QOTD: Did You Watch F1 This Weekend?

by Tim Healey

Published: May 7th, 2024

Formula 1, as a global racing series, is immensely popular. It is, however, generally considered to not be as popular with an American audience, though its popularity seems to be growing in the States.

The perception is that F1 struggles -- or, past tense, struggled -- to gain a foothold in the States because so many races are held while most of us are sleeping, and there aren't many American drivers, and the racing can be sometimes boring.

On the other hand, F1 has recently grown in popularity in this country, thanks in part to the Netflix documentary series Drive to Survive. In fact, the series has gotten so popular in the U.S. that there are now three races within our borders this season. One in Miami, one in Austin, and one in Las Vegas. Canada, of course, has long had a stop on the circuit, for those F1 fans who wanted to watch a Grand Prix live without sacrificing sleep.

Miami took place last weekend, with Lando Norris finally notching his first victory. It was easy enough for American audiences to tune in -- the race was broadcast on ABC and started around 3 pm CST.

Not only that, but race fans who follow more than one series didn't have to divide their attention, thanks to Mother Nature. The NASCAR race at Kansas was scheduled to start before the F1 race but it was delayed by rain and didn't start until well after the F1 race finished. IndyCar, meanwhile, was off.

So, I ask of you, B and B, how many of you tuned in? Despite being a casual F1 fan at best, I watched every lap, though at times the racing was dull enough that I started scrolling Twitter/X on my phone.

I don't watch a ton of F1 because I a) don't want to lose sleep and b) forget to DVR the races, but I watched this one. I will probably catch the end of the Monaco race before the Indy 500, and I will probably watch the Texas stop. I might even watch Vegas despite the odd 10 pm PST start time.

So while I tend to mostly stick to NASCAR and IndyCar, I definitely tuned in to this F1 race.

Did you?

Sound off below.

[Image: motorsports Photographer/Shutterstock.com]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

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2 of 27 comments

Slavuta on May 09, 2024

Nah. the only interesting part is when they replace tires. If I want to see crashes, I can go to youtube and watch dashcam videos

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Lorenzo on May 12, 2024

Car racing is dying, and with it my interest. Midget/micro racing was my last interest in car racing, and now sanctioning body bureaucrats are killing it off too. The more organized it is, the less interesting it becomes.

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