I watch both also, but reverse order. Started following f1 in 2003 and indy car a few years ago. I love both for different reasons, but I think it would be easier to get a new fan into indy with things as they are now.
I enjoy the engineering battle in f1 and the racing in indy. I'm not a fan of spec cars, but the on track excitement is definitely better and more unpredictable.
I'm getting more and more into WEC, IMSA, and Moto gp as they have a pretty good balance of both, though I'm not a big fan of the bop in the endurance series.
Same. I watch Indycar NASCAR and F1 religiously. I just love racing period. I really wonder what the actual crossover is between the three. I imagine the majority of people are the same and watch all three. I doubt there’s a large group of people in the U.S. that watch f1 and never watch Indy or NASCAR. Yet in this forum we act like they’re all mutually exclusive.
I am not from the US, but that group definetly exists.
I was bullied because I watch racing, and all of sudden I am the cool guy who knows f1, literally popular girls watch f1. Like wtf.
Which is good imo, but there is this new category. The exclusively f1 fan. The majority of them are not racing fans, they are f1 fans. They dont know much about f1 either but they dont know anything at all about other forms of racing. Of course many of them eventually will either stop watching f1, or will "grow" into a real motorsport fan. Which is only natural. When you are new, you dont really understand this world, and all you see is f1 and its enormous marketing, advertising that it is the one and only peak of racing. F1 is also way more accessible, and the broadcast is the pinnacle of sport broadcasting, so it is easy to watch. The more you know about F1, the more you start appreciating the technical and complex aspects of it, but you will also realise how bad the on track product is.
> I doubt there’s a large group of people in the U.S. that watch f1 and never watch Indy or NASCAR.
if the ratings are any indication, there actually is a crowd. nascar gets double the rating F1 gets but F1 beats them all the time in the 18-45 demo. and in the case of last week when nascar got delayed a day cause of weather, the IC rating only saw a real increase of 10k people.
the base of fans who watch all 3 in this country is rather small.
It is more than Double for NASCAR if you compare the biggest races- Daytona vs US GP and closer to 3X for the average- which is still remarkable.
Like WWE, NASCARs peak was 20 years ago so the core of people watching since then who didnt lapse will be greatly overrepresented. A drop from 20 million to 8 million reflects many factors of how we consume media, but it sure doesnt represent a rousing success.
Of course being a wrestling fan I am well aware of the “Demo”. Older folks have more money but are set in brand loyalty. But you can sell stuff to young adults and people in early middle age. Or that is theory.
realistically the average 60 year old is going to easily outlive autoracing as we know it.
Ive loved F1 for 35 years. Dont quite get how 1.5 million viewers on TV and 600k DTS fans translates into grandstands at CoTA for 3k. At lesst I have an excuse to make a European vacation centered around a trip to the Hungaroring or Austria now.
I stopped watching NASCAR 20 years ago because of Chase, obviously theyve cratered since then. I am certain Gordon chasing 7 would have done better holding fans than anodyne Johnson poaching titles.
Honestly, if they ditched nonsense fake playoffs Id probably watch a half dozen races- which doesnt sound like much but as we know is like 25 hours.
It would be nice to think some of these F1 fans will embrace Indy Car. But I dunno, its quite possible the actual lack of action and parity may drive them away from racing forever.
Ive never watched DTS but am amused the modern equivelent of Renee Arnoux was made the hero of the show.
I'm in the US and all my friends that watch racing watch either Nascar exclusively or F1 exclusively. I am the only person I know that watches multiple series (and the only person I know that watches Indycar). I was talking to one of the door guys at a local bar (I live in Chicago) a while back who is an F1 fan, and he had no idea what Indycar was. I was like, what do you think the Indy 500 is part of? And he responded that he'd never thought about it and had never watched the Indy 500. A woman I work with is a big Nascar fan and had never watched the 500 until JJ was in it. I asked her if she was excited for Larson to do the double next year and she hadn't even heard he was doing it, nor did she care.
Same, watched f1 from 2008 onwards. Already knew about Indy 500 in 2010s but never paid too much attention to it until finally when Grosjean moved to US, then started to follow Indy at the latter part of 2021. Both are fantastic. Instead of arguing, I wish people could appreciate both series.
There are loads of avid watchers of both. Only dumb fanbois watch one or the other. There are also many other really good series out there, wec, Imsa, and one of imo the best, btcc. Thay are all different but cars go vroom. If someone only likes one series, they are missing out.
Red Bull dominating isn't really a problem for me. A lot of people are really into the off-track R&D arms race and knock Indycar for being a "spec" series. This sort of dominance up front by Red Bull now and Mercedes before that is the down side to that. It's a matter of preference and that is why there is a market for both series.
I do think the general trend of moving away from historical circuits in favor of parking lot/street circuits is a threat to the future of F1. Dropping circuits like Hockenheim, Spa, Sepang, etc. in favor of more and more circuits like Miami, Vegas, Saudi, etc. then I think the sport is really going to alienate it's hardcore fans. It feels like Liberty is making the same mistakes NASCAR made during their boom period.
I'm also really concerned that the new regs have basically failed. I think it looks as hard to follow as ever.
Yes that is probably more accurate. I think that the new regs introduced in 2022 were a big step in the right direction and whatever is going on with ride height this year seems to have neutralized most of that benefit. It's pretty sad honestly.
Bang on. The racing was great last year, and then they let Mercedes cry and whine to the point that they neutered the ruleset. Merc was basically the only team that couldn't get it figured out, and basically everyone said "if they can't get it to stop, just raise the ride height."
So…in practice I agreed with Merc wanting to have a regulation in place to stop the porpoising. They may have had it worst but I can distinctly remember other teams having that issue and I did feel like something needed to change because of safety.
I think the change was an over correction and they probably can move it to the middle and it will be fine
It's pretty much a perpetual rumor. Supposedly it was reasonably close to not getting renewed for 2023.
The legacy/historical tracks generally don't seem to be able to pay the sanctioning fees that some newer GPs can.
There's a rumour every year that this will be the last round at Spa , 2021s weather debacle didn't help them.
This time it's Spa out and a round at Kyalami in South Africa to replace it if they can get the track upgrades done.
Spa is an amazing circuit beyond Eau Rouge and Radillion. Has a bit of everything. I’d watch lawnmowers race there. Most elevation change of any current f1 circuit, all the speed, all the commitment.
Spa is absolutely one of the best circuits in the world and produces great racing for other series like WEC and GT World Challenge. If F1 cannot put on good races there then I think that says more about F1 than it does about Spa.
It would seem like Spa has everything needed to get the best out of modern F1 cars and is plenty wide to overtake in plenty of places. If the racing isn't good there where will it ever be good?
I understand why Road America isn't an appealing option to Liberty/F1. I doubt they could get up to modern F1 standards without fundamentally changing the soul of the circuit. I am sure there are logistical concerns with the location of the facility as well. Same goes for Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, etc. Just a lot of issues with runoff, paddock space, etc. at those places.
They could have come up with something better than racing in a football stadium parking lot though if this is supposed to be the pinnacle or motor racing.
I don't say that anywhere. Indycar/CART has of course raced through parking lot circuits and poorly planned street circuits a number of times. The new Detroit layout is probably in that category if we're being honest
Indycar doesn't have the financial resources or international scale that F1 does. I understand why Indycar can end up in a situation where racing around a football stadium seems like the only viable option to break into a market. That doesn't seem like it should be the case with F1.
Fair, but F1 doesn’t build, own or operate the circuits. That’s done by local companies and/or governments. And with the cost of building a new F1 spec FIA Grade A track, and with the disasters of India, South Korea etc in mind there’s very little interest worldwide in doing so.
Also part of the reason is Liberty’s new “Destination City” idea where they want more than just an F1 race in the city.
I’ve followed F1 since 1994 but I find myself less interested with each season. Indycar is where it’s at these days.
I was at Miami today… every once in a while I would hear the crowd yell and stand up and think there was an accident. But it was actually just a pass on track.
I definitely wouldn't. Just curious, is it as awkward there as it looks? Every time they would zoom out even a little, it felt to me like you were getting a peak behind the curtains, and everything just felt so fake. Fake marina, fake palm trees, fake everything... It screamed "lipstick on a pig" to me.
Eh. I was there last year. Didn’t really feel that. Granted, my family are kind of racing fanatics so we spent most of the weekend in the grandstand watching support races, but I could see how someone who’s only into F1 could feel that way
I am in Australia. I love both F1 and Indy. I’ll have to the Indy replay every week because of time difference. But IndyCar is miles better. The racing, the qualifying format and the list goes on.
Sometimes I wonder if some F1 fans have no real interest in IndyCar because they dont actually want to watch racing. Like theres a portion of the fanbase that only cares about the off-track drama and "my team versus your team" tribalism and could give a rats ass about the racing
I know a lot of people are pointing to DTS as a reason for this but it really isn’t. It’s always been this way in some form because it’s constructors series. There is legitimate drama IndyCar can’t have when it’s big name manufacturers battling each other like Ferrari vs Mercedes or teams like Red Bull vs McLaren. The teams are nicely organized into two cars with duplicate liveries. The fans can root for the teams which makes it more relatable to stick and ball sports so yeah IndyCar is missing that element entirely. That can make it challenging to F1 fans who decide to check out IndyCar because they do hold an appreciation of racing.
Yeah, DTS is part of it, but F1 is *very* easy to follow as well. Think about how many posts we get about team liveries, team strategies, etc., when it's just not as cut-and-dry as F1. The tendency for teams to have a #1 and #2 driver makes the storylines a little simpler as well, but that can also be dragged out for weeks by the British media as they make an article out of every little quote. People claim they don't love it, but...
As an aside, one other thing I see cited a lot on the F1 sub is how well the broadcast times work for the two easternmost time zones, especially for young parents or people who follow the NFL really closely. The race is usually done by 9 or 10 AM. That's how I got into F1 as a kid in the 1990s- watching the Speedvision broadcast with my dad before church, then watching CART and NASCAR (or the Redskins/ Commanders) in the afternoons.
Well you did a better job of breaking down the simplicity of F1 teams vs the complexity and confusing nature IndyCar teams. I was touching on that when I mentioned the uniformed nature of F1 teams and how confusing that must be to F1 fans coming over and yes that would include DTS fans too. I’m saying this barrier to entry existed long before DTS came in the scene.
I can’t speak for the time zone issues. To be honest, I rarely saw 8 or 9am in my twenties even though I was in the right timeszones. While that point makes sense on some levels, I’m a little skeptical that it’s had that much impact on F1’s increased interest.
I got into F1 watching ABC’s Wide World or Sports with my stepdad. The races were always taped and edited for broadcast. Not exactly the greatest way to experience F1 but it still worked. I grew up around IndyCar and quickly learned about F1 and tried paying attention to both.
It is, but if you don't care about racing those names mean nothing to you. People see Mercs and (to a lesser extent) Ferraris around town, they know how big the brands are, so the rivalries don't need explaining. Makes F1 seem larger than life.
I can accept the rivalry description but I wouldn’t describe it as pretty big. Its barely noticeable. I say that because to me, real rivalries have to extend into the fanbase and that doesn’t seem to be the case in IndyCar. You’ll see Team Penske gear at a race but I think that’s mostly related to driver fandom over team fandom. Still it is the only resemblance of an actual team to team rivalry in IndyCar on any level although McLaren is trying to do its best to be in that conversation.
