Andrew Krier

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Why You Should Watch Formula 1

I've watched sports all my life. I grew up watching Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau define the Minnesota Twins' "M&M" era. The newly-constructed Target Field brimmed with excitement that was definitively stamped out by the New York Yankees in 2009, then again in 2010.

These days the team I follow the most is the Minnesota Vikings. My heart's been broken by the Philadelphia Eagles destroying us a mere week after the Minneapolis Miracle made the 2017 postseason run seem predestined. And even more recently I watched Sam Darnold's magic evaporate in a matter of two weeks.

The Minneapolis Miracle, 2017. Thank you Stefon Diggs

That's not what this is about. I've been following sports all my life. I love sports. This isn't about me. This is about you.

I don't know anything about you, but hopefully one of these reasons convinces you to at least turn on a race or read an article this year.

To Start

I got into Formula 1 very recently. I distinctly remember asking some of my college friends why they were getting up so early for a race because I just didn't get the appeal. Even before then I couldn't understand that one of my high school classmate's go-karting career was a relatively serious endeavor. Ah well, can't go back.

In the spring of 2023 I caught COVID. What better use of recovery time than to binge watch a show? I can't remember how I picked Drive to Survive, but I did. A couple months later and I was through the whole series and totally hooked. I started watching races. Then I started watching qualifyings too, then the rest was history.

Without further ado, here are 10 reasons you should watch Formula 1

The Reasons:

1. You Like Cars

This is a pretty easy one to see. If you like cars, you're going to enjoy the pinnacle of cars going fast. While F1 doesn't get to claim that it hits the fastest top speeds in racing¹, its combination of speed, tight corners, and track variance among others, makes it the standard for motor racing. Drivers are consistently pulling over 5 G's in the normal operation of the car

For the technologically inclined, you can dig into all the advancements that come out of F1. Like the controversial active suspension developed by Williams in the 90's, or the controversial "Dual-Axis Steering" (DAS) developed by Mercedes in 2020, or even the controversial mini-DRS developed by McLaren last season in 2024. The reward for innovation is truly the joy of innovating itself getting banned.

If I'm being honest, the most I feel this one myself is gawking at all the fancy cars the drivers themselves drive for their personal vehicles².

Apparently driving for Ferrari doesn't get you any free cars, just the privilege of buying one

2. You're Not Looking for Too Much

I was worried when I first started watching F1. I'm a chronically busy person, and adding another thing to my plate really wasn't something I was looking to do. Thankfully, F1 is a really easy sport to keep up with. In the NFL if you miss a weekend, you can miss up to 16 hours of game action³. Not to mention that each of the 32 teams have 53 roster spots, so tracking the entire sport is some 1700 players. Even leaving just the 22 starters⁴ that's still 700 players to keep track of.

That's not the case in F1. On a given race weekend you miss an hour of qualifying, and two hours of the race, and that's it⁵. If you really care about the highlights, there's maybe 15 minutes of that total, and in the end you can just look at the finishing order and move on.

To complete the football comparison. There are only twenty drivers total in F1. That's it. You can memorize all the faces and names in the whole sport almost without trying.

I've really enjoyed how elastic F1 is to my availability, but stay with me, there's still some enjoyment to watching the sport itself.

3. You Like when Things Go Wrong

This one is for my sister, who is one of the many people whose favorite part of hockey is when they stop smacking a puck around and drop the gloves⁶.

When cars are driven fast, we humans tend to crash them. Formula 1 is no exception. There is obviously potential severe consequence to an F1 crash, but this section is about the kind that don't go "that" far.

I really liked when in this past season, even Sergio Perez' car folded on his season

Crashes are pretty routine in F1. One of my favorite things to keep track of during the season is the World Destructor's Championship, an estimate for how much crashes have cost for teams and drivers. The trophy is awarded to the most expensive driver and team respectively⁷.

Crashes are some of the most consequential and engaging events in an F1 season. You've really got to see them to appreciate how spectacular they can be. A few quick googles can show you why F1 crashes are often the benchmark for the highest levels of G-Force ever experienced by humans.

4. You Are Really Good at Bedrotting

I really want to be a morning person. College killed any chance of that happening for four years, but once I escaped the world of chronic sleepiness, I saw an opportunity.

Fighting the bedrot was what transitioned me from checking on the results after the fact to watching the race most weekends. F1 qualifying (usually) takes place on Saturdays, and the main race on Sundays. Since the races take place all over the world, the start times aren't always the most convenient for American audiences.

