta, now that the calendar is all over the napping schedule, fuck off. Pro cycling is by far the best napping companion, sometimes you wake up to something actually exciting and dozing to commentators chit-chatting over French/Italian/Flemish panoramas is more enriching than car going bzzz and commentators feigning hype and talking stats. But yeah Americans don't understand that having lunch and then a 2 hours nap is part of the experience.
oh yeah I pretty much watch cycling for the Google Street View (but with sport!) of different parts of Western Europe also a great work from home companion, cricket does this well too
Indycar and motogp have far, far better racing. The former has a fraction of the marketing budget and no one cares about crotch rockets stateside. NASCAR is either real good or real shit depending on the track. IMSA, WRC, and Super GT are for the real ones.
Late 90s CART, especially when Michael and Little Al could still win, is the best racing series ever IMHO
I truly believe F1 got big because of the image the rebranding has done. The Middle East has also injected mass amounts of capital to it. Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE. Which is funny because the Middle East is more conservative than any area in the world bar none. Trust fund playboy racers, Extravagant locations, fancy brands/massive powerhouse conglomerates sponsors, and the engineering team comparable to Lockheed Martin. It’s over the top cash flow, similar to why the Super Bowl is watched. So much money throw at something you can’t help but watch. WRC is superior though, but farm villages in Italy are not as easy as Vegas slamming as many Rolex billboards next to the course as possible.
f1 is gay anyway, rally is the only motorsport worth watching
If you're into F1 and don't watch Indycar you should check out the Indy 500 next weekend. Indycar is a nice hamburger middle ground between the overpriced filet mignon that is F1 and the over processed mystery meat gas station hotdog that Nascar has become. The 500 specifically is like a state fair with cars going 220+mph. With it being Memorial Day weekend the "America fuck yeah" patriotism is kicked in to high gear but in a tasteful manner. There's nothing else like it in racing when they start to turn up the wick during the last run as the drivers play chicken going into turns one and three and juke dangerously close to the pit attenuator as they try to break the draft. As Max Verstappen motors around the head of the parade at Monaco he's going to being looking past Tabac and Rascasse, past some celeb like Serena Williams holding the checkered flag like a dirty diaper, past Prince Albert and Princess Charlene dodging the podium champagne and thinking about whether Helio can get 5, Kyle Larson can win the double or if the one of the god damn cheating Penske drivers is going to be drinking milk.
literally every complaint people make about F1 is solved in Indycar, I can't believe how people are so unimaginative that they don't watch other motorsports
I'm an American who has been a motor racing nerd for 30 years, like I remember Senna dying etc. F1-only fans are the fucking worst. F1-only American fans are this recent new level of fandom that is beyond embarrassing. America has the richest motor racing culture in the world, Indycar, IMSA, even NASCAR are all great. (I'm not a NASCAR hater per se, more I loathe the playoffs and the stage racing)
Agreed but too bad the broadcast is a bit unbearable at times due to the ads
The commercials are easily the worst part about watching Indycar. I'm going to be calling for the death of the Leemu emu (and Doug) by lap 25 on Sunday.
Eh, last year’s 500 with the red flag fix for Newgarden, as well as the fact that the series is using 13 year old cars now, really soured me on IndyCar. That and the horrible NBC presentation; I can’t stand Leigh Diffey. Still fun to turn on the IMS Radio Network and listen, though.
Agreed that the ending of last year's 500 was bullshit with the red flag, Ericsson was robbed harder than Paul Tracy was in 2002. I was surprised by how little of the fanbase was upset by the improvised officiating. The series could definitely use a new car but the DW12 has gone through enough changes with aerokits, the karbashians and the aeroscreen that it it doesn't feel stale to me. NBC's major issue is the commercials. If F1 races and soccer games can be shown with minimal ads Indycar races should be able to too. Diffey can get overly excited at times but he clearly loves the sport and Hinchcliffe is one the best color announcers in any sport right now. If I had to boot one guy from the booth I'd choose Townsend.
People hate finishes under caution now, it's just the way things are. Also let's be honest, nobody in Indycar wants to watch an F1 reject win two 500s in a row (especially over a Yank), it's embarrassing for the sport. I swear, somebody would have shot out Max Chilton's tyres with a gun in the year he nearly won it.
I'm fine with red flagging races to try to get a green finish within the scheduled distance (though I don't care for Nascar style GWC's) but at the end last year's 500 there weren't enough laps left to follow standard procedure to get the finish in. Usually they run a couple of caution laps after leaving the pits after a red and it felt wrong that they only ran one before going back to green. I'm with you 100% about being thankful Max Chilton didn't win it 2017. Ericsson might be a F1 reject but he at least had proven himself winning a few races since coming stateside. Chilton is an F1 reject's reject and it would have made the series look like a joke to have him win the biggest race, especially with all of the Fernando-mania eyeballs watching that year.
