I watch it because I drive/drove race cars. I love auto-racing. I love the noise, the personalities, and most importantly the cars.
I can't answer your question, really. If there isn't any draw to watch it, you probably just don't enjoy it. No shame in that.
I don't really understand why people watch football/basketball/soccer; but I understand why I don't get it -- I have no interest in the sports.
My father watches the Tour de France every year. He was an extremely in-depth established cyclist for years and years.
When I watch the Tour with him, I fall asleep. He falls asleep if I put him through auto-racing.
I think it's the same kind of thing.
If it's any consolation : your problem is a widespread one. The FIA is trying to make it more spectator-interesting next year by establishing a big wall of rule changes.
I don't know why I watch the every single race. I got into it because I liked the engine noise. I happened to see young Kimi Raikkonen getting into the McLaren car. That was a nice story to follow. I started to pickup other stories. Newey moving to Red Bull, rule changes, Alonso moving to Ferrari, Vettel moving to Ferrari and here I am.
At first, it is just cars trying to be faster than the other which can be quite boring for 305km. But, when my father-in-law starts talking about the different strategies and choices being made, it puts a lot more color to what is happening. For instance, which tires to use (they have different types), when to do pit stops, how hard to push during different segments of the race, when to overtake, etc. Also, throw in some driver/team drama in the mix and you have some interesting meta game going on.
Similarly in basketball, it is just a bunch of people running up and down the court trying to get the ball in the hoop more than the other team. Kind of boring. However, the strategies, plays and player personalities/drama that get you to the end result make it more interesting. When to full court press, when should a foul be made, when to rotate players, etc.
It gets much more interesting once the rules/strategies are clear. In F1, I think it takes a little longer to get to that point because sometimes the action can be spread out over a longer period. It is interesting to see what choices are being made in different situations.
It also doesn’t help that one team currently has the best car by a very significant margin. They also have the best driver, and the two teams that were closest to them have fallen further behind this season (one significantly further behind).
The midfield battles are actually still quite exciting though. Those cars are a lot closer together in terms of performance, and if anything happens to one of the top 3 drivers, you can see somebody fighting for a potentially career first podium. Which is why the TV coverage will barely cover the front of the pack in most races, because the front 3 cars typically spend the whole race driving at the end of each other dirty air without fighting each other at all.
This post is very highly subjective though. This year you have LeClerc making the Ferrari (which is widely regarded as a very bad car at the moment) actually look good, and his team mate (4 time world champion Sebastian Vettel) is making it look terrible. It’s been the same story at Red Bull with Verstappen and all of his recent team mates. You’ve also got the best and worst team running the same engine.
As a side note, Kimi is currently driving one of the worst cars on the grid, so you probably wouldn’t expect much excitement from him.
It's either about childhood memories of seeing it, remembering your friends that are far away, or having deep technical knowledge about the cars or something like that.
I used to think I didn't really like sports until I started going to bars to see Starcraft II matches. I still have good memories about it and my friends back then.
And sure, some sports have more action than others, but at the end of the day, people have feelings and sports can deeply affect people. That's not a very logical answer, but I hope others can vouch that it sorta makes sense.
It provides a view that normal TV doesn’t give you, but will have you watch the regular TV broadcast of races with very different eyes.
The Economist had an excellent article about the NFL's structure, and how it operates like a cartel, pressuring cities with varies financial threats and incentives.
https://www.economist.com/business/2006/04/27/in-a-league-of...
If you let yourself go into the fiction of sports teams, and don't think about it too much, you can have very strong (and hopefully positive) emotional experiences.
> all teams are owned by the same business What do you mean? Each team has a different owner.
> So for example the San Francisco 49ers have very little to do with San Francisco, except for the name' In many geographical regions, you grow up watching the team that is closest in proximity. e.g. I grew up in rural western New York State and I grew up watching the Buffalo Bills because they were the closest franchise despite being 100 miles away.
The name is just a semantic. Would you be happier if the 49ers were called the "Northern California 49ers"?
Overtaking is particularly exciting but there is less of it now, because being behind another car means turbulence and modern cars are too aerodynamically sensitive. Also, nowadays a few big teams dominate and there is no hope for the underdog.
Even now, though, playing a racing game will make it clear how difficult it is to drive these cars and that makes the boring parts of the race more compelling to watch.