Knowing myself, it's really difficult to get out of bed when the morning is entirely free, but I'll always be on time (if not early) for a scheduled event. I didn't want to commit to something big where I'd have to leave the house. I wanted something to get me out of bed where I could enjoy a cup of coffee as I wake up and enjoy the start of the day.

The European leg of the F1 calendar provided this at just the right time. Races would start at 9 or 10 AM, and there I would be, tuned in on my couch.

This helped me establish a new habit in my life: getting up at a reasonable hour on the weekends. I feel a lot better about myself when I can get going for the day, even if it's for a leisure activity.

5. You Are Bad at Geography

If you pressed me on it, I couldn't have pointed out Bahrain on a map before F1.

Let me be clear, the geography one learns from paying attention to F1 suffers from a strong European bias. Formula 1 still doesn't have a race in Africa, and is just the Brazilian race away from excluding all of South America too. The F1 calendar is also one of the many indicators you can see of the monetary influences playing out in global sport⁸.

With that said, it's been cool to be introduced to a bunch of different parts of the world by watching drivers speed down their tracks or converted streets.

6. You Enjoy Reality Television

I could never really get into reality TV. I've enjoyed watching Singles Inferno with friends, and I once put on an event to watch the Bachelor as an RA in college, but I never find myself watching it on my own.

There's just something about these immensely talented twenty-somethings being thrust at the focal point of a multi-million dollar organization that intensifies all the interpersonal interactions.

The grid is small enough that you could fit all twenty drivers into a group chat⁹. Drivers can start nipping at each other over anything on or off track. Each team only having two drivers is ripe circumstance to flip a prospective buddy-buddy relationship to a heated rivalry¹⁰.

Following all the little slights and big fights is certainly a compelling way to follow the season's action. Last year featured Max Verstappen beefing with everybody around him on track. We'll see what this year has in store soon enough but it's sure to be an entertaining one

Max Verstappen, seen here with the actual messiest member of F1, Helmut Marko

7. You Enjoy Fanfiction

Let's call this one... the opposite of the point before¹¹.

It was brought to my attention that there are several fanfictions written in the Formula 1 universe. There are 5 as of writing that have eclipsed 500,000 words each on AO3. I haven't read any of them, and I don't intend to, but if that's your cup of tea, there's plenty of material to dive into, I guess¹².

8. You Hate American Sports Streaming Providers

It's been 7 years since I lived in Minnesota, and I still yearn for a day when I can pay a reasonable price to watch every Vikings game online for a given season.

The NFL has deals with NBC, CBS, Fox, Amazon Prime, and even streamed their crown jewel Super Bowl on Tubi for some reason. They have their own separate streaming service, NFL+, and air games on YouTubeTV as well. Figuring out how to catch a game is a nightmare. And it figures to get worse, recently Netflix is angling to get an even bigger chunk of the pie for the coming seasons.

F1 is a dream by comparison (at least for now). F1 TV costs less than $100 for the whole year, and you can stream everything during the event, or after the fact. This includes practices, qualifying, sprint races, and the Grands Prix themselves. This enables 6 devices, so after sharing with a friend, my cost to watch is around $2 per race weekend. I'll take that every time.

It figures that as F1 grows more in the United States that this may change as more lucrative streaming setups/pricing plans develop, but for the time being it really is one of the more accessible sports packages.

9. You Like Spending Money

To counter the point above, if you've really got a hole burning in your pocket, Formula 1 will gladly take it from you.

There are boundless ways to spend your money on F1. There's plenty of team merchandise, driver merchandise, or Peanuts-branded race merchandise ¹³ that you can purchase. And that's all without going to a single race!

A weekend-long race ticket can range from ~€140 for a 3 day pass to the Suzuka Grand Prix this year, to nearly $2000 to get in the door for the Las Vegas Grand Prix. All to stay in a city for certainly its most expensive weekend of the year¹⁴.

The Monaco GP is consistently the most opulent display of wealth, and frankly boring display of F1 racing

Or maybe you even have a cool few million dollars sitting around, and you're just looking to hang out around other people who also buy expensive cars. My question to you would be, how are you just finding this now? And why are you reading this?

10. You Want to Hang Out

At the end of the day, as it always is for me, F1 is just another means to connect with people you either care about already, or want to care about more. When I started watching live races, I was going over to a couples' very nice house to take in the morning, ask questions, and sip their coffee.

Watching a race with friends is an exceptional opportunity to show your hospitality, and to give your time together a little excitement as you catch up with one another. I love having my friends over to watch a race, even if we spend it answering all their questions about a potentially foreign sport.

So if you ever find yourself in Pittsburgh (or wherever I am) on a race morning, hit me up and come over! I'll make you some coffee and we can take it all in.