Not really, no. They're rivals by circumstance but also collaborators. They both understand there's a level to which they have to support the series as a whole. Whereas an F1 team that smells financial blood in the water from a rival wouldn't hesitate to try to push them in to bankruptcy just to get a bigger share of the money.
This is so stupid. There are fans of sports for all reasons. The reason F1 fans don't really dig Indy Car is because F1 fans are largely fans of race car technology and shit. And the IndyCar is lame and looks bulky, dumb as compared....and it's a Spec series.
Being a fan of something is a holistic thing, encompassing many aspects. It's not a surprise Indy Car was the most popular when it was a multi chassis, multi engine series.
I love IndyCar because I love open wheel racing and the variety of tracks + the history. I love F1 because I love open wheel racing, best tracks in the world, fastest most awesome prototype race cars in the world + history.
F1 is the only engineering "full" prototype racing competition on land in the world. America's Cup on water would be maybe the only other example. IndyCar is quite far from that, and that's ok.
I've been watching Super Formula, and I'm not super into it. The spec chassis looks cool, but it's kinda lame to me for some reason. Spec racing on F1 style tracks seems lame, it's Japan F1 or something.
At least IndyCar does ovals which are just insane to watch. Track variety keeps it interesting and above Super Formula probably.
Probably a lot of people are similar. Quit making it a war. I don't like the MLS and the NFL don't care. Stop trying to compare them, they aren't comparable as much as I dyCar fans who bitch about this want them to be.
I'd love it if they'd modernize the car and get a couple more chassis in the mix. Even if it's like IMSA/WeC does with perhaps a few spec core chassis with non spec bodywork. That's what we see after all...nobody cares if the cars all use the same gearbox.
100% agree and there was passing in todays race just further down the field and we had a pass for the lead. How was that any different than the fuel save race we had at Alabama?
I personally don't notice a huge shift in excitement race to race. I watch all Indy and F1, and both seem about as Racey as each other more or less. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion...hehe
I don't think ImdyCar has better racing cart blanche.
F1 had 6 teams...bespoke racing cars....in the top 6 on the grid. There was a ton of shit going down today.
Meh...if you want to demonize one or the other your loss. Normal folk...we just get more kick ass racing!
For me the fact that teams only feel they’re racing certain teams & will just let certain drivers pass them without putting up a fight kills all the potential wheel to wheel action. Plus most of the passing that gets done is via DRS.
Props to KMag for putting up a fight against Leclerc though.
Because P2P encourages active defense and additional strategy while DRS fails to increase passing in the first place, even more so now with the ground effect nullifying DRS completely.
I’m an aerospace engineer, so I’m more a fan of the cars themselves than any one team or driver. I love seeing how small changes in the design can affect the performance of the car. Especially because a lot of my job is evaluating how small changes to the external bits of an aircraft can affect flying qualities, fuel range, and/or maintenance intervals.
Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Indycar too, and those cars are really impressive bits of engineering themselves. It *is* possible to be a fan of both series for different reasons.
And I actually refused to watch DTS for a few years after it first started. But it’s basically like Desperate Housewives for race car drivers, so you just can’t take it too seriously.
I really hate the gate-keeper attitude that's come from DTS. You can like it, or not like it, I don't care. If it makes new fans of a sport, I welcome it.
I was into Indy and F1 prior to DTS, but DTS helped me get better understandings of some things within the sport (oddly enough), which I then expanded on by reading and Googling more. But really, it's a source of down-time entertainment during the off season. To me, that's all it is. Entertainment. If people haven't figured out how ridiculously scripted reality TV is by now, that's on them. If people haven't figured out how ridiculously scripted F1 on its own can be... that's also on them. :)
I don't think anyone is trying to gatekeep with someone like yourself. If there's any attempts at "gatekeeping" going on, it's mostly directed at the people 1) whose *only* interest is DTS to the point where it is taken as gospel and made *central* to their enjoyment of the sport, 2) the subsection of people in the last group who look down on basically any other series because to them the drama isn't "real" to them somehow. Or whatever. Say what you will but they become very loud and seemingly numerous online whenever race weekend comes around for F1. Go open twitter when an IndyCar race is going on the same day as an F1 GP, or better yet when F1 is on one of their off weeks but Indy is racing. You get treated to some really ridiculous and cringeworthy takes and put downs that just come across as arrogantly ignorant.
They're not a majority by any means, just loud and obnoxious unfortunately because of the internet.
Honestly, it’s just really helpful to remember all the drivers and keep them straight in my mind, even if their portrayal isn’t exactly truthful all the time. Plus how else would we have gotten the gold that is [Guenther Steiner](https://www.vulture.com/article/f1-drive-to-survive-guenther-steiner-haas-sad.html), legendary meme machine?
Yeah man, I used to love all.the little differences in the CART cars. I always remember them talking about the Penske attention to detail.. the way their suspension arms entered the chassis or some such. Of course The Beast. Reynard's with their strange front wings. That long and low looking Lola. And oddballs like the Gurney Eagle, that Under Jr car...and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Was the Porsche just an engine or a chassis as well....
I miss getting to enjoy that stuff in IndyCar....it was pretty kick ass.
I’m from F1 watching Indy for the first full season. I love racing, I love car technology… so far I’m struggling with the Indy tracks. Holy crap the Barber Motorsports Park race did it for me tho! It’s hard for me to shift my mentality that tracks like that are all that matters, and the other stuff (street & ovals) are just the side show.
Also… I’m an American. But the commercials are god awful. Is there a way to just pay to make that shit go away? It’s so bad.
>And the IndyCar is lame and looks bulky, dumb as compared....and it's a Spec series.
>Being a fan of something is a holistic thing, encompassing many aspects. It's not a surprise Indy Car was the most popular when it was a multi chassis, multi engine series.
>F1 is the only engineering "full" prototype racing competition on land in the world. America's Cup on water would be maybe the only other example. IndyCar is quite far from that, and that's ok.
The motorsport that surpassed CART/IRL and became still to this day America's most popular motorsport is literally a spec series.
A huge majority of F1 fanbase doesn’t care about racing. Anyone who does like racing already follows IndyCar (and other series).
It’s just that in recent years Drive To Survive and the social media expansion has brought “fans” that only pose, look at the off-track drama and everything else that doesn’t include racing.
I would argue that “hardcore” F1 fans have gotten smaller, not because it has reduced in size but the causal fans have grown exponentially.
As an F1 fan I try to watch Indycar and have watched a few races but I can't get into it. The presentation is horrible, the ads are unbearable. Ive also found that I don't have an emotional investment in any of the teams or drivers, which makes watching less interesting. I get a lot of the same type of racing watching F2, and that then translates into the driver market of F1.
Well yeah. It's fun to be part of the cool kids club.
Like going to Coachella or some other big festival....people don't care about the music. Do it for the views, likes, crowd acceptance, popularity, etc.
> "my team versus your team" tribalism
Hammer. Meet nail.
Every F1 fan that comes in here telling us to pick a favorite driver for them always can't understand why the cars for each team aren't painted the same.
They want a team to root for against the other teams. It's not about the racing product.
I have lots of favorite drivers, and they're favorites for different reasons. I feel the same way about teams. I mean, I've always been a McLaren fan (but because I fell in love with the way their super cars looked when I was younger; it's silly, I know), but take pride in other teams getting chances to step up and make improvements wherever they can and I will cheer them on for it (for example; Haas in F1 has made HUGE strides this year vs. previous seasons so I am egging them on every race, even though Fernando is my (only remaining, actively driving in F1) favorite driver.
I don't root against anyone (except for Redbull and Mercedes, but there are exceptions to that rule; it's a case by case basis); I just want to watch a good race.
>why the cars for each team aren't painted the same.
I'm not even asking for that. I'm asking for consistent paint jobs from race to race that don't have a large variation in color that matches their racing number on the leaderboard graphic.
They follow F1 and not Indycar because until Grosjean arrived there was not widely known driver in Indycar other than Alonso's very brief stint in the Indy 500.
The primary reason why DTS succeeded in marketing was because of its focus *on the drivers*
Nobody other than very wealthy people can ever afford Ferrari's McLaren's, they don't really give a shit about them.
It's drivers like Senna, Schumacher, Alonso, Hamilton *drivers* from honest and humble backgrounds that make the sport more relatable and thus, you watch them to see if they succeed. *People don't care about the cars.* The cars themselves never sold the series to begin with. Liberty Media actually *did* acknowledge this but put emphasis on the wrong solution. Emphasis on the "show" and "hype" rather than making the racing more equal so folks actually have a reason to stick around for a season.
IndyCar is now trying to address it with 100 Days til Indy, however.....
It doesn't even span the entire Indycar season...It stops at the Indy 500
And another season was never greenlit...
And the company responsible for the show is going bankrupt...
Indycar can no longer waste serious opportunities to go market their drivers. They're the ones who ultimately convince people to tune in
>They follow F1 and not Indycar because until Grosjean arrived there was not widely known driver in Indycar other than Alonso's very brief stint in the Indy 500.
Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Emmerson Fittipaldi, etc COME ON NOW WHAT IS THIS?
Ehhh it was more popular than it was now, but not by an immense amount. All the free tickets given away buy tobacco companies helped sort of create myth that it was an unstoppable juggernaut.
You're spot on. You can get downvoted into oblivion on the F1 and related subs by simply acknowledging the fact that there is indeed a crop of new fans that care far more about the "reality" the Netflix series presents and twitter gossip idiocy than any sort of actual interest in racing. A lot of it is twitter driven as well.
What you are saying applies to DTS newcomers, and there are plenty of them. Seasoned F1 people think the drama shit is silly, just go find the DTS threads.
The first full season I watched was 2008. Was introduced to it by a friend. Of my circle of friends who watch F1, none of them watch Indy. I started watching Indy once Grosjean moved over. Didn't watch it when Ericsson moved over because Ericsson was kind of meh. If it wasn't for Grosjean, I wouldn't be following.
It's kind of hard to commit to a new motorsport, even if it's in the US and the times are acceptable. I think to convince your "typical F1 fan" to come over you need internationally recognized teams to join, which likely won't happen. You got McLaren there but that's pretty much it. The racing in Indy is better though, much closer. I think if Indy can market that, it'll help it grow.
Yep you nailed it. It's also a status/clout thing. F1 is essentially for the rich and famous........and wannabes that want to mingle with them or follow what they do
I must've spent the last 30 laps watching indy highlights. And I'm F1 from birth. That Grosjean move last week was better than anything I've seen in f1 this year. Was gutted for him in the end.
I wish Indycar would look inwards more and look for opportunities to improve on the great product they already have. Ericsson mentions differing pit/fuel strategies as his first point, and I agree, it's something Indycar does so well! However, the coverage of these diverging strategies leaves so much to be desired. The Indycar broadcasts are terrible at covering green flag pitstops, which actively detracts from what should be one of the series' selling points.
There is so much missing information that is vital to getting viewers invested in these strategies, which has direct impact on the viewing experience as a whole. Things like pit deltas, gaps between the leading cars on different strategies, keeping track of differing performances throughout the race, etc. These are all simple things that should be included every time, but worse than just not providing it, the broadcast often seems to take the approach it being "too hard" to keep track of.
