Any Formula 1 fanatics who have spent recent years agonising over the so-called ‘Americanisation’ of their favourite sport wouldn’t have had their anxieties calmed by Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei’s comments during a meeting with investors last week.
Maffei hailed the various actions Liberty had taken with F1 and the FIA to modify the sport – such as introducing the budget cap, making prize money pay-outs more even across the championship and transforming technical regulations with ground effect cars. But he also casually mentioned that he and F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali had caught up over lunch to swap notes with two of the most powerful figures in North American sport: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NBA commissioner Adam Silver.And it’s clear that the NFL – the most lucrative sports league in North America and, indeed, on planet Earth – is the model Liberty aims to emulate with F1.
“Our goal is to build a long-term healthy ecosystem and build a sport that has as much of some of the elements that the NFL has on any given Sunday – that anybody can win,” Maffei said during the investors call. “They compete like hell on Sunday and then think about the league first on Monday.”
There was perhaps no greater example of this than Super Bowl 42 in 2008, when the all-or-nothing championship showdown pitted the unstoppable New England Patriots, looking to become the first team to win all 19 games in a single season, against a New York Giants team who had somehow stumbled into the showdown having lost almost 40% of their regular season ties. Through disciplined defence, a hard-nosed effort from their attacking core and perhaps the most exceptional act of athleticism in Super Bowl history, the Giants overcame the odds and pulled off one of the greatest upsets in North American sporting history to become champions. The Patriots’ quest for a perfect season ended at the last.
But as thrilling a story as the Giants’ own giant-killing performance was, how does it relate to Formula 1? After all, a grand prix is never just two teams pitted in direct competition against each other. Rather, there are ten teams competing at the same time – 20 drivers all fighting among themselves to be the sole winner to reach the chequered flag first.
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At the heart of the matter is predictability. When you have seasons like 2004 with Michael Schumacher, 2011 with Sebastian Vettel, 2019 with Lewis Hamilton or even last season with Max Verstappen, it’s nearly impossible for fans to approach a race weekend with hope that the runaway championship leader will face competition for victory. This problem has worsened during the V6 turbo era.
Even outside of the top step of the podium to the other two alongside, the rate hardly gets any better. The top three teams hoarded 91.4% of the 539 podium places between 2014 and the end of 2022, meaning you could pick any of the 182 grands prix in that span and have less than a one-in-ten chance of finding a driver not from the top three teams on the podium.
When lightning does eventually strike and an unexpected winner takes the chequered flag on those very rare occasions, it’s almost entirely through circumstance and good fortune – not through pure merit. Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon fully earned their shock race wins by holding their nerves in the lead, but both required exceptional good luck to find themselves out front to begin with. Even McLaren’s one-two victory at Monza in 2021, achieved through excellent driving by both Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris, might not have happened had Verstappen and Hamilton not collided.What Formula 1 too often lacks is that potential for teams to somehow hook their cars up out of the blue and storm to victory through virtue of simply being the fastest at that particular track on that particular weekend. Just this past weekend, IndyCar provided the perfect example as second-year driver Kyle Kirkwood – who had only recorded a single top-10 finish before Sunday’s Grand Prix of Long Beach – converted pole position into a stunning first victory in the series.
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Yes, Kirkwood’s form was boosted by his move from AJ Foyt’s team to the better-resourced Andretti powerhouse. But having those opportunities to fight at the front when you get your car in the perfect window is what F1 refugees like reigning Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson find so appealing about racing in America’s foremost single-seater series.
“The IndyCar championship, the competitiveness of the championship, especially this year, is just incredible. There’s so many good drivers and cars out there. To know every weekend you can go out and compete and fight for a win, the kind of drive you get from that is something I missed very much in my five years in Formula 1.”
Of course, as IndyCar is largely a single-spec series, you would expect it to be more competitive than Formula 1, where teams design, build and develop their cars each season. But as Liberty Media look to emulate that ‘any given Sunday’ dynamic of the NFL, they’re also unknowingly looking to revive competition in Formula 1 to the level it was at times during the eighties and nineties – a period many long-time fans consider the peak of the sport.
