Welcome to Wednesday’s edition of the RaceFans round-up.
Comment of the day
Formula 1 drivers may lament the loss of Imola but don’t expect that to sway those in charge, says Phil:
The drivers can make their views known but little else. There has been so many comments from fans and drivers recently, that they lament the passing of the older, traditional circuits. But Liberty and F1 aren’t listening. Big payments and sponsorship from Gulf states and anywhere else willing to pay over the odds is all they are interested in.
They say they are growing the sport which is not a bad thing and may technically be true, but it’s the quality of racing and competitiveness that does this. This year and last have been close but this could easily change with the advent of a dominant engine/car next year onwards.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to GV27, Kanyima, thersqaured and Olivia Stephanie Ault!
On this day in motorsport
- 25 years ago today Michael Schumacher scored a popular home win in the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring after passing Mika Hakkinen
- Born today in 1942: Danny Ongais, the only driver from Hawaii to start an F1 race
- 75 years ago today Juan Manuel Fangio scored his first world championship race win after a huge pile-up in the Monaco Grand Prix, while Alberto Ascari came second for Ferrari on their debut
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S
21st May 2025, 5:36
Absolutely. The 2021 season was a gold mine for F1, with the finale adding an adjacent truffle farm. It was like steroids for viewer growth.
Nothing F1 can ever do (sporting, business or financial) will ever be as good as sustained tight competition – which is why it can sometimes be so mind-boggling that they forego it so intently, despite having endless opportunities to improve it.
The fact is, though, that FOM can’t control that element, so they instead choose to prioritise income streams they can control. Wealthier promoters, Pay TV deals, fewer (but higher paying) corporate partners, manufacturer involvement over actual competition… All very low risk and reliable.
Ferdi
21st May 2025, 9:44
But 2021 did prove they can actually control it and ever since we’ve seen them doing it to more or lesser extent. Scripting through well timed red flags, penalty points, looking the other way when technical infringements are made. I see it as one of the core elements of the decay of F1 under current disleadership of FIA and Liberty; they script it like it is driver to survive. 2021 was my ultimate low season of all times. Two protagonists going into the last race on equal points? Give me a break. 100% staged.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
21st May 2025, 10:45
Oh dear. one wonders why you watch or comment when its clearly all faked. A momentary look at how the last 9 races of 2021 went dispels this chip paper theory and it surely forces the question, if they can engineer it to be so tight, why dont they do it more often?
Ferdi
21st May 2025, 12:50
They try, but it is not easy. The situation unfolding needs to be improvised upon. I still watch because partly I am a dreamer that hopes it will go away and partly because I thoroughly enjoy it when despite their efforts they fail to keep a driver down. I will probably stop watching when push to pass is introduced or when there are only prison track races (street tracks.. fences, fences, fences) left.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
21st May 2025, 18:01
@tonymansell Several of the “last 9 races of 2021” also had blatant FIA regulation breaches, which means they are not the compelling case they might otherwise have been. Quite the opposite, especially when compared to before the summer break (when there is no evidence that any regulations were broken by the FIA, and the results were quite different). I for one regard Spa 2021 as the worst out of the batch, because that endangered the public as well as competitors.
(Also note that not all the reasons I watch F1 are fun).
anon
21st May 2025, 11:31
Apart from the fact that wasn’t the first time that we have had title protagonists going into the final race on equal points?
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
21st May 2025, 12:06
Must be a fix then as it happened before. ( !!!)
OMG what are the people saying these things doing for a living?! Scary
Ferdi
21st May 2025, 13:10
That is a way to look at it. I on the other hand am deeply worried about people letting themselves be led like sheep and falling for these corrupt organisations. A global phenomenon too, I am afraid.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
21st May 2025, 18:02
@tonymansell A lot of different jobs, as one would expect from a point of view that is rather more coherent than the “FIA didn’t manipulate the season and then lied about part of it in their own investigation when it could easily have hidden its non-manipulation by telling the truth”.
S
21st May 2025, 12:18
Not sure I agree with that. As inconsistent as the penalties were and will always seem to be, they were still pretty consistently inconsistent in equal measure. Both championship contenders were given about the same number of free passes/penalties when they perhaps (arguably) shouldn’t have.
I believe it’s been more or less the same before and since – they don’t get it completely wrong all that often (as per the rules), they just may not be completely consistent. Every incident is different and taken on its own merits, so fair enough.
That doesn’t imply intentional manipulation, unless that’s what you’ve already convinced yourself that’s what must be.
MichaelN
21st May 2025, 7:10
Schumacher winning in 2000 brings back memories. I had a sense that this was an almost wintery race, but I suppose it was just rainy and cold both at the track and were I was watching from. One of those races were Schumacher and Häkkinen just demolished the rest of the field and lapped everyone. Couldn’t happen now, I suppose. There would have been half a dozen safety cars.
Doug Boles is probably right that the rules limit their options on how to handle Penske, but I wonder if there’s not some vague general rule that could be called on, unsportsmanlike behaviour or something, as Penske seems to doing these things not by accident but rather as a years long team strategy. Such a shame.
Ferdi
21st May 2025, 7:10
Oh my. it is like watching Michael Douglas in Wall Street or Leo in Wolf of Wall Street.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
21st May 2025, 8:12
That’s such a sad statement.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
21st May 2025, 8:52
Indeed. It’s a sport Stefano, in case you’d forgotten. How about appealing to the people who genuinely love it?