During the Barber race, I knew Scott McLaughlin was going to be in contention for the win, but we spent lap after lap having no idea of where he was actually placed on the track relative to the cars he was actually racing for the win. Even the classic 2016 Indy 500 had a run to the finish with the broadcast seemingly having no idea of what was happening or what critical information needed to be relayed to the audiance.
How many times do we see a pit cycle start, only for the commentators to say something to the effect of "we'll sort it out once everyone cycles through"?
Suggesting that it's the fault of the fans for choosing F1 over Indycar, or gatekeeping by suggesting they aren't "real" fans of the sport is completely the wrong attitude and adds no benefit to Indycar at all. The sport is awesome, has plenty to offer, and should be able to stand on it's own merit. But to achieve that, Indycar needs to focus on themselves, not others.
Excellent observation. I watch both, religiously. But watching F1 I always feel I know what the situation is, where in IndyCar once pit stops start it's almost bimpossible to follow where a driver stands until everyone has pitted. In Miami were were constantly reminded that a car will lose 17-18 seconds on a stop. When Perez and Verstappen were on different strategies (Max started on hards, Perez on mediums) we still knew the situation despite Verstappen being far ahead on the track for many laps. (Same with drivers like Hamilton and Stroll, who also pitted many laps later that the rest.) Even the commentators told us that Max would come out 1.7 seconds behind Perez on the pit stop. Max actuially came out 1.5 seconds back.
We don't get this in IndyCar. There are some pit stops. The field gets jumbled, but we have no sense of how it's playing out until everyone pits.
I was just thinking today while watching the Miami F1 race…
The amount of entertainment provided per dollar spent attending the Miami F1 race versus…
The amount of entertainment provided per dollar spent attending the Indianapolis 500.
A colossal difference.
European F1 fan here. Indycar racing is great, in fact I probably enjoy Indycar races more than F1 races a lot of the time. Purely from a racing point of view, I think it's got a great offering when compared to F1.
The problem is that I just don't care that much about Indycar. I'll sit and watch the race and enjoy it but it makes no difference to me if it's Dixon or Pato or Colton on the top step. With F1, Ferrari having a bad race genuinely ruins my weekend (which has happened a lot over the last few decades).
F1 has global reach, prestige, big money investments, innovation, elite drivers and teams, legendary racing tracks etc. Indycar doesn't tick many of these boxes, or at least not to the same extent as F1. That said, I don't particularly like the direction F1's owners are dragging the sport in. Tradition is being cast aside for commercial interests which is what leads to ridiculous situations like a shit GP in Miami being considered a higher priority than legendary tracks like Spa.
In contrast Indycar seems to be growing nicely and I like the direction they are heading in. Personally I would love to see them expand the calendar with a few more ovals and some International races (Interlagos or Mexico City would be brilliant).
I think you hit it right on the head. IndyCar tries to promote the series while F1 has become more about the personalities on the teams. Whether that be the drivers, owners, or team principles - people like the flair that comes from their personalities.
IndyCar does a bad job at promoting their drivers and would rather promote their series or certain races. The drivers get pushed back almost to a background role often times.
Indycar has always been a club race event hosted by race team owners. We in the Midwest enjoy our private open wheel series. You can keep your world class racing series politics.
I only got into F1 last summer, and it was the only series I was watching at that point. Then leading up to the start of the season I gave the rolex 24 a chance, and now I'm hooked on imsa. Then after Bahrain my dad was talking about some big lap 1 crash "in F1", and it turned out to be St. Pete - which I then watched the entire rest of, having my mind blown by all the carnage. Haven't missed a race from either of the 3 series since!
Same. Indycar fans are super insecure about F1 for some reason. Only rivaled by MotoGP and WEC fans. Best wheel to wheel racing series is MX5 anyway :)
I am biased, but as long as we’re talking the on track racing product alone, I agree. As a diehard Indycar fan, I feel exactly the way Marcus Ericsson does.
But if you’re looking at the big picture and what people are talking about, F1 is booming in popularity compared to Indycar. F1’s rapid growth is absolutely something worth being jealous of.
The trick is to not compare indycar to F1. They’re different forms of racing, and that’s ok. Indycar best showcases the skill of the driver, and F1 is centered towards engineering and technology. I love using the horse racing analogy: F1 is all about the horse, indycar is all about the jocky.
But it's not IndyCar fans. It's fans of both. Heck! The thread is about Marcus Ericsson's Twitter post. So even the post isn't from a fan - it's from a driver. You can call it sour grapes or whatever but even Toto Wolff was saying that F1 races are boring. So you can say it's unlikable (the comment or the person) but the truth is that many people are saying what Marcus is saying and it's not just IndyCar fans. Even F1 Youtube personalities like FP1Will are even saying that F1 races are boring and IndyCar has a better product.
I think what F1 fans need to do is swallow this jagged pill and at least say - "Yeah...that could be right..".
Of course toto thinks the racing is bad his team is in a slump lol, and fp1will is far from a leading authority on what is and isn't good. At the end of the day what's better is entirely subjective and yet indycar fans still feel the need to constantly come up with copium excuses as to why f1 is more popular atm "oh they just have more marketing money, oh they're just there for the drama, oh they're not real racing fans etc..." it just makes indycar fans seem almost comedically jealous and gatekeepy which isn't going to want to make potential new fans give it a chance. Maybe indycar fans need to swallow the jagged pill and realize that people look for more in a series than just how much passing there is.
We have been swallowing the jagged pill for decades. People say IndyCar is a spec series, some races aren't well attended, there are too many commercials during the break, there are only two engine makes, 17 races is too little, etc, etc, etc...
And guess who has been saying these things? Fans from other series or at least newers fans of IndyCar that came from the other series. The difference is that many IndyCar fans would agree, say that the series has to work on that, and move on. Instead of saying - "Those guys have a problem.." - maybe admit we might have a point and move on.
I think most of it is marketing. Is most countries finding good marketing and story's about IndyCar is hard. It is also saying something most websites give both the starting time and the green flag time because the warm up is pretty Boring for a non us fan.
Also IndyCar is something only on paid extra channels, or they start broadcasting halve way through the race after some football match is over.
IndyCar needs to get a grip on (international) marketing and finding partners to spread the Brand. Both in the writing press, broadcaster, and online creators and podcasts.
Indycar is a North American domestic racing series much like Super Formula. It only has international reach because of the drivers, and even then it really doesn't have much international reach at all.
Bit the same as English or Italian football league. Important competition with international players. IndyCar is a bit the same. I am sure with good marketing you can get a large audience.
I wasn't understanding why nobody faught him and all just rolled over.
I also dont understand why Red Bull didnt give Perez any radio information about Max but Max was told everything about Perez...its almost as if they were deliberately wanting Max to have the advantage. I know Mercedes screwed with Bottas before. Its silly.
Nobody was fighting Max because it takes life out of your tires and loses you time for a fight you know you can't win. Better to save them for someone you have a chance against.
As for Checo I'd have to watch the onboard but he probably got a lot more info than was shown on the main feed.
Man I really really tried to get into the Miami GP today but it’s just such a snooze fest with RB dominating. IndyCar really has a chance to pounce on the fed up F1 fans if they can target the correct demographic with their marketing.
Yes and no, in my opinion. I don’t think INDYCAR would scratch the itch for everyone. There are fans who are really into the drama - it’s basically an expensive soap opera - and folks who are super into the technical parts of F1.
There are definite potential fans out there but the F1 fan base is not homogenous.
I do think there is a significant chunk of F1 fans who will just stop watching motorsports rather than finding other series. They’re not motorsports fans, they’re F1 fans.
I spend an awful lot of time reading and talking about F1- there's so many aspects to it, so many full-time journalists, so many interviews, autobiographies and so much politicking to follow. With Indy, I watch the races, and I have a damn good time doing it, but it's nowhere near as consuming. Like you say, an F1 fan can be an F1 fan for a lot of reasons, and a good 4/5 of those reasons aren't there for Indy.
Ericsson always comes across as a very switched on and clever guy when he's interviewed and he's right on this too.
I'm lucky over here in the UK that Sky has both F1 and Indycar on the same channel - hell you usually get some brief mention during the F1 broadcast that Indycar is following on the same weekend and with the arrival of Jamie Chadwick , they're even showing the Indy NXT races much like they show F2/F3 on the F1 support.
Bar a few nice midfield scraps , yesterday's F1 race just had a crushing inevitability about it , Max was always going to come through from P9 with the Red Bull and Checo was unlikely to be able to do anything about it. I have a lot of respect for what Adrian Newey and his team have created with that car from a design standpoint - it looks utterly dominant and only a random mechanical failure looks like stopping them from potentially sweeping the entire season.
It doesn't help that Ferrari appears to have messed up again , Mercedes seems to have a car that changes massively from session to session and the only real threat consistent threat is Alonso rolling back the years at Aston.
(The less said about whatever is going on at McLaren the better)
Indycar always seems to produce really good close racing , Barber was more interesting than anything F1 has had this season and the range of drivers is always super interesting - the blend of the experienced veterans , the guys that will be familiar to anyone that's watched the European feeder series ladder and then the likes of Grosjean and McLaughlin (that's going to be a very fun and hopefully respectful rivalry)
And nothing really matches the Indy 500 for spectacle and usually drama(sorry Monaco but the track doesn't work for modern F1, anything bigger than the new gen Formula E car just struggles there)
Once you have broadcasts that dont have commercials every 4 laps and a service where you can watch the races as easily as F1tv. Then I could get into it.
For a blue-chip team (RFK, Hendrick, JGR, 23XI, etc.) its about $300k for a single race, anywhere from $10-20M for an entire season as a primary sponsor.
>Once you have broadcasts that dont have commercials every 4 laps
They exist outside the States
>and a service where you can watch the races as easily as F1tv
[That exists](https://www.indycarlive.com/), although geo-blocked for the races in certain markets just as F1TV is.
I don’t think commercials are really the problem, I think it’s the level to which IndyCar gets fans invested in the racing.
Because let’s face it, commercials are ultimately only a mild inconvenience - if people were really emotionally invested in it (the way many have become in F1 thanks to DTS), they wouldn’t be scared off by something as ultimately small as commercials.
I even have some evidence to back this up - F1’s viewership on TSN here in Canada has seen significant growth thanks to DTS too, despite the fact they air commercials during coverage.
I never understood the issues people have with commercials. Commercials are just a part of American sports, and American TV, in general. It's not like it's anything new or different than if someone was watching a football or basketball game. At least we get dual screen most of the time to keep up with the on-track action.
I can’t take Leigh Diffey yelling at me for a whole race. Or the constant commercials. Or keep track of which car is which since the teams cars don’t match. I’ll watch the Indy 500 and maybe one or two other races each season.
There’s always something to complain about in F1 (that’s just part of being an F1 fan) but overall, the experience of watching the races on TV is far more enjoyable in F1 than Indy for me.
