One of the commentators likes to yse this line: the only things that are interchangeable between the top 3 teams’ cars are brake lights and tyres. Yet week in week out they are separated by less than 0,3 seconds to the finish line. The teams have gone through a great filter that makes the barrier of entry pretty limited, but there definitely is a place for the engineering battle side of F1.

One of the things I think is really neat about F1, and which doesn't show up in any other sports that I'm aware of aside from other types of motor racing, is that F1 isn't one competition - it's two separate competitions running in parallel.

The first competition is the obvious one: The drivers all want to be the fastest driver and get the most points in the driver's championship. The second competition is similarly obvious: The constructors all want to have built the fastest car, and get the most points in the constructor's championship.

But crucially, these two competitions can't exist without each other! The drivers can't be fast if they have a good car, and the best cars won't be fast unless there's a driver who really understands how to wring the most performance out of it sitting behind the wheel. So there's this constant (and in my opinion, fascinating) tension where the constructors are trying to build a) fast cars, but also b) cars that their current drivers can effectively use and the drivers are trying to a) drive the car fast but also b) find the constructor who will build a car that can go fast and is suited to their driving style.

In other sports there's some amount of equipment preference (e.g. different golfers have different brands of clubs, different tennis players might use different brands of rackets or different shoes), but the equipment manufacturers aren't literally competing with other manufacturers - they're just trying to supply an industry.

So if you give everybody the same car, then yes - it becomes a transparent display of driver skill, but that doesn't necessarily make the race better, because now you've lost half of the competition. F1 (and motor racing) history is full of bits where somebody managed to figure out something neat about aerodynamics, stuck a new part on their car, and then _lied to everybody else about what it was_ so that nobody would be able to figure out why their car had gotten so fast; the ground effect lotus '78 comes to mind, as does the discovery of the gurney flap.

Why? There are other sports for that. F1 is cool because it's multidimensional and a proper team sport in many regards.

People building the car, supporting the race, strategy, supporting the teams building the cars, the drivers, etc.

Some teams have over 1000 people behind them and you can see weaknesses and strengths in those teams across a number of areas.

You seem to see it as an individual sport, drivers fighting each other.

It is, in fact, a team sport. Man + Machine + Engineers!

A friend living in the USA told me many years ago: in the USA companies compete to the death and sport is managed with a kind of non aggression pact. In Europe it's the opposite. Sport is where you outspend and destroy the opponents and work is where you get along with the others.

And more to the point. As Italian I can't care less about the drivers. All I want to see is Ferrari winning. Who drives it is an implementation detail, human, AI, remote control, it's the same.

Each car has a very different setup for each driver, and may well be designed differently for the drivers the teams have - who may have quite different driving styles and preferences. Being able to optimize both together is quite important for the series.

I understand the feeling. And many seasons a pretty boring because one car is just so dominating that it's a walk in the park for the driver to get the championship.

But when teams get closer on performance, there's some aspects that are particular to it, like one car adapts better to a kind of circuit than the other, and this makes the championship swing for one side or the other.

There's a kind of charming on not having this general equilibrium (that we see in many American sports). It much like La Liga or Premier League, where you have always 2-3 front-runners and the rest seems just acting in a supporting role.

TBH, I suspect a lot of us here would be more excited by using the same AI robot drivers but different engineering teams building the cars.

Why would a battle bewteen drivers be more entertaining than a battle between drivers+makers?

that's the IndyCar

It's a battle between engineers + a driver + a pit crew + other drivers

If you want to "get it" go to the F1 subreddit, if you like data analysis you'll like it.

The drivers are the side show, it's a battle between constructors.

do you "get" BattleBots? Teams build a robot, and then they compete in a combat arena against other teams' robots.

The design and build and strategy are as important as the person controlling the robot.