F1 CEO, Stefano Domenicali rules out tinkering with the rules to derail Max Verstappen and Red Bull despite concerns that domination will turn off viewers, particularly in the US.
Earlier this week, ESPN announced that last weekend's Miami Grand Prix had attracted the largest live television audience in the US on record for F1 as an average of 3.1 million viewers watched Lando Norris capture his first F1 victory.
The race-only viewership between 15:55 and 17:30 ET "shattered the previous F1 record of 2.6 million viewers that was set for the inaugural Miami Grand Prix in 2022". Indeed, viewership was up 48 percent over last year's race, which attracted 2.1 million viewers.
The Miami Grand Prix now has the top three live US television audiences in F1 history, boasted the broadcaster, as viewership during the race peaked at 3.6 million, the audience in the 18-49 demographic averaging 1.3 million.
All well and good, but as we asked recently, why no figures for the opening five races or for much of the second half of last year.
As for Miami, well the figures do look very good... as high as Germany, and one would be forgiven for feeling that Liberty has cracked the US market, until you realise that this race was the first race this year on the equivalent of terrestrial TV (ABC) and, much more importantly, the audience is irrelevant unless we know how many people watched the previous races. If they were all down by 33%, for example, the audience will be well below last year.
We can therefore safely assume that the previous races were well down on last year otherwise ESPN would have announced the audiences for them. Indeed, ESPN is owned by Disney which recently invented its own definition of a common business term (return on investment) in a presentation to investors in order to make it look like it had made more money than it actually had.
Anyway, whatever the truth of the viewing numbers, the great fear is that the continued domination by Red Bull and Max Verstappen will have the newly won over fans switching off in their droves, and with the rules not changing until 2026 there is every likelihood that the Dutchman will continue to reign in 2025 also.
At a time revenue is up 45% for the first quarter alone, the sport is aware that maintaining interest is everything, therefore there have been continued calls from some to amend the regulations in order to close the field, even though some of the recent results suggest this could already be happening.
F1 CEO, Domenicali insists that this is not the way to go.
"I tell you why, because we need to create legends in all sports," he told ESPN, when asked if the sport might intervene. "If you change too many winners, people do not capture the significance of being so strong. And the element of being strong has always been a part of Formula One, it is a cyclical sport when it comes to success.
"In the U.S. you have for many years the same team or same athlete winning and then you have iconic players and iconic teams, so for that I don't think it is negative," he added. "For sure, if you ask me my personal opinion I would like to have exciting action on the track, and this is happening. For now, Max is the strongest with the best car, for sure, but I am not so worried about it because it is part of the nature of the sport.
"This is what we cannot have," he insisted, in reaction to being asked if the sport might consider handicapping Red Bull, "we are not WWE!
"With a lot of respect to WWE, our fights on the track have to be real," he continued. "And what we have to make sure is that around this we have the right entertainment platform to create the right vibes for what we are doing, but on the track we want to be real. That's for sure."
Domenicali remains confident of F1's success in the US, which he believes will be further boosted by the forthcoming Brad Pitt movie.
"Of course, what happened with Liberty coming in, there was a change of approach in general in the sport. Considering the racing itself, which is of course the centre of our product, but with the objective to try to communicate with everyone using a different form of communication.
"That's why we opened up our social media, that's why there was a project within our marketing group to discuss in a different way the values of Formula One, and that's the reason why there was a project like Drive to Survive, which contributed for sure to getting in the public domain at a different level.
"That's why we have continued this... that's why we are doing other projects like the movie with Apple, with a big Hollywood producer and director, because we think that is the only way to capture the attention of market, not only from a sporting point of view, but in general, they are very focused on their products.
"So the fact that we were able to move from only one grand prix that was in Austin four years ago to three grands prix today, all full and with great success, means that we have achieved the first step of our growth in the U.S. in terms of increasing awareness. But America is huge. As a potential growth there is a lot of space for us to keep working and that is why we don't want to stop.
"I really hope the growth (in the US) will continue, and this is our objective," he said. "It is not only the US, the world is our objective. Of course, the US will represent for us a big possibility to grow in terms of the quality of what we can offer, and I do believe that the potential to be here in five years time together and see the next step of our growth will happen.
"There are a lot of elements that we still need to tackle because we didn't have the time or we didn't have the resources, which would lead us to that growth."
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