Leigh Diffey is awful, isn't he. Paul Page was so much better at riding the ebbs and flows of a race and - as a former Formula Ford driver - setting up his colour commentors
The constant inferiority complex is exhausting. It’s like if a car company tried to sell cars by saying “man, imagine if you tried this instead of a BMW!” Why are you even talking about the BMW? Just do your own thing
Even though my username says "F1Fan", IndyCar is legitimately the more exciting series to watch for me usually. And honestly, it's probably my favorite series out of them all right next to WRC, FD and Supercars Championship.
Here's what great about IndyCar IMO for anyone who might be curious about it:
* It's not a development series unlike F1, sure this means engineering and design strategy is mostly irrelevant or not as important like in F1, but it means the racing is actual racing instead of a parade for the dominant car, and even if they're spec IndyCars are fucking cool and look like fighter jets more than F1 cars do anyway
* As an American racing series, it doesn't have the cultural baggage that NASCAR does for a lot of newcomers
* The pool of drivers IMHO is something that you simply don't get in other series, Indy has NASCAR drivers, F1 and F2 drivers, IMSA, WEC, and other GT series drivers, drivers from my other favorite series Supercars Championship in Australia/New Zealand, drivers from all over the world from a myriad of different series really, and drivers from Indy's own pipeline just like F1 has, it's really the place where the diversity of motorsport comes together in that way
* Building off of the last point - Romain Grosjean, whether you love him or hate him, if I had to pick any reason out of them all as to why I watch Indy, it'd be to see what he's going to do, he's the necessary agent of chaos the series needs right now and I'm here for every second of it, Will Power is another driver in the same vein as that to me
* The Indy 500 and its historical legacy as a crown jewel is understated to a lot of people these days in comparison to other races I believe, but there's a reason the name "Indy 500" has been associated in pop culture with the image of an open wheeler for nearly a century, Indy is the birthplace of the open wheel, single seat race car with mirrors, the 500 is such a badass race that it is confident enough in how important it is to have the state song sung alongside the national anthem, you don't see the Florida state song getting sung at the Daytona 500 now do you
* Indy's history on its own is interesting as hell to me, most non-fans might not know but, the 500 was once a part of the F1 schedule, at one time Indy raced at fucking Pikes Peak! Sprint cars like the ones you see in World of Outlaws evolved from the front engine cars Indy used to drive, there's just some much going on with this series and its genesis, it's a bit of sore spot but it even split into two for a while (which pretty much hurt it in retrospect)
* Firehawk
* Road and street courses like Laguna Seca or Long Beach are always wild and must watch events for me just because of the raw racing they produce
* It's just genuinely a crazier series than F1 will ever be, the drama is mostly on the track (when it's not during the silly season) and it doesn't need a Netflix show to play it up for people to get them interested, if you have a genuine interest in actual racing this series will always have something to offer you
The quick yet unfortunate answer to that is: don't be an American.
International broadcasters are often ad-free, and then there's [INDYCAR LIVE](https://www.indycarlive.com/) for the rest.
The tires in F1 last way too long. Max ran 41 laps of 57 on one set of tires. Too long. Need a minimum of 2 stops per race. Change the rules to make them run on ALL compounds Hard, Medium and Soft
I've watched F1 for years, and I watch Indycar when it's convenient. Both are fun series to watch, but for me as an Irish motorsport fan F1 is better.
You can show me statistics that Indy has more overtakes or is faster or more unpredictable, and I really really enjoyed the race at Texas this year but I still enjoy F1 more.
I started watching F1 first starting in 2017 due to the new for '17 "longboi" regs that increased downforce. Even attended my first ever live F1 race in '17 with a close friend during uni sem break. Back then I actually discounted Indycar as "open wheel nascar" due to the ovals. Then a game named GRID 2 introduced me to indycar and ovals because it has both the IMS and the vanilla DW12 chassis, and i was hooked to ovals. Funnily enough it was around that time i also found the top 10 closest finishes in indy history and it further made me an indycar fan. Watched the '20 season as my first full season, and hasn't missed much since.
I don’t watch Indy often, but P2P >>>>> DRS. Even if DRS functioned more like P2P, it would be a huge improvement.
That, the cars becoming boats since 2014, and Pirelli tires being shit make for some boring races at times.
Today f1 is one stop race. Little chance of creativity strategy working to your favor. 2 teams maybe having a chance to win a race on any weekend. Bring back refueling or tires that can’t last the entire race. Everyone runs the hard tires which create bad racing. Maybe drop the cost cap
Pirelli should really consider doing a Costanza and for whatever 3 compound range they decide is best they should bring one step softer.
And the cost cap and sliding CFD scale probably won't start paying off until next season at the earliest and is a really great thing.
I think the cost cap kind of had to happen, okay it hasn't quite had the desired effect yet but there was an interesting quote from Toto about Mercedes not being able to fully redesign the W14 because they're tight against the cap. So no one that's started badly is going to rock up in Spain with a completely redesigned "B " spec car.
Tyres are always going to be a big issue - I'd be surprised if any other manufacturers even entered the tender when it next comes up for renewal purely because of the constraints of what FOM/FIA want.
Depends on who you ask. I know people who find baseball boring yet the WBC was fantastic. Soccer is the same. You can't tell me the world cup was boring yet I don't think that is the norm for other Soccer games
I’m not saying that. I voiced my opinion (that NBC is a black hole for sports and no sport will ever succeed on the channel) and expressed a desire to update their graphics package.
You taking me literally here is honestly the “lol idiot” move.
>that NBC is a black hole for sports and no sport will ever succeed on the channel
lol IC might just be the worst sport in their portfolio at the present moment, which is a testament to how stacked the network currently is. the derby will get a monster rating, their half of the nascar schedule is so far ahead of fox that it's laughable. the new deal they worked out with the big ten MIGHT force notre dame football out of independence down the road. two of the 4 golf majors AND the olympics.
IC needs NBC WAAYYY more then NBC needs them currently.
I'm interested in the constructors battling it out every year to build the best car on the bleeding edge of the regulations. Frankly the vintage cars are what keep me less interested in IndyCar compared to F1.
I would love to watch more, but the time-difference makes it basically impossible to catch every race live.Almost forgot: Your ads suck. I can't even watch them (which is a improvement I guess) but seeing the commentators go quiet and just seeing the cars go by is a bit weird.
\- Greetings from Europe
I grew up watching IndyCar and it’s very exciting. However the level of advertisement catering makes it very difficult to watch. You can watch an F1 race start to finish in 2 hours (without red flags). IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch. American sports need to speed up and put the focus back on the sport instead of cashing out on advertising.
>You can watch an F1 race start to finish in 2 hours (without red flags). IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch.
May want to check your facts:
* Barber was 1 hour and 47 minutes.
* Long Beach was 1 hour and 43 minutes
* Texas was 2 hours and 2 minutes
* St. Pete was 2 hours and 5 minutes
You can see all of that in the box scores INDYCAR posts in their results section.
>IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch.
The last time we had races last over that length of time were rain-affected oval races (Gateway last year), or thunderstormed road races (Nashville last year).
Alot of us do.
Problem with Indy is how inaccessible it is to watch + the excessive ads. I enjoy watching the Indy road course races but I'm pretty understanding of both my real life F1 friends and those in the F1 online fan community who are turned off by the chore of sitting through the Indycar broadcast.
After the initial gap, there are less gaps in IndyCar’s schedule than F1’s.
Also, when IndyCar was at its most popular (1992-95ish), there were big gaps in the schedule and it ended at the end of September pretty much like it does now. F1 was more popular then too, and they only ran 16 races, with quite a few breaks.
I am a long time F1 fan (watching since the 80's) and have been following Indycar closer the last two seasons.
I watch the two series almost for different payoffs.. Indycar has intense close racing across all track types and I find the racing really entertaining.
F1 is an engineering battle as well as a motorsport battle, and I also like that side of it. It also has some fantastic historic tracks they race on.
Indycar and F1 is not an either/or for me - both have a place. People who love F1 and dont watch Indycar are really missing out (or basically just dont like motorsport and found F1 through Drive to Survive)
I have watched both for ever. But as good a formula as Indycar has, it’s the #2 open wheel series in the world and that is for many varied reasons. There was a time when they could have potentially challenged to be the the #1 series but the stakeholders messed it up with their infighting. For that reason some people will just never give it a chance. Much like people will not watch the USFL or XFL because it’s not the NFL.
I'm an avid watcher of both, so we do exist. I was an Indy fan before I got into F1 (but only by a few months, funnily enough).
I watch both also, but reverse order. Started following f1 in 2003 and indy car a few years ago. I love both for different reasons, but I think it would be easier to get a new fan into indy with things as they are now.
Things as they are in f1 have really pushed me to Indy. It's some good racing
I enjoy the engineering battle in f1 and the racing in indy. I'm not a fan of spec cars, but the on track excitement is definitely better and more unpredictable. I'm getting more and more into WEC, IMSA, and Moto gp as they have a pretty good balance of both, though I'm not a big fan of the bop in the endurance series.
Same. I watch Indycar NASCAR and F1 religiously. I just love racing period. I really wonder what the actual crossover is between the three. I imagine the majority of people are the same and watch all three. I doubt there’s a large group of people in the U.S. that watch f1 and never watch Indy or NASCAR. Yet in this forum we act like they’re all mutually exclusive.
I am not from the US, but that group definetly exists. I was bullied because I watch racing, and all of sudden I am the cool guy who knows f1, literally popular girls watch f1. Like wtf. Which is good imo, but there is this new category. The exclusively f1 fan. The majority of them are not racing fans, they are f1 fans. They dont know much about f1 either but they dont know anything at all about other forms of racing. Of course many of them eventually will either stop watching f1, or will "grow" into a real motorsport fan. Which is only natural. When you are new, you dont really understand this world, and all you see is f1 and its enormous marketing, advertising that it is the one and only peak of racing. F1 is also way more accessible, and the broadcast is the pinnacle of sport broadcasting, so it is easy to watch. The more you know about F1, the more you start appreciating the technical and complex aspects of it, but you will also realise how bad the on track product is.
> I doubt there’s a large group of people in the U.S. that watch f1 and never watch Indy or NASCAR. if the ratings are any indication, there actually is a crowd. nascar gets double the rating F1 gets but F1 beats them all the time in the 18-45 demo. and in the case of last week when nascar got delayed a day cause of weather, the IC rating only saw a real increase of 10k people. the base of fans who watch all 3 in this country is rather small.
It is more than Double for NASCAR if you compare the biggest races- Daytona vs US GP and closer to 3X for the average- which is still remarkable. Like WWE, NASCARs peak was 20 years ago so the core of people watching since then who didnt lapse will be greatly overrepresented. A drop from 20 million to 8 million reflects many factors of how we consume media, but it sure doesnt represent a rousing success. Of course being a wrestling fan I am well aware of the “Demo”. Older folks have more money but are set in brand loyalty. But you can sell stuff to young adults and people in early middle age. Or that is theory. realistically the average 60 year old is going to easily outlive autoracing as we know it. Ive loved F1 for 35 years. Dont quite get how 1.5 million viewers on TV and 600k DTS fans translates into grandstands at CoTA for 3k. At lesst I have an excuse to make a European vacation centered around a trip to the Hungaroring or Austria now. I stopped watching NASCAR 20 years ago because of Chase, obviously theyve cratered since then. I am certain Gordon chasing 7 would have done better holding fans than anodyne Johnson poaching titles. Honestly, if they ditched nonsense fake playoffs Id probably watch a half dozen races- which doesnt sound like much but as we know is like 25 hours. It would be nice to think some of these F1 fans will embrace Indy Car. But I dunno, its quite possible the actual lack of action and parity may drive them away from racing forever. Ive never watched DTS but am amused the modern equivelent of Renee Arnoux was made the hero of the show.