S
21st May 2025, 8:59
The people who genuinely love F1 aren’t sufficient to sustain it. They need the discretionary spenders more than the diehards.
It is they who are having to choose how to spend their limited time and money. F1 – or something else. F1 needs to be a more attractive form of entertainment to hook them.
This is actually the most sensible quote Domenicali has produced for years.
Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
21st May 2025, 18:05
As the decades prior to Liberty proved, the people who genuinely love F1 are plenty enough to sustain it.
Obviously, Liberty and F1 appreciate having as many fans as possible. That’s marketing power. However, it does need to remember the actual stakes involved are not life-and-death, but rich-or-richer.
S
22nd May 2025, 10:09
So no casual viewers existed prior to Liberty’s buyout of the commercial rights, huh?
Given the numbers of comments from diehards vowing never to watch F1 again during Bernie’s time, I’d suggest there can’t be many of them left…
MichaelN
21st May 2025, 8:58
Why? F1 is so far beyond anything else in motorsport that it is not something they need to concern themselves with, nor is it much of a source of new viewers. It’s all the other forms of entertainment that is where they need to look to grow their audience.
BasCB (@bascb)
21st May 2025, 9:11
I tend to agree with MichaelN here. It makes huge sense that big sport events “compete” for attention and money and attendance with other big events, with other ways to spend your time and money. Just think of having a family and discussing going to a race – what are the arguments over: spending our time together at a race instead of say hiking, being on the beach, or attending a concert, over how much it costs and what else we could do with that money and the same goes for time and money spend watching – we could also spend that on other things we do together with friends and family.
Craig
21st May 2025, 9:13
Is it? F1 is called the “pinnacle of motorsport” but it does frequently find itself lacking compared to other sports at times and only maintains it’s position as “pinnacle” due to the amount of money behind it and name recognition. I frequently feel F1 (and FOM) needs to get over itself and accept it can learn from others series’ rather then pretend it’s better then anything else be dint of being F1.
Ferdi
21st May 2025, 9:51
I agree, it has little elements of being the pinnacle of anything rather than the pinnacle of greed these days. I wish there would have been a way in the past to protect SPORT from this circusification and entertainment. Why should sport be entertainment? Why shouldn’t it just be fun to watch and admirable achievements from the teams. Who ever said it needed to be a profit center or who ever said it needed to attract a wider audience? I mean, what is next? Mickey Mouse getting into F1? It is just disrespectful and reducing athletes to clowns.
S
21st May 2025, 12:37
The people (and corporations) participating in it, for starters.
Sport without sponsorship/marketing and media distribution is called amateur sport. That’s where money doesn’t matter so much – it’s where passion and enthusiasm are more prevalent than greed.
It might not seem so interesting and exciting a lot of the time, though, because it isn’t supposed to be.
MichaelN
21st May 2025, 10:04
On substance, you’re totally right. But on the numbers, it’s not even close.
The only two events that can rival an F1 race are the Indianapolis 500 and the Le Mans 24h. The rest? Not a chance. Just two years ago Indycar embarrassingly had their California title decider play out in front of half empty stands. Most races of the WEC are no better. There was a brief, and local, moment in the mid 2010s when the WEC race at the Nürburgring attracted more people than F1 at Hockenheim, but that was very much the exception, and of course the TV audience is a whole different matter.
The myth of F1 is, however cynical one might wish to be, still based on the truth that there is no other series of circuit racing that is faster. That is very much by design, not because F1 is somehow technologically superior, but it remains true. And that is a very powerful claim to be able to make.
Tony Mansell (@tonymansell)
21st May 2025, 12:12
+1 theres a lot of reverse snobbery about f1 and some other series giving ‘infinitely more enjoyment’, so you tune in or go and watch and theres literally no one there.
The recent WEC’s are encouraging and im no f1 or bust fan, the VSCC meets are fabulous, but motorsport generally struggles to get even petrol heads along in any great number these days with so many other things pulling on peoples attention. Stefan is right but he doesnt go far enough, motorsport competes against everything and everything is on your phone
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
21st May 2025, 13:16
In reply to all comments. I think factually, in this day and age Stefano does have a point. F1 and motorsport is competing for attention against everything in else in people’s lives. But I think for a true, keen fan, like most of us on here, it is not competing against events, music or movies because we are willing to make time for it. Competing for attention becomes more of an issue if you are entirely committed to gaining a new audience and their engagement with the sport as a prime aim.
Of course the danger is in that in gaining some new fans, you will lose others because they don’t like what they are being presented with so much. Hence my point in CotD really, about the quality of the racing and competitiveness being the main driving factor for audience.
Deerhunter
21st May 2025, 10:40
Aside from Domenicali’s use of the word ‘content’, it’s pretty observant and relevant, actually.
I may have grew up watching F1, but my adult life has plenty in it besides just motorsport. Looking at my schedule this weekend alone, I’ve got invites for a preview for an upcoming solo exhibition of a local artist I’ve long admired and a musical I’m kinda interested in.
And given it’s Monaco where processional race is the norm, odds are I’m going to have a lot more fun going out instead of staying in. It’s not like I can’t watch reruns in my free time, anyway.
Even a lot of the drivers today have plenty more going on in their lives beside just racing.
AlexS
22nd May 2025, 7:10
Why sad?
But i would say differently, it is a competition for human attention.
Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
21st May 2025, 8:55
Thanks for the CotD @KeithCollantine