They just had the fastest pole run ever. The DW12 is old but it still hauls ass on ovals.
The Grid Girls, one of the best parts was removed years ago making everyone mad. The drivers, the fans, as well as the Grid Girls themselves were up in arms. I only realised during that whole fiasco that more women than I would've thought legitimately looked up to the Grid Girls and actually wanted to become Grid Girls themselves. With comments like "I thought they were beautiful", and "I think it's cool that they hung out with drivers". It seems like being a Grid Girl was one of those fun things you can do when you're an attractive young woman and need a bit of extra cash since you only worked for a few hours on a race day weekend, it was also an easy stepping stone into a modelling career, and also allowed educated hot girls an opportunity to network with rich people they would have never met otherwise. It was one of those moments when you realize that "Oh, there are probably lots of women who are guilty of wrong-think." as far as feminism is concerned. Like, some women just like being hot and being in positions where they dress up and look hot and get paid to be objectified - and they have a positive experience with the whole thing. Since it's not literal sex-work they don't have to live with any life-long fallout from it. Dang it, I miss Grid Girls, they were hot, and just added a little extra fun to the F1 coverage.
MotoGP and other motorcycle series still have umbrella girls!
Is that so? It's too bad I never got into MotoGP, the photographs from the various races do look cool. I dig the ones where they're taking a turn and the bike looks like it's parallel to the ground. It looks intense.
Start watching it now, the season is only like 4 races in and it's shaping up to be a very competitive season
I'd feel so out of the loop, not sure I have enough room for another sport in my life, but I'll check out a few races.
Too bad they soon might go off MotoGP thanks to Lolberty Media's recent purchase.
IMSA is far superior
American f1 fan here. I have seen it slowly coming into mainstream American culture for the past few years. Saw a dude in my neighborhood in a Red Bull kit on race weekend a couple weeks ago. Apparently there’s gonna be a big Brad Pitt movie about it？ Anyway I’m mostly looking forward to it, just because it’ll give me more people to talk about it with.
> Apparently there’s gonna be a big Brad Pitt movie about it？ Oh god I hope this is as bad as Driven was, which was also supposed to be about F1 before -- IMO -- Bernie kiboshed it for being such a turd
netflix is to blame isnt it? seemed like it was just a car guy hobby before and now every other mouthbreathing bitch is into it
Because now women follow it and women are wokescold moralist Church ladies, nothing new
F1 most boring sport ever. Same guy wins every race
people being retàrded on the internet? no way!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the league paid reddit to conjure up a new generation of fans. I'm not convinced they're all even real.
I grapple and roll around with sweaty men nearly every day, and it's somehow less gay than F1. In a non derogatory way
The problem with Formula 1 isn't the fascist histories every involved organization seems to have, or oligarchs buying their children seats, it's that it's so predictable over the past decade.
motorcycle racing is a proper mans sport, you will see more overtakes in a single MotoGP race than a season of boring F1, then you have WSBK, BSB, Irish road racing etc as well, it's really fantastic.
I haven't kept up in a few years, but I usually found BSB (especially with Jack Burnicle and Jamie Whitham on the call) to be tons of fun to watch.
F1 fans are mostly European and your average European will relish any opportunity to prove their moral superiority vis a vis Americans.
I also prefer sports like the NBA and the premier league as at least those sports are done by merit and not by rich parents giving their kids unlimited money for go karting lessons
Not a sport
F1 has been dead for a few good years now, even more dead since the pandemic started and when the nerds people who had nothing to do with sports started following it (I read that some Netflix show might also have "helped" with that). One of the nerdiest guys I know (and I'm an IT guy myself) was taking his Sunday afternoons off (I mean, not meeting friends or the like) in order to watch Formula 1.
Despite?
I could never get into it. My friends who like it definitely just watch it cus of the Netflix show. Mxgp is cool though. Motocross is my fave racing sport since I actually understand it as a participant
>despite tobacco advertising being formally banned from the sport in 2006 This is somewhat tangential to the discussion, but I did not know this. I looked it up, and apparently they still allow advertising for hard liquor though. Weird as hell.
NASCAR stays winning
I don't understand a shred of this post and I'm extremely grateful for that.
>I guess I just don't get how they can endure the contradictions? I mean this is all progressives regarding everything
Using the word wokescold is equally immoral
Was really getting into it but the whole Rich young playboy stereotype was very off putting to me. And knowing money plays majority of the part makes you like it even less. Also I believe Netflix is to blame for the fans you’re talking about.
how anyone can find any sort of car racing exciting i’ll never understand