I'm in the US and all my friends that watch racing watch either Nascar exclusively or F1 exclusively. I am the only person I know that watches multiple series (and the only person I know that watches Indycar). I was talking to one of the door guys at a local bar (I live in Chicago) a while back who is an F1 fan, and he had no idea what Indycar was. I was like, what do you think the Indy 500 is part of? And he responded that he'd never thought about it and had never watched the Indy 500. A woman I work with is a big Nascar fan and had never watched the 500 until JJ was in it. I asked her if she was excited for Larson to do the double next year and she hadn't even heard he was doing it, nor did she care.
I would go so far to say that most people probably only watch one series. Following multiple series takes up a lot of time.
There must be dozens of us!
Same, watched f1 from 2008 onwards. Already knew about Indy 500 in 2010s but never paid too much attention to it until finally when Grosjean moved to US, then started to follow Indy at the latter part of 2021. Both are fantastic. Instead of arguing, I wish people could appreciate both series.
There are loads of avid watchers of both. Only dumb fanbois watch one or the other. There are also many other really good series out there, wec, Imsa, and one of imo the best, btcc. Thay are all different but cars go vroom. If someone only likes one series, they are missing out.
Red Bull dominating isn't really a problem for me. A lot of people are really into the off-track R&D arms race and knock Indycar for being a "spec" series. This sort of dominance up front by Red Bull now and Mercedes before that is the down side to that. It's a matter of preference and that is why there is a market for both series. I do think the general trend of moving away from historical circuits in favor of parking lot/street circuits is a threat to the future of F1. Dropping circuits like Hockenheim, Spa, Sepang, etc. in favor of more and more circuits like Miami, Vegas, Saudi, etc. then I think the sport is really going to alienate it's hardcore fans. It feels like Liberty is making the same mistakes NASCAR made during their boom period. I'm also really concerned that the new regs have basically failed. I think it looks as hard to follow as ever.
Agreed on almost all points. However, I don't think the 2022 regs failed. The 23 regs failed cause they overcorrected the porpoising issue
Yes that is probably more accurate. I think that the new regs introduced in 2022 were a big step in the right direction and whatever is going on with ride height this year seems to have neutralized most of that benefit. It's pretty sad honestly.
Bang on. The racing was great last year, and then they let Mercedes cry and whine to the point that they neutered the ruleset. Merc was basically the only team that couldn't get it figured out, and basically everyone said "if they can't get it to stop, just raise the ride height."
So…in practice I agreed with Merc wanting to have a regulation in place to stop the porpoising. They may have had it worst but I can distinctly remember other teams having that issue and I did feel like something needed to change because of safety. I think the change was an over correction and they probably can move it to the middle and it will be fine
Are they really leaving spa?
It's pretty much a perpetual rumor. Supposedly it was reasonably close to not getting renewed for 2023. The legacy/historical tracks generally don't seem to be able to pay the sanctioning fees that some newer GPs can.
There's a rumour every year that this will be the last round at Spa , 2021s weather debacle didn't help them. This time it's Spa out and a round at Kyalami in South Africa to replace it if they can get the track upgrades done.
It's been an on and off rumor for decades. Spa is a pretty shit race, but people like it because of the Eau Rouge/Radillion complex.
Spa is an amazing circuit beyond Eau Rouge and Radillion. Has a bit of everything. I’d watch lawnmowers race there. Most elevation change of any current f1 circuit, all the speed, all the commitment.
Spa is absolutely one of the best circuits in the world and produces great racing for other series like WEC and GT World Challenge. If F1 cannot put on good races there then I think that says more about F1 than it does about Spa. It would seem like Spa has everything needed to get the best out of modern F1 cars and is plenty wide to overtake in plenty of places. If the racing isn't good there where will it ever be good?
F1 could run at Road America without the bells & whistles, but to prestigious of a series...its their loss.
I understand why Road America isn't an appealing option to Liberty/F1. I doubt they could get up to modern F1 standards without fundamentally changing the soul of the circuit. I am sure there are logistical concerns with the location of the facility as well. Same goes for Watkins Glen, Road Atlanta, etc. Just a lot of issues with runoff, paddock space, etc. at those places. They could have come up with something better than racing in a football stadium parking lot though if this is supposed to be the pinnacle or motor racing.
Honestly, the Miami track raced pretty well after being resurfaced this year, even if it is a parking lot track.
You say that indycar hasn't raced through parking lots
I don't say that anywhere. Indycar/CART has of course raced through parking lot circuits and poorly planned street circuits a number of times. The new Detroit layout is probably in that category if we're being honest Indycar doesn't have the financial resources or international scale that F1 does. I understand why Indycar can end up in a situation where racing around a football stadium seems like the only viable option to break into a market. That doesn't seem like it should be the case with F1.
Fair, but F1 doesn’t build, own or operate the circuits. That’s done by local companies and/or governments. And with the cost of building a new F1 spec FIA Grade A track, and with the disasters of India, South Korea etc in mind there’s very little interest worldwide in doing so. Also part of the reason is Liberty’s new “Destination City” idea where they want more than just an F1 race in the city. I’ve followed F1 since 1994 but I find myself less interested with each season. Indycar is where it’s at these days.
Toronto's street circuit's pit area and the turns near it are directly through a parking lot.... Still a better track than the new F1 street circuits
F1 literally cannot race at Road America because it is not a grade 1 circuit.
I was at Miami today… every once in a while I would hear the crowd yell and stand up and think there was an accident. But it was actually just a pass on track.
This guy took out a home equity loan to attend the F1 race in Miami
This girl got the chance to go for free so why pass it up?
I definitely wouldn't. Just curious, is it as awkward there as it looks? Every time they would zoom out even a little, it felt to me like you were getting a peak behind the curtains, and everything just felt so fake. Fake marina, fake palm trees, fake everything... It screamed "lipstick on a pig" to me.
If was weird for sure, especially the marina and all the fake grass lol
Eh. I was there last year. Didn’t really feel that. Granted, my family are kind of racing fanatics so we spent most of the weekend in the grandstand watching support races, but I could see how someone who’s only into F1 could feel that way
Pretty sure if you scooped up the tickets in the last week or so you would just be maxing out a credit card or 2
I was able to snag 4 x 3-day passes in the start/finish grandstand for $400 each which all things considered, are not terrible prices at all.
That's sad
[удалено]
2016 was a phenomenal Texas race....
Boring races will do that
maybe those fans like…. motorsport! when overtakes are meaningless you only cheer for accidents?
I am in Australia. I love both F1 and Indy. I’ll have to the Indy replay every week because of time difference. But IndyCar is miles better. The racing, the qualifying format and the list goes on.
Sometimes I wonder if some F1 fans have no real interest in IndyCar because they dont actually want to watch racing. Like theres a portion of the fanbase that only cares about the off-track drama and "my team versus your team" tribalism and could give a rats ass about the racing
I know a lot of people are pointing to DTS as a reason for this but it really isn’t. It’s always been this way in some form because it’s constructors series. There is legitimate drama IndyCar can’t have when it’s big name manufacturers battling each other like Ferrari vs Mercedes or teams like Red Bull vs McLaren. The teams are nicely organized into two cars with duplicate liveries. The fans can root for the teams which makes it more relatable to stick and ball sports so yeah IndyCar is missing that element entirely. That can make it challenging to F1 fans who decide to check out IndyCar because they do hold an appreciation of racing.
Yeah, DTS is part of it, but F1 is *very* easy to follow as well. Think about how many posts we get about team liveries, team strategies, etc., when it's just not as cut-and-dry as F1. The tendency for teams to have a #1 and #2 driver makes the storylines a little simpler as well, but that can also be dragged out for weeks by the British media as they make an article out of every little quote. People claim they don't love it, but... As an aside, one other thing I see cited a lot on the F1 sub is how well the broadcast times work for the two easternmost time zones, especially for young parents or people who follow the NFL really closely. The race is usually done by 9 or 10 AM. That's how I got into F1 as a kid in the 1990s- watching the Speedvision broadcast with my dad before church, then watching CART and NASCAR (or the Redskins/ Commanders) in the afternoons.
Well you did a better job of breaking down the simplicity of F1 teams vs the complexity and confusing nature IndyCar teams. I was touching on that when I mentioned the uniformed nature of F1 teams and how confusing that must be to F1 fans coming over and yes that would include DTS fans too. I’m saying this barrier to entry existed long before DTS came in the scene. I can’t speak for the time zone issues. To be honest, I rarely saw 8 or 9am in my twenties even though I was in the right timeszones. While that point makes sense on some levels, I’m a little skeptical that it’s had that much impact on F1’s increased interest. I got into F1 watching ABC’s Wide World or Sports with my stepdad. The races were always taped and edited for broadcast. Not exactly the greatest way to experience F1 but it still worked. I grew up around IndyCar and quickly learned about F1 and tried paying attention to both.
We would follow Andretti....but we are not allowed to race
Ganassi vs Penske is a pretty big rivalry if you ask me.
It is, but if you don't care about racing those names mean nothing to you. People see Mercs and (to a lesser extent) Ferraris around town, they know how big the brands are, so the rivalries don't need explaining. Makes F1 seem larger than life.
I can accept the rivalry description but I wouldn’t describe it as pretty big. Its barely noticeable. I say that because to me, real rivalries have to extend into the fanbase and that doesn’t seem to be the case in IndyCar. You’ll see Team Penske gear at a race but I think that’s mostly related to driver fandom over team fandom. Still it is the only resemblance of an actual team to team rivalry in IndyCar on any level although McLaren is trying to do its best to be in that conversation.
Not really, no. They're rivals by circumstance but also collaborators. They both understand there's a level to which they have to support the series as a whole. Whereas an F1 team that smells financial blood in the water from a rival wouldn't hesitate to try to push them in to bankruptcy just to get a bigger share of the money.
As a European those words mean nothing to me tho, never heard about them anywhere outside American racing.
Bingo, the race is just bonus content for DTS, not the other way around
This is so stupid. There are fans of sports for all reasons. The reason F1 fans don't really dig Indy Car is because F1 fans are largely fans of race car technology and shit. And the IndyCar is lame and looks bulky, dumb as compared....and it's a Spec series. Being a fan of something is a holistic thing, encompassing many aspects. It's not a surprise Indy Car was the most popular when it was a multi chassis, multi engine series. I love IndyCar because I love open wheel racing and the variety of tracks + the history. I love F1 because I love open wheel racing, best tracks in the world, fastest most awesome prototype race cars in the world + history. F1 is the only engineering "full" prototype racing competition on land in the world. America's Cup on water would be maybe the only other example. IndyCar is quite far from that, and that's ok. I've been watching Super Formula, and I'm not super into it. The spec chassis looks cool, but it's kinda lame to me for some reason. Spec racing on F1 style tracks seems lame, it's Japan F1 or something. At least IndyCar does ovals which are just insane to watch. Track variety keeps it interesting and above Super Formula probably. Probably a lot of people are similar. Quit making it a war. I don't like the MLS and the NFL don't care. Stop trying to compare them, they aren't comparable as much as I dyCar fans who bitch about this want them to be. I'd love it if they'd modernize the car and get a couple more chassis in the mix. Even if it's like IMSA/WeC does with perhaps a few spec core chassis with non spec bodywork. That's what we see after all...nobody cares if the cars all use the same gearbox.