Back then, the strongest teams still took the lion’s share of victories. But the smaller teams further down the field still knew that if they played their cards right, they had just as much chance of points or better as any of their rivals. Across the whole of the 1980s, an average of 7.8 teams a year scored at least one podium during the season. In the last full decade – 2010 to 2019 – that figure dropped to an average of only five teams a season.
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Although 2023 is hardly proving the most competitive start to a season in recent history, there are signs that Liberty’s efforts to tighten up the field is working. Over the first three rounds of 2023, the average field spread in Q1 during qualifying sits at 1.64% – far closer than the three most recent seasons of 2020 (2.5%), 2021 (2.89%) and last season (1.91%). All ten teams have also scored at least one point during the opening three races – something that has never happened since the current system awarding points for the top 10 was introduced in 2010.
Teams up and down the field remain convinced that the recent measures to level the playing field in F1 will have a major impact on competition over the years to come. But even if F1 never becomes a championship where each team has a genuine chance of fighting for wins or even podiums every race weekend, would it really be all that tragic if the world championship trophies were not presented to the same small number of recipients year after year?
After all, in the last 10 years, seven separate teams have been crowned as champions of the NFL. In the same time, only four drivers – and two constructors – have earned the greatest prize in F1.
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Proesterchen_nli
20th April 2023, 12:53
Only someone who spent too much time listening to the NFL owners and not enough checking the actual facts would proclaim their show particularly competitive.
And that’s with them literally treating people as commodities with no say in their own careers and little protection from the debilitating injuries inherant in their participation.
ajpennypacker (@ajpennypacker)
20th April 2023, 15:16
Yes, the NFL is absolutely profitable. But the way they do it is not something any organization should want to emulate. They represent a lot of the negative stereotypes about profit-obsessed America. Over commercializing, abusive practices of hosts, absolutely absurd prices for tickets where it’s no longer a sport for families to enjoy. Finally, a culture in the league the, call it what you want, but glorifies violence and has ended up with the most criminal convictions per capita in any professional league
IfImnotverymuchmistaken
20th April 2023, 13:15
A big part of F1 is in that it’s special and rare. Every race is (or should be) an occasion. I don’t have an abundance of free time, but for F1 I make an effort to free my Sunday afternoons.
I won’t be doing that for some run-in-the-mill, special effects, all looks and no substance facsimile of F1 once was.
With all other showbizz related changes, I really do believe that soon it will be time for me to say goodbye to F1.
asd
20th April 2023, 13:28
In team sports, every game is a new opponent for the team you follow. Every round of games gives you a set of completely new games to choose from.
In F1, every race is the exact same field of drivers and the same 2-3 drivers racing for the win.
Because of this, F1 events are much more prone to feel generic and unfresh.
JezH79
20th April 2023, 13:39
I think Liberty should take their ideas and go somewhere else, find a different sport to milk out and ruin. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think changing things is a bad idea – but the motivation behind it is. Liberty clearly doesn’t understand or respect the history of F1 and it’s DNA. If they want F1 Las Vegas style with Hollywood glamour- just buy NASCAR and swap the cars for F1 cars or put NASCAR drivers in F1 cars – I don’t care as long as they leave F1 alone..
floodo1 (@floodo1)
20th April 2023, 14:18
Yea because football basketball and F1 are such similar sports, what with NFL and Basketball tams developing their own bespoke equipment and teams losing because their equipment breaks down.
Liberty peove day after day that they are just greedy outside investors trying to maximize their profits not actually improve the sport
David
20th April 2023, 14:21
NFL is so stupid and rigged (if you think you’ve seen rigged in F1, you should see the NFL!).
This is bad news. Look at the US. Obviously what they are doing isn’t good. They are falling apart!
X1Znet (@x1znet)
20th April 2023, 15:07
Really trying to find some positive notes from this…. NFL does not have sprints races and do not try to monetise teams practising. There are less than 20 games (per team) in an NFL season.
Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
20th April 2023, 15:23
No better case than apples and oranges. The NFL uses a talent draft where the worst teams get first pick of the best upcoming talent. The model is that over time, as the veteran talent ages and leaves the top teams, the young talent that came into the bad teams will hit their peak and the once bad teams will be good and vice versa. The NBA has good examples of that as the Philadelphia 76ers for example, went from a bad team to a good team via the draft. They also had to tank (intentionally be bad) for a few years so they could stock pile top draft picks, but the model worked for them.