Sort of like how I watch Cricket actually
I once spent 5 days watching a test match at the basin reserve in Wellington, fueled with plenty of beer.
From day 4 it was obvious the match was heading for a draw and so it did.
- It's televised Sunday mornings (at least here in America), and it's way more interesting than anything else on at that time.
- It's a soap opera/drama, but socially acceptable for men to watch. You've got all the classic story tropes there (intra-/inter-team rivalries, underdog/favorite, hotshot newcomer/grizzled veteran, rich vs poor, etc.)
- People are inherently intrigued by man + machine collaborations, kids too. I didn't appreciate this until I hung around my friends' kids, and saw their amazement at any moving vehicle. Then I remembered, yes, I was once one of those kids.
With that said, I think F1 as a motorsport is pretty boring.
- If you're in it for the racing, I'd rather watch Indycar, which has the same or better racing with open-wheeled cars at 1/10th the price.
- If you're in it to see car technology translate to your road car, probably should watch a GT series instead.
- If you're in it for the technological innovation, none of those things get shared to viewers. As a data person, I would love to see how the sausage gets made, like how they translate learnings from the simulator to the real track, or the the trial & error in tweaking their aero or engine configs, CFD, etc. But for obvious sporting reasons, they can't. Like you can notice that Mclaren's nose is different, you just don't know why. Knowing why is the more interesting part IMO.
Many of that changes to the F1 rules in the last 10-15 have been an attempt to create more overtaking and "drama", but unfortunately as you said it hasn't really worked out that way.
More often than not races are won with good strategy and pit stops, not overtaking or interesting battles on the track.
Dad and I used to watch it a lot back around the late 90s/early 00s. These days I watch zero.
You see things differently when you know how they work.
The cars largely determine the success of the endeavor. It's often that following qualifying, the grid is composed of team cars side-by-side for at least the first few rows. There are exceptional drivers who break the pattern and all but carry the car around on their back like Verstappen and Leclerc.
The car technology is genuinely fascinating to me, but I'm a gearhead anyway.
But it is not like you can't appreciate other drivers. See the magnitude of difference in result that Verstappen is able to add. I think he is probably the best driver right now in F1.
You can increase your ability to empathize with the athletes by playing the sport. I couldn't have cared less about the NBA until I started playing pick up.
I still don't watch sports though. There are usually better things to do.
Some reasons are more personal than others but here's my take (although I haven't been watching in the past 3 years):
1. Nostalgia, I used to watch F1 every race as a kid with my dad (we never had sports pay tv, and F1 was broadcasted free as opposed to soccer [I'm european]); we used to watch Moto GP too for that same reason and this are the only 2 motorsport I actually would still watch, I don't really have interest in any other, so this might be the most important factor.
2. races used to be more exciting, objectively: a combo of less technical/financial differences between teams, less safety rules, old school tracks (that seem to be better suited for overtakes for some reason) made it so that more drivers were able to compete for each specific position. Financial standing of a certain team is nowadays the number 1 predictor of success. Give today's mercedes to most drivers that can be called F1 drivers with a straight face and after getting to know the car they are going to do well, even compete with Hamilton. Same thing was probably true with Schumacher once he got to Ferrari (that was my nostalgia time, so it hurts to say): yes he was exceptional but 80% was the car (and arguably his ability to communicate what he/it needed to the engineers), 10% his instinct on setup/aerodynamic, 10% him being truly unique (at the time) on wet conditions.
3. pit stops, used to be more exciting (and dangerous with fuel refill) I suppose but I think it still brings a sparkle to the race, strategy and actual timing of the stops are a big moment that can make or break a driver race
4. one race is not a good measure for determining the overall excitement for the season: first of all there are better races and worse races; then overall there is some excitement from how much risk taking and calculation are involved in a race depending of current championship standings. Also, if you are so inclined there is drama in between races (usually not into that personally)
5. last, you said you followed Raikonnen: if you literally just watched 1 driver (not sure if it's possible, but I think so) by setting the camera only on his car, I'm sure you were doomed to boredom, the "race as a whole" is at least a bit fun on every race, but the race of a single driver? probably booooring: 2 hours and unless the driver somehow is fighting all the times (good car but classified last somehow?) there's going to be a lot of nothing going on.
Also races with mixed weather are very unpredictable and add a huge variable, making for usually awesome races in my opinion. Unfortunately they don't happen very often.