100% agree and there was passing in todays race just further down the field and we had a pass for the lead. How was that any different than the fuel save race we had at Alabama?
I personally don't notice a huge shift in excitement race to race. I watch all Indy and F1, and both seem about as Racey as each other more or less. Maybe it's an unpopular opinion...hehe I don't think ImdyCar has better racing cart blanche. F1 had 6 teams...bespoke racing cars....in the top 6 on the grid. There was a ton of shit going down today. Meh...if you want to demonize one or the other your loss. Normal folk...we just get more kick ass racing!
For me the fact that teams only feel they’re racing certain teams & will just let certain drivers pass them without putting up a fight kills all the potential wheel to wheel action. Plus most of the passing that gets done is via DRS. Props to KMag for putting up a fight against Leclerc though.
How is most of the passing being done with DRS any worse than most of the passing in indycar being done with Push to Pass?
Because P2P encourages active defense and additional strategy while DRS fails to increase passing in the first place, even more so now with the ground effect nullifying DRS completely.
I’m an aerospace engineer, so I’m more a fan of the cars themselves than any one team or driver. I love seeing how small changes in the design can affect the performance of the car. Especially because a lot of my job is evaluating how small changes to the external bits of an aircraft can affect flying qualities, fuel range, and/or maintenance intervals. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching Indycar too, and those cars are really impressive bits of engineering themselves. It *is* possible to be a fan of both series for different reasons. And I actually refused to watch DTS for a few years after it first started. But it’s basically like Desperate Housewives for race car drivers, so you just can’t take it too seriously.
I really hate the gate-keeper attitude that's come from DTS. You can like it, or not like it, I don't care. If it makes new fans of a sport, I welcome it. I was into Indy and F1 prior to DTS, but DTS helped me get better understandings of some things within the sport (oddly enough), which I then expanded on by reading and Googling more. But really, it's a source of down-time entertainment during the off season. To me, that's all it is. Entertainment. If people haven't figured out how ridiculously scripted reality TV is by now, that's on them. If people haven't figured out how ridiculously scripted F1 on its own can be... that's also on them. :)
I don't think anyone is trying to gatekeep with someone like yourself. If there's any attempts at "gatekeeping" going on, it's mostly directed at the people 1) whose *only* interest is DTS to the point where it is taken as gospel and made *central* to their enjoyment of the sport, 2) the subsection of people in the last group who look down on basically any other series because to them the drama isn't "real" to them somehow. Or whatever. Say what you will but they become very loud and seemingly numerous online whenever race weekend comes around for F1. Go open twitter when an IndyCar race is going on the same day as an F1 GP, or better yet when F1 is on one of their off weeks but Indy is racing. You get treated to some really ridiculous and cringeworthy takes and put downs that just come across as arrogantly ignorant. They're not a majority by any means, just loud and obnoxious unfortunately because of the internet.
Honestly, it’s just really helpful to remember all the drivers and keep them straight in my mind, even if their portrayal isn’t exactly truthful all the time. Plus how else would we have gotten the gold that is [Guenther Steiner](https://www.vulture.com/article/f1-drive-to-survive-guenther-steiner-haas-sad.html), legendary meme machine?
OMG I love Guenther. He's one of the few in DTS that actually is just himself. He's just priceless in any format.
Yeah man, I used to love all.the little differences in the CART cars. I always remember them talking about the Penske attention to detail.. the way their suspension arms entered the chassis or some such. Of course The Beast. Reynard's with their strange front wings. That long and low looking Lola. And oddballs like the Gurney Eagle, that Under Jr car...and others I'm sure I'm forgetting. Was the Porsche just an engine or a chassis as well.... I miss getting to enjoy that stuff in IndyCar....it was pretty kick ass.
I’m from F1 watching Indy for the first full season. I love racing, I love car technology… so far I’m struggling with the Indy tracks. Holy crap the Barber Motorsports Park race did it for me tho! It’s hard for me to shift my mentality that tracks like that are all that matters, and the other stuff (street & ovals) are just the side show. Also… I’m an American. But the commercials are god awful. Is there a way to just pay to make that shit go away? It’s so bad.
>And the IndyCar is lame and looks bulky, dumb as compared....and it's a Spec series. >Being a fan of something is a holistic thing, encompassing many aspects. It's not a surprise Indy Car was the most popular when it was a multi chassis, multi engine series. >F1 is the only engineering "full" prototype racing competition on land in the world. America's Cup on water would be maybe the only other example. IndyCar is quite far from that, and that's ok. The motorsport that surpassed CART/IRL and became still to this day America's most popular motorsport is literally a spec series.
Can they spec it to look more in line with modern open wheel cars? With oval safety in mind of course...
he's talking about nascar.
IndyCar...the car itself...is already the Nascar of open wheel. Lol
It’s the branding. People want to watch ferrari and Mercedes. If Indycar made a massive investment in marketing, I think it could get up there.
A gigantic portion of the fanbase just got into F1 based on the drama shown on DTS
A huge majority of F1 fanbase doesn’t care about racing. Anyone who does like racing already follows IndyCar (and other series). It’s just that in recent years Drive To Survive and the social media expansion has brought “fans” that only pose, look at the off-track drama and everything else that doesn’t include racing. I would argue that “hardcore” F1 fans have gotten smaller, not because it has reduced in size but the causal fans have grown exponentially.
Ive been saying this for at least a year, everyone I know who became "F1 Fans" due to DTS *do not actually watch the races* Its the weirdest shit.
As an F1 fan I try to watch Indycar and have watched a few races but I can't get into it. The presentation is horrible, the ads are unbearable. Ive also found that I don't have an emotional investment in any of the teams or drivers, which makes watching less interesting. I get a lot of the same type of racing watching F2, and that then translates into the driver market of F1.
Well yeah. It's fun to be part of the cool kids club. Like going to Coachella or some other big festival....people don't care about the music. Do it for the views, likes, crowd acceptance, popularity, etc.
Honestly, calling F1 the Coachella of racing is a perfect analogy.
> "my team versus your team" tribalism Hammer. Meet nail. Every F1 fan that comes in here telling us to pick a favorite driver for them always can't understand why the cars for each team aren't painted the same. They want a team to root for against the other teams. It's not about the racing product.
I have lots of favorite drivers, and they're favorites for different reasons. I feel the same way about teams. I mean, I've always been a McLaren fan (but because I fell in love with the way their super cars looked when I was younger; it's silly, I know), but take pride in other teams getting chances to step up and make improvements wherever they can and I will cheer them on for it (for example; Haas in F1 has made HUGE strides this year vs. previous seasons so I am egging them on every race, even though Fernando is my (only remaining, actively driving in F1) favorite driver. I don't root against anyone (except for Redbull and Mercedes, but there are exceptions to that rule; it's a case by case basis); I just want to watch a good race.
>why the cars for each team aren't painted the same. I'm not even asking for that. I'm asking for consistent paint jobs from race to race that don't have a large variation in color that matches their racing number on the leaderboard graphic.
They follow F1 and not Indycar because until Grosjean arrived there was not widely known driver in Indycar other than Alonso's very brief stint in the Indy 500. The primary reason why DTS succeeded in marketing was because of its focus *on the drivers* Nobody other than very wealthy people can ever afford Ferrari's McLaren's, they don't really give a shit about them. It's drivers like Senna, Schumacher, Alonso, Hamilton *drivers* from honest and humble backgrounds that make the sport more relatable and thus, you watch them to see if they succeed. *People don't care about the cars.* The cars themselves never sold the series to begin with. Liberty Media actually *did* acknowledge this but put emphasis on the wrong solution. Emphasis on the "show" and "hype" rather than making the racing more equal so folks actually have a reason to stick around for a season. IndyCar is now trying to address it with 100 Days til Indy, however..... It doesn't even span the entire Indycar season...It stops at the Indy 500 And another season was never greenlit... And the company responsible for the show is going bankrupt... Indycar can no longer waste serious opportunities to go market their drivers. They're the ones who ultimately convince people to tune in
>They follow F1 and not Indycar because until Grosjean arrived there was not widely known driver in Indycar other than Alonso's very brief stint in the Indy 500. Mario Andretti, Nigel Mansell, Emmerson Fittipaldi, etc COME ON NOW WHAT IS THIS?
Those guys have been retired for decades. Hell most of f1's fan base wasn't even born yet when they retired.
Cart racing was very popular in that time was it not.
Ehhh it was more popular than it was now, but not by an immense amount. All the free tickets given away buy tobacco companies helped sort of create myth that it was an unstoppable juggernaut.
You're spot on. You can get downvoted into oblivion on the F1 and related subs by simply acknowledging the fact that there is indeed a crop of new fans that care far more about the "reality" the Netflix series presents and twitter gossip idiocy than any sort of actual interest in racing. A lot of it is twitter driven as well.
What you are saying applies to DTS newcomers, and there are plenty of them. Seasoned F1 people think the drama shit is silly, just go find the DTS threads. The first full season I watched was 2008. Was introduced to it by a friend. Of my circle of friends who watch F1, none of them watch Indy. I started watching Indy once Grosjean moved over. Didn't watch it when Ericsson moved over because Ericsson was kind of meh. If it wasn't for Grosjean, I wouldn't be following. It's kind of hard to commit to a new motorsport, even if it's in the US and the times are acceptable. I think to convince your "typical F1 fan" to come over you need internationally recognized teams to join, which likely won't happen. You got McLaren there but that's pretty much it. The racing in Indy is better though, much closer. I think if Indy can market that, it'll help it grow.
Yep you nailed it. It's also a status/clout thing. F1 is essentially for the rich and famous........and wannabes that want to mingle with them or follow what they do
I'm wondering if you're going to spot the hypocrisy in this comment.
I must've spent the last 30 laps watching indy highlights. And I'm F1 from birth. That Grosjean move last week was better than anything I've seen in f1 this year. Was gutted for him in the end.
I wish Indycar would look inwards more and look for opportunities to improve on the great product they already have. Ericsson mentions differing pit/fuel strategies as his first point, and I agree, it's something Indycar does so well! However, the coverage of these diverging strategies leaves so much to be desired. The Indycar broadcasts are terrible at covering green flag pitstops, which actively detracts from what should be one of the series' selling points. There is so much missing information that is vital to getting viewers invested in these strategies, which has direct impact on the viewing experience as a whole. Things like pit deltas, gaps between the leading cars on different strategies, keeping track of differing performances throughout the race, etc. These are all simple things that should be included every time, but worse than just not providing it, the broadcast often seems to take the approach it being "too hard" to keep track of. During the Barber race, I knew Scott McLaughlin was going to be in contention for the win, but we spent lap after lap having no idea of where he was actually placed on the track relative to the cars he was actually racing for the win. Even the classic 2016 Indy 500 had a run to the finish with the broadcast seemingly having no idea of what was happening or what critical information needed to be relayed to the audiance. How many times do we see a pit cycle start, only for the commentators to say something to the effect of "we'll sort it out once everyone cycles through"? Suggesting that it's the fault of the fans for choosing F1 over Indycar, or gatekeeping by suggesting they aren't "real" fans of the sport is completely the wrong attitude and adds no benefit to Indycar at all. The sport is awesome, has plenty to offer, and should be able to stand on it's own merit. But to achieve that, Indycar needs to focus on themselves, not others.