The only way we’ve really seen smaller teams close the gap to the larger teams in F1 is when the rules remain stable for a prolonged period of time and the smaller teams are able to whittle away at the gap to the larger teams. Jordan and Stewart are probably the two most recent examples of that. Currently one could argue that Ferrari and Mercedes losing the plot has more to do with what we’re seeing from Aston Martin than them making any great gains.
The unfortunate part of this story is that we can assume that Liberty will continue to put the show above the sport in hopes of having a lottery finish at each event.
RandomMallard
20th April 2023, 18:24
@velocityboy
I agree, either you have to be very clever with a regulations change, hire Adrian Newey, or wait for the field to naturally level out as the regulations stay stable. However, in another example, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, in my opinion, the most competitive season of the hybrid era came in 2021: the 5th season of having a mostly stable ruleset. It was the only title fight between 2 teams that went right down to the wire in that era, and also featured 13 drivers and 8 teams reaching the podium, far more than most others years of the hybrids.
S
21st April 2023, 12:30
You forgot to add that the following year involved a new set of technical regs, so teams were putting limited or even no development on the existing (2021) cars. Certainly less and less as the season progressed.
Asanator
20th April 2023, 15:27
Reliability!
zeus_m3
22nd April 2023, 16:39
Totally agree. Teams were no where close in performance back then, just a lottery of whos cars failed on the day.
Leroy (@g-funk)
20th April 2023, 15:41
Ooof. There is a lot to unpack here.
As others have mentioned, F1 and the NFL/NBA are quite different. The first major difference is that the playing “equipment” is all standardized. Teams don’t develop their own pads or balls or gloves or cleats/sneakers, etc. They all use the same equipment. Therefore any differences on the field are a result of the players or the team’s strategy. In F1, the equipment plays a significant role in performance (if not the biggest role).
The second major difference is that through the draft systems both the NFL/NBA use, the best athletic talent in the junior series go to the weakest teams and they are locked into rookie contracts that are dictated through CBAs between the leagues and players’ unions. In F1, not only is that not the case but teams often spend millions of dollars investing in junior talent so they can sign them when they are ready. That is known as “tampering” in the NBA/NFL and is specifically prohibited. F1 would never permit the top F2 talent to be mandated to go to the worst team on the grid for a set amount of years.
So the comparison to the NFL’s Any Given Sunday mantra is totally misplaced and uninformed and shows a shocking lack of understanding of both F1 and the NFL.
CarWars (@maxv)
20th April 2023, 15:43
NFL, really a worldwide competition with worldwide audience for every game.. Maybe only the super bowl. Sure great show but it ain’t comparable to F1.
Sonny Crockett (@sonnycrockett)
20th April 2023, 15:50
Liberty are slowly turning the noble sport of Formula 1 into Monster Trucks…
Steve K
21st April 2023, 23:28
Have you ever been to Monster Jam? I have taken my kid several times and Grave Digger wins every time.
Doug Webster
20th April 2023, 17:25
I think what they are looking to emulate is to create the circumstances where all the teams have the opportunity to deliver a top result on occasion. In the NFL, the best team can lose to the worst team if the circumstances line up just so. How that is accomplished is by introducing playing-field-leveling rules that allocate resources and opportunities in a relatively fair way. This model balances the field but also allows high functioning teams to achieve long term results and championships.
F1 is arguably already implementing these sort of changes (cost cap, progressive wind tunnel hours), and is getting these sort of results in the past few years (Ocon in Hungry, Gasly in Italy). I think F1 is trending the right direction in this regard.
On some level, the largest outlier in F1 right now is the brilliance of Newey and his team at RB. This was also the case on several other rule refresh seasons. There is no way to temper his brilliance, and they should never try. Somewhat dull results when a single team nails the new regs isn’t something that could be removed from F1 without destroying its soul -and nobody is suggesting that.
Comments about the numerous negative aspects of the NFL are not relevant to this conversation. This article is out emulating a sports league’s competitive results and it’s successful business model. It has nothing to do with Sprint Races or turning the sport into something unrecognizable.