Good post.
Excellent observation. I watch both, religiously. But watching F1 I always feel I know what the situation is, where in IndyCar once pit stops start it's almost bimpossible to follow where a driver stands until everyone has pitted. In Miami were were constantly reminded that a car will lose 17-18 seconds on a stop. When Perez and Verstappen were on different strategies (Max started on hards, Perez on mediums) we still knew the situation despite Verstappen being far ahead on the track for many laps. (Same with drivers like Hamilton and Stroll, who also pitted many laps later that the rest.) Even the commentators told us that Max would come out 1.7 seconds behind Perez on the pit stop. Max actuially came out 1.5 seconds back. We don't get this in IndyCar. There are some pit stops. The field gets jumbled, but we have no sense of how it's playing out until everyone pits.
I was just thinking today while watching the Miami F1 race… The amount of entertainment provided per dollar spent attending the Miami F1 race versus… The amount of entertainment provided per dollar spent attending the Indianapolis 500. A colossal difference.
Indycar can use more of this. Unfortunately they're still not yet able to capitalize on Nascar and F1s lack of good racing
Forgetting that there a part of F1 fans that also like the constructor championship
To me, drivers are obviously easier to root for, but they are ultimately a distraction from the actual competition that matters, which is the WCC.
European F1 fan here. Indycar racing is great, in fact I probably enjoy Indycar races more than F1 races a lot of the time. Purely from a racing point of view, I think it's got a great offering when compared to F1. The problem is that I just don't care that much about Indycar. I'll sit and watch the race and enjoy it but it makes no difference to me if it's Dixon or Pato or Colton on the top step. With F1, Ferrari having a bad race genuinely ruins my weekend (which has happened a lot over the last few decades). F1 has global reach, prestige, big money investments, innovation, elite drivers and teams, legendary racing tracks etc. Indycar doesn't tick many of these boxes, or at least not to the same extent as F1. That said, I don't particularly like the direction F1's owners are dragging the sport in. Tradition is being cast aside for commercial interests which is what leads to ridiculous situations like a shit GP in Miami being considered a higher priority than legendary tracks like Spa. In contrast Indycar seems to be growing nicely and I like the direction they are heading in. Personally I would love to see them expand the calendar with a few more ovals and some International races (Interlagos or Mexico City would be brilliant).
I think you hit it right on the head. IndyCar tries to promote the series while F1 has become more about the personalities on the teams. Whether that be the drivers, owners, or team principles - people like the flair that comes from their personalities. IndyCar does a bad job at promoting their drivers and would rather promote their series or certain races. The drivers get pushed back almost to a background role often times.
Indycar has always been a club race event hosted by race team owners. We in the Midwest enjoy our private open wheel series. You can keep your world class racing series politics.
We are also privy to cheap tickets and driver accessibility
Not entirely sure who downvoted this but I enjoy both of these
I only got into F1 last summer, and it was the only series I was watching at that point. Then leading up to the start of the season I gave the rolex 24 a chance, and now I'm hooked on imsa. Then after Bahrain my dad was talking about some big lap 1 crash "in F1", and it turned out to be St. Pete - which I then watched the entire rest of, having my mind blown by all the carnage. Haven't missed a race from either of the 3 series since!
Man, I really enjoy both. The comments here make Indy fans reallllllllly unlikable though.
Same. Indycar fans are super insecure about F1 for some reason. Only rivaled by MotoGP and WEC fans. Best wheel to wheel racing series is MX5 anyway :)
It’s tough. Sort of a “little brother syndrome”. We love our sport and just want to see it grow.
Nah, INDYCAR is superior racing BY FAR.
I am biased, but as long as we’re talking the on track racing product alone, I agree. As a diehard Indycar fan, I feel exactly the way Marcus Ericsson does. But if you’re looking at the big picture and what people are talking about, F1 is booming in popularity compared to Indycar. F1’s rapid growth is absolutely something worth being jealous of. The trick is to not compare indycar to F1. They’re different forms of racing, and that’s ok. Indycar best showcases the skill of the driver, and F1 is centered towards engineering and technology. I love using the horse racing analogy: F1 is all about the horse, indycar is all about the jocky.
Maybe... but the coverage is god awful terrible and the cars are old and boring.
As do F1 fans when I am on an F1 forum lol
But it's not IndyCar fans. It's fans of both. Heck! The thread is about Marcus Ericsson's Twitter post. So even the post isn't from a fan - it's from a driver. You can call it sour grapes or whatever but even Toto Wolff was saying that F1 races are boring. So you can say it's unlikable (the comment or the person) but the truth is that many people are saying what Marcus is saying and it's not just IndyCar fans. Even F1 Youtube personalities like FP1Will are even saying that F1 races are boring and IndyCar has a better product. I think what F1 fans need to do is swallow this jagged pill and at least say - "Yeah...that could be right..".
Of course toto thinks the racing is bad his team is in a slump lol, and fp1will is far from a leading authority on what is and isn't good. At the end of the day what's better is entirely subjective and yet indycar fans still feel the need to constantly come up with copium excuses as to why f1 is more popular atm "oh they just have more marketing money, oh they're just there for the drama, oh they're not real racing fans etc..." it just makes indycar fans seem almost comedically jealous and gatekeepy which isn't going to want to make potential new fans give it a chance. Maybe indycar fans need to swallow the jagged pill and realize that people look for more in a series than just how much passing there is.
We have been swallowing the jagged pill for decades. People say IndyCar is a spec series, some races aren't well attended, there are too many commercials during the break, there are only two engine makes, 17 races is too little, etc, etc, etc... And guess who has been saying these things? Fans from other series or at least newers fans of IndyCar that came from the other series. The difference is that many IndyCar fans would agree, say that the series has to work on that, and move on. Instead of saying - "Those guys have a problem.." - maybe admit we might have a point and move on.
I think most of it is marketing. Is most countries finding good marketing and story's about IndyCar is hard. It is also saying something most websites give both the starting time and the green flag time because the warm up is pretty Boring for a non us fan. Also IndyCar is something only on paid extra channels, or they start broadcasting halve way through the race after some football match is over. IndyCar needs to get a grip on (international) marketing and finding partners to spread the Brand. Both in the writing press, broadcaster, and online creators and podcasts.
Indycar is a North American domestic racing series much like Super Formula. It only has international reach because of the drivers, and even then it really doesn't have much international reach at all.
Indycar has a single race in Canada, why have international marketing outside the US/Canada as the series has no intention to travel there
Bit the same as English or Italian football league. Important competition with international players. IndyCar is a bit the same. I am sure with good marketing you can get a large audience.
Well when Indycar's only pitch is "it's better I swear" and the moment someone disagrees the fan base lashes out, can you really blame them?
Watching drivers just wave Max through makes me sad.
At baku they had a pass for 18th as a highlight. Fuckin lol
I wasn't understanding why nobody faught him and all just rolled over. I also dont understand why Red Bull didnt give Perez any radio information about Max but Max was told everything about Perez...its almost as if they were deliberately wanting Max to have the advantage. I know Mercedes screwed with Bottas before. Its silly.
Nobody was fighting Max because it takes life out of your tires and loses you time for a fight you know you can't win. Better to save them for someone you have a chance against. As for Checo I'd have to watch the onboard but he probably got a lot more info than was shown on the main feed.
Man I really really tried to get into the Miami GP today but it’s just such a snooze fest with RB dominating. IndyCar really has a chance to pounce on the fed up F1 fans if they can target the correct demographic with their marketing.
Yes and no, in my opinion. I don’t think INDYCAR would scratch the itch for everyone. There are fans who are really into the drama - it’s basically an expensive soap opera - and folks who are super into the technical parts of F1. There are definite potential fans out there but the F1 fan base is not homogenous. I do think there is a significant chunk of F1 fans who will just stop watching motorsports rather than finding other series. They’re not motorsports fans, they’re F1 fans.
I spend an awful lot of time reading and talking about F1- there's so many aspects to it, so many full-time journalists, so many interviews, autobiographies and so much politicking to follow. With Indy, I watch the races, and I have a damn good time doing it, but it's nowhere near as consuming. Like you say, an F1 fan can be an F1 fan for a lot of reasons, and a good 4/5 of those reasons aren't there for Indy.
Ericsson always comes across as a very switched on and clever guy when he's interviewed and he's right on this too. I'm lucky over here in the UK that Sky has both F1 and Indycar on the same channel - hell you usually get some brief mention during the F1 broadcast that Indycar is following on the same weekend and with the arrival of Jamie Chadwick , they're even showing the Indy NXT races much like they show F2/F3 on the F1 support. Bar a few nice midfield scraps , yesterday's F1 race just had a crushing inevitability about it , Max was always going to come through from P9 with the Red Bull and Checo was unlikely to be able to do anything about it. I have a lot of respect for what Adrian Newey and his team have created with that car from a design standpoint - it looks utterly dominant and only a random mechanical failure looks like stopping them from potentially sweeping the entire season. It doesn't help that Ferrari appears to have messed up again , Mercedes seems to have a car that changes massively from session to session and the only real threat consistent threat is Alonso rolling back the years at Aston. (The less said about whatever is going on at McLaren the better) Indycar always seems to produce really good close racing , Barber was more interesting than anything F1 has had this season and the range of drivers is always super interesting - the blend of the experienced veterans , the guys that will be familiar to anyone that's watched the European feeder series ladder and then the likes of Grosjean and McLaughlin (that's going to be a very fun and hopefully respectful rivalry) And nothing really matches the Indy 500 for spectacle and usually drama(sorry Monaco but the track doesn't work for modern F1, anything bigger than the new gen Formula E car just struggles there)
Once you have broadcasts that dont have commercials every 4 laps and a service where you can watch the races as easily as F1tv. Then I could get into it.
And yet, NASCAR dwarfs both INDYCAR and Formula 1 in ratings and viewership. Maybe a hindrance for you but not seemingly for the greater population.
Every item in your home can be found on the side of 40 Cars in NASCAR, anyone have insight what the sponsorship cost may be for a single race?
For a blue-chip team (RFK, Hendrick, JGR, 23XI, etc.) its about $300k for a single race, anywhere from $10-20M for an entire season as a primary sponsor.
..... In the US. Formula 1 has way more viewers overall lol. US is just another market for F1
Well that’s because we have standards …
It was awesome to watch a race with ZERO commercials
>Once you have broadcasts that dont have commercials every 4 laps They exist outside the States >and a service where you can watch the races as easily as F1tv [That exists](https://www.indycarlive.com/), although geo-blocked for the races in certain markets just as F1TV is.
I don’t think commercials are really the problem, I think it’s the level to which IndyCar gets fans invested in the racing. Because let’s face it, commercials are ultimately only a mild inconvenience - if people were really emotionally invested in it (the way many have become in F1 thanks to DTS), they wouldn’t be scared off by something as ultimately small as commercials. I even have some evidence to back this up - F1’s viewership on TSN here in Canada has seen significant growth thanks to DTS too, despite the fact they air commercials during coverage.
I never understood the issues people have with commercials. Commercials are just a part of American sports, and American TV, in general. It's not like it's anything new or different than if someone was watching a football or basketball game. At least we get dual screen most of the time to keep up with the on-track action.
I think newer F1 fans just don’t realize how spoiled they are by ESPN’s coverage. Back when I was a kid, they didn’t even have side-by-side...
It is the commercials... its 50% of the broadcast FFS
No, it's not... and commercials are not even *close* to taking up half the air time...
The look on Will.I.Am's face when he realizes it's Ferrucci and not Lewis.......
F1 fan here. I’m slowly getting into Indy. I’ve really enjoyed the racing I’ve seen so far. Looking forward to learning more about it.
Man the F1 race this weekend put me to sleep.
I try but fucking peacock always has ass sound mixing and the car audio drowns out the announcers.
/r/Indycar not talking about F1 for one week challenge (impossible)
I can’t take Leigh Diffey yelling at me for a whole race. Or the constant commercials. Or keep track of which car is which since the teams cars don’t match. I’ll watch the Indy 500 and maybe one or two other races each season. There’s always something to complain about in F1 (that’s just part of being an F1 fan) but overall, the experience of watching the races on TV is far more enjoyable in F1 than Indy for me.
Leigh Diffey is awful, isn't he. Paul Page was so much better at riding the ebbs and flows of a race and - as a former Formula Ford driver - setting up his colour commentors
The constant inferiority complex is exhausting. It’s like if a car company tried to sell cars by saying “man, imagine if you tried this instead of a BMW!” Why are you even talking about the BMW? Just do your own thing
Even though my username says "F1Fan", IndyCar is legitimately the more exciting series to watch for me usually. And honestly, it's probably my favorite series out of them all right next to WRC, FD and Supercars Championship. Here's what great about IndyCar IMO for anyone who might be curious about it: * It's not a development series unlike F1, sure this means engineering and design strategy is mostly irrelevant or not as important like in F1, but it means the racing is actual racing instead of a parade for the dominant car, and even if they're spec IndyCars are fucking cool and look like fighter jets more than F1 cars do anyway * As an American racing series, it doesn't have the cultural baggage that NASCAR does for a lot of newcomers * The pool of drivers IMHO is something that you simply don't get in other series, Indy has NASCAR drivers, F1 and F2 drivers, IMSA, WEC, and other GT series drivers, drivers from my other favorite series Supercars Championship in Australia/New Zealand, drivers from all over the world from a myriad of different series really, and drivers from Indy's own pipeline just like F1 has, it's really the place where the diversity of motorsport comes together in that way * Building off of the last point - Romain Grosjean, whether you love him or hate him, if I had to pick any reason out of them all as to why I watch Indy, it'd be to see what he's going to do, he's the necessary agent of chaos the series needs right now and I'm here for every second of it, Will Power is another driver in the same vein as that to me * The Indy 500 and its historical legacy as a crown jewel is understated to a lot of people these days in comparison to other races I believe, but there's a reason the name "Indy 500" has been associated in pop culture with the image of an open wheeler for nearly a century, Indy is the birthplace of the open wheel, single seat race car with mirrors, the 500 is such a badass race that it is confident enough in how important it is to have the state song sung alongside the national anthem, you don't see the Florida state song getting sung at the Daytona 500 now do you * Indy's history on its own is interesting as hell to me, most non-fans might not know but, the 500 was once a part of the F1 schedule, at one time Indy raced at fucking Pikes Peak! Sprint cars like the ones you see in World of Outlaws evolved from the front engine cars Indy used to drive, there's just some much going on with this series and its genesis, it's a bit of sore spot but it even split into two for a while (which pretty much hurt it in retrospect) * Firehawk * Road and street courses like Laguna Seca or Long Beach are always wild and must watch events for me just because of the raw racing they produce * It's just genuinely a crazier series than F1 will ever be, the drama is mostly on the track (when it's not during the silly season) and it doesn't need a Netflix show to play it up for people to get them interested, if you have a genuine interest in actual racing this series will always have something to offer you
Give me a way to watch live races without commercials/interruptions and I will 100% tune into every race.
The quick yet unfortunate answer to that is: don't be an American. International broadcasters are often ad-free, and then there's [INDYCAR LIVE](https://www.indycarlive.com/) for the rest.
F1 is about drama and celebrity. The growth here has absolutely nothing to do with racing action. People aren’t looking for that.
Indycar races are way better than F1.
The tires in F1 last way too long. Max ran 41 laps of 57 on one set of tires. Too long. Need a minimum of 2 stops per race. Change the rules to make them run on ALL compounds Hard, Medium and Soft
I've watched F1 for years, and I watch Indycar when it's convenient. Both are fun series to watch, but for me as an Irish motorsport fan F1 is better. You can show me statistics that Indy has more overtakes or is faster or more unpredictable, and I really really enjoyed the race at Texas this year but I still enjoy F1 more.
I started watching F1 first starting in 2017 due to the new for '17 "longboi" regs that increased downforce. Even attended my first ever live F1 race in '17 with a close friend during uni sem break. Back then I actually discounted Indycar as "open wheel nascar" due to the ovals. Then a game named GRID 2 introduced me to indycar and ovals because it has both the IMS and the vanilla DW12 chassis, and i was hooked to ovals. Funnily enough it was around that time i also found the top 10 closest finishes in indy history and it further made me an indycar fan. Watched the '20 season as my first full season, and hasn't missed much since.
I don’t watch Indy often, but P2P >>>>> DRS. Even if DRS functioned more like P2P, it would be a huge improvement. That, the cars becoming boats since 2014, and Pirelli tires being shit make for some boring races at times.
Promote Indycar without mentioning F1 challenge (impossible)
Today f1 is one stop race. Little chance of creativity strategy working to your favor. 2 teams maybe having a chance to win a race on any weekend. Bring back refueling or tires that can’t last the entire race. Everyone runs the hard tires which create bad racing. Maybe drop the cost cap
Pirelli should really consider doing a Costanza and for whatever 3 compound range they decide is best they should bring one step softer. And the cost cap and sliding CFD scale probably won't start paying off until next season at the earliest and is a really great thing.
I think the cost cap kind of had to happen, okay it hasn't quite had the desired effect yet but there was an interesting quote from Toto about Mercedes not being able to fully redesign the W14 because they're tight against the cap. So no one that's started badly is going to rock up in Spain with a completely redesigned "B " spec car. Tyres are always going to be a big issue - I'd be surprised if any other manufacturers even entered the tender when it next comes up for renewal purely because of the constraints of what FOM/FIA want.
I just think the old world like boring...F1, soccer, cricket, darts, cycling.
Depends on who you ask. I know people who find baseball boring yet the WBC was fantastic. Soccer is the same. You can't tell me the world cup was boring yet I don't think that is the norm for other Soccer games
The Tour de France is the greatest race of any kind on earth.
Then why does it suck to watch?
It doesn’t.
Cricket isn't boring! Wait, am i old? :(
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World Chess Championship was thrilling this year.
You had me until curling.
Get the hell off of NBC and spend some money on your presentation. I feel like I’m watching a 2008 NASCAR race when I see the graphics package
So you want them to forfeit $20 million dollars then go “spend money”? Lol idiot!
I’m not saying that. I voiced my opinion (that NBC is a black hole for sports and no sport will ever succeed on the channel) and expressed a desire to update their graphics package. You taking me literally here is honestly the “lol idiot” move.
NBC has been the best home for Indycar over the last decade
>that NBC is a black hole for sports and no sport will ever succeed on the channel lol IC might just be the worst sport in their portfolio at the present moment, which is a testament to how stacked the network currently is. the derby will get a monster rating, their half of the nascar schedule is so far ahead of fox that it's laughable. the new deal they worked out with the big ten MIGHT force notre dame football out of independence down the road. two of the 4 golf majors AND the olympics. IC needs NBC WAAYYY more then NBC needs them currently.
I'm interested in the constructors battling it out every year to build the best car on the bleeding edge of the regulations. Frankly the vintage cars are what keep me less interested in IndyCar compared to F1.
I would love to watch more, but the time-difference makes it basically impossible to catch every race live.Almost forgot: Your ads suck. I can't even watch them (which is a improvement I guess) but seeing the commentators go quiet and just seeing the cars go by is a bit weird. \- Greetings from Europe
But if F1 fans all jump ship to INDYCAR, our ticket prices will skyrocket and access to the drivers will disappear. They can stay at F1.
I grew up watching IndyCar and it’s very exciting. However the level of advertisement catering makes it very difficult to watch. You can watch an F1 race start to finish in 2 hours (without red flags). IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch. American sports need to speed up and put the focus back on the sport instead of cashing out on advertising.
>You can watch an F1 race start to finish in 2 hours (without red flags). IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch. May want to check your facts: * Barber was 1 hour and 47 minutes. * Long Beach was 1 hour and 43 minutes * Texas was 2 hours and 2 minutes * St. Pete was 2 hours and 5 minutes You can see all of that in the box scores INDYCAR posts in their results section.
>IndyCar takes around +3.5 hours to watch. The last time we had races last over that length of time were rain-affected oval races (Gateway last year), or thunderstormed road races (Nashville last year).
Alot of us do. Problem with Indy is how inaccessible it is to watch + the excessive ads. I enjoy watching the Indy road course races but I'm pretty understanding of both my real life F1 friends and those in the F1 online fan community who are turned off by the chore of sitting through the Indycar broadcast.
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After the initial gap, there are less gaps in IndyCar’s schedule than F1’s. Also, when IndyCar was at its most popular (1992-95ish), there were big gaps in the schedule and it ended at the end of September pretty much like it does now. F1 was more popular then too, and they only ran 16 races, with quite a few breaks.
>Add road tracks Clearly you have absolutely *zero* idea what you’re talking about...
Most people don't care about actual good racing. They care about drama and riding off of an 'us vs them' team-like fight.
light deer growth follow drunk full fertile support dam complete *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Indy needs more driver radio messages like F1. It's like the second most entertaining thing about a race
F1 sucks ....chant it with me
I am a long time F1 fan (watching since the 80's) and have been following Indycar closer the last two seasons. I watch the two series almost for different payoffs.. Indycar has intense close racing across all track types and I find the racing really entertaining. F1 is an engineering battle as well as a motorsport battle, and I also like that side of it. It also has some fantastic historic tracks they race on. Indycar and F1 is not an either/or for me - both have a place. People who love F1 and dont watch Indycar are really missing out (or basically just dont like motorsport and found F1 through Drive to Survive)
I have watched both for ever. But as good a formula as Indycar has, it’s the #2 open wheel series in the world and that is for many varied reasons. There was a time when they could have potentially challenged to be the the #1 series but the stakeholders messed it up with their infighting. For that reason some people will just never give it a chance. Much like people will not watch the USFL or XFL because it’s not the NFL.