Perhaps British and European viewers are OK with having one or two teams that destroy everyone and the results are nearly known beforehand (like French & Spanish Football), but I would guess that there are more people who prefer watching something where the results are reasonably unpredictable.
Disclosure. I’m American. I’ve been a fan of F1 and the NFL since the early 80’s. I grew up near Cleveland, the home of arguably the worst and most embarrassing NFL team.
Coventry Climax
21st April 2023, 20:18
1: Explain to me why you would need the framework of a championship when each and every race is a gamble. When it’s the last race on the calendar to decide the championship, and that’s a gamble too, that’s describing a format where only the last race counts. Also, it describes a lottery, not a sports.
2: On the description of the NFL 2008 Superbowl as an example:
When F1 got exactly that, they fired Michael Masi over it, saying there were errors and it’s not what they wanted.
But apparently that’s a downright lie, as they now say it’s exactly what they want.
F1 has been smelly before, under Ballestre, under Ecclestone, but now there’s a heavy, foul stench developing around it, thanks to our american friends.
zeus_m3
22nd April 2023, 16:54
Spec racing
Neil (@neilosjames)
20th April 2023, 17:36
The ‘unpredictable’ nature of most sports is because they rely so heavily on the input of one or many standard humans, and with such high reliance on a human for all aspects of performance there will be always be substantial variability. Humans have off days, on days, moments of inspiration, make silly or forced errors, time things badly, miskick or mishit, etc etc. Even the most best human at their given sport (peak Messi, Djokovic, Williams, Woods, Tendulkar, James, Brady level) does almost every single thing on the pitch/court/course suboptimally.
F1 cars are so brilliantly, beautifully engineered that they just work. The power units never have moments of inspiration where they magic themselves an extra 50hp that they don’t always have. The aero parts don’t change their mind about how they’ll react to an airflow several times a lap. The tyres are predictable and don’t occasionally slip for no apparent reason, and the wheels don’t have a mind of their own and decide to point the wrong way every now and then. You get occasions when things don’t work perfectly (bit of oil on the racing line, PU failure, unexpected dirty air, poorly timed SC/red flag) but even if that happens to the leader, there’ll nearly always be another front runner having a normal race to take over.
There’s obvious a big human element too, but the human in F1 is shielded from his own variation by the perfect machine he’s sat in. F1 will never be an ‘Any Given Sunday’ sport because it’s so much more reliant on equipment than humans. Like comparing organic apples and 3D-printed oranges.
zeus_m3
22nd April 2023, 16:52
Spot on, however if we have spec cars, then we tilt the competition back to human. If you find spec is bad for engineering, then have only ferrari mercedes redbull, each team w. 5 6 cars, so we can have Ver vs. Lec vs. Ham vs. Rus vs. Alo vs. Nor in equal equipment and each race will be unpredicable.
Neil (@neilosjames)
20th April 2023, 17:37
The ‘unpredictable’ nature of most sports is because they rely so heavily on the input of one or many standard humans, and with such high reliance on a human for all aspects of performance there will be always be substantial variability. Humans have off days, on days, moments of inspiration, make silly or forced errors, time things badly, miskick or mis-hit, etc etc. Even the most best human at their given sport (peak Messi, Djokovic, Williams, Woods, Tendulkar, James, Brady level) does almost every single thing on the pitch/court/course suboptimally.
F1 cars are so brilliantly, beautifully engineered that they just work. The power units never have moments of inspiration where they magic themselves an extra 50hp that they don’t always have. The aero parts don’t change their mind about how they’ll react to an airflow several times a lap. The tyres are predictable and don’t occasionally slip for no apparent reason, and the wheels don’t have a mind of their own and decide to point the wrong way every now and then. You get occasions when things don’t work perfectly (bit of oil on the racing line, PU failure, unexpected dirty air, poorly timed SC/red flag) but even if that happens to the leader, there’ll nearly always be another front runner having a normal race to take over.
There’s obvious a big human element too, but the human in F1 is shielded from his own variation by the perfect machine he’s sat in. F1 will never be an ‘Any Given Sunday’ sport because it’s so much more reliant on equipment than humans. Like comparing organic apples and 3D-printed oranges.
Adrian Hancox (@ahxshades)
20th April 2023, 20:12
OK – A little left field here – why should the prize money be different for teams depending on the position in the championship table? Surely the main benefit should be the fact that you are seen as a World Championship Winning Team. Most of the teams will be close to covering the cost cap now and the extra prize money income to the better sponsored richer teams gives no real return to the sport aside from paying “Star” drivers horse choking amounts of cash (and good for them getting it of course).
If the reason for racing was points rather than finances we could even see convergence of the teams performance happen more quickly – when the lower placed teams have that extra injection of cash from evening up the prize money.
I could be wrong of course.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
20th April 2023, 20:46
Why are they both on Sunday?
Dex
20th April 2023, 22:00
An average F1 fan can’t name a single player from NFL, perhaps not even a single team. They have so much in common…
MacLeod (@macleod)
21st April 2023, 7:58
Even the more fanatical F1 fan like me can’t name any NFL or it must be North Florida roadsign? Without the picture above the article i would say baseball or Basketball competition. Certain no Football (American Ruby as we say here in the old world)
Jon
21st April 2023, 1:18
One thing NFL and F1 fans have in common…both think the sports were much better in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s.
Roberto Fratelli (@rfratelli)
21st April 2023, 3:16
I only care about bringing back the v10´s…
JackL
21st April 2023, 3:38
Did anyone notice that the guy on the left looks like Lando Norris on steroids?
CarWars (@maxv)
21st April 2023, 7:09
Is that Hamilton on the right?
Short Circuit (@jjohn)
21st April 2023, 9:24
Any given Sunday? Nah diminishes Friday & Saturday.
Endless Summer is more appropriate.
Qeki (@qeki)
21st April 2023, 10:43
First half of 2013 was the last part F1 was F1. After that it has gone downhill. I don’t care if in 2026 20 drivers will be within 0.010s eachother. I’m not saying it will be artificial because rules are going in that way. Bernie had some very special ideas for the sport but Liberty is making them
obster
21st April 2023, 17:22
Interestingly, that probably would not be ruled a catch in todays game.
The rules now are much stricter about the receiver’s control of the ball…
Electroball76
21st April 2023, 18:33
32 teams, 53 drivers each? That’s a great idea for F1. It would sure cut down on the “who deserves a seat” arguments.
Vic
21st April 2023, 19:21
Every given Sunday, Max Verstappen wins in the Red Bull.
Steve K
21st April 2023, 23:25
The NFL hate on here is hilarious. I root for one of the worst run teams the last 25 years and I am convinced this will be the year we turn it around. This is what you want as a fan. Not utter hopelessness…which is what you have in F1 2023.
Hate on the NFL because they make money (that is why businesses exist), but their formula since they started sharing TV revenue (1961) and installed a salary cap (1994) has made the league the most entertaining sport in the USA and more entertaining than anything I have seen in Europe (on TV in the USA). I guess the Premier League will always have Leicester that one time…
Michael
22nd April 2023, 10:45
The scenario you describe does happen but the rarity of it happening makes it significant when it does happen
In 2008 Honda and Red Bull where in the lower half of the field. In 2009 they were first and second as Brawn and Red Bull while better funded rival teams struggled with technological changes (i.e. accomodating the optional KERS). They have won every title since. Before that Ferrari, McLaren, Williams and Renault/Benneton shared every title since the early 80s.
NewVerstappenFan (@jureo)
22nd April 2023, 7:50
Why is there no race on Sunday these weeks?
Mathias
22nd April 2023, 13:13
it’s jsut the calendar chosen by the FOM
ferrox glideh (@ferrox-glideh)
22nd April 2023, 18:00
@jureo The race in China was cancelled due to the pandemic, and the logistics of replacing it was deemed too difficult for the teams in such a short amount of time.
cdfemke (@cdfemke)
23rd April 2023, 1:58
More fake americanshizzle will kill the sport. More fake cheering. More fake sound effects, more drs, more sprints. Watching from 1992 it will soom emd
MotoGP , endurance amd ralley appeal a lot