It’s F1 weekend in Austin, a weekend which always kind of cracks me up. The American F1 world changes a lot every year, which makes this weekend an annual check-in. What are these dorks up to?
Six years ago, F1 was still a curiosity. Those who traveled for it were diehards, and they had the same air about them as people who go to a concert to see the opener. No, you don’t get it. This rocks. And honestly? I don’t care if you know. They weren’t wrong! The next few years marked a surge in F1 popularity. Drive to Survive debuted. Covid made motorsports briefly more popular. The 2021 season was a classic. We enjoyed getting to know F1.
The problem, of course, is that regular sports returned to their regular routines, and by 2022, those traveling to Austin for F1 races were, well, dorks. Because everything involved in F1 has to be 150% more expensive than is reasonable, all their team apparel was mesh athleisure collared shirts, hybrids between things you wear to golf and things your friend’s dad wears to go biking. Because anyone still closely following F1 in 2022 was either an original diehard (not a lot of those) or a Netflix fan trying to figure out sports (so many of those), a preponderance arose of 34-year-old dudes discussing McLaren in Uber drivers’ backseats.
I’ve been on both sides of the massive underdog conversation, meaning: I’ve been a guest as a fan of a big underdog, and I’ve hosted that underdog’s fans. I’m familiar with Louisiana–Lafayette fans coming to Austin to see the Ragin’ Cajuns play Texas. They know what they’re getting into, and they have a calibrated emotional response. McLaren and Ferrari fans coming to COTA in 2022 also knew what they were getting into, but their response was not calibrated. There was no wryness, no gallows humor about the situation. They weren’t actually there to cheer for Charles Leclerc or Lando Norris. They were there for F1 itself. The thing wasn’t competition. It was convention. A convention for F1 fans. Conversations went like this:
Stuber Driver: You think Norris has a chance on Sunday?
McLaren-adorned man from Ft Lauderdale: No, of course not.
Stuber Driver: Yeah, same. That’s a bummer.
McLaren-adorned man’s friend from West Palm Beach: Why?
They acted like you didn’t understand the sport. I suspected they didn’t understand sports. There’s nothing wrong with an F1 fan—being a fan of most things is great, and we love the diehards, original and new. There’s nothing wrong, even, with being a 34-year-old McLaren bro. But they were weird. They were a weird sort.
By last year, the bros were diluted. I’m guessing the new Las Vegas Grand Prix helped with this, that blessed city of sin serving as a natural pen in which we could imprison these Instagram addicts afflicted with the impression that for the first time in their life, they liked a sport. Some of the shift probably also came from F1 becoming more mainstream. Every additional year ESPN broadcasts Formula 1, more people know what it is, or at least know that it exists. There were more local families at COTA last year than two seasons back. It was a curiosity again, and the concert was again a bigger focus.
What’s happening this weekend? Well, that’s the sad part. I don’t really know yet. Some of you know that on Tuesday, my car wouldn’t start. Well, it wouldn’t start yesterday either. No driving Stuber this weekend for me. I asked my wife to drop me off this morning in the Chili’s Metropolitan Area, and I am going to stay here for the rest of the day and then walk the two and a half miles home. This is UT territory. F1 fans don’t get this far west. Georgia fans aren’t going to get this far north. I am insulated from the joys and terrors of this weekend. Alas.
From what little I can tell, though, my impression of the state of F1 in America is this:
We’re settling into it. Enough American sports fans are familiar with F1 now that we’ve mostly decided whether or not we like it, and how much. We’ve siloed it, the same way we eventually managed to silo soccer and will one day, God willing, silo the culture warriors. Simultaneously, enough non-sports fans know it exists and understand the general concept (fast cars, global, more Adam Driver in that Gucci movie than Will Ferrell as Ricky Bobby) that they can check in once a decade or so, especially here in Austin where it’s a local thing. The weirdos are diluted (and again, shunted off to Vegas and Miami), and the diehards have reclaimed some space, and some of the weirdos figured sports out and are now diehards themselves.
Basically, we’re achieving homeostasis. Nature is doing what nature does. This makes for less friction, fewer brushes with the annoying. It’s all better than it was. Next year, we might not even check in on the status of F1 in America. We might just talk about the race.
Other F1 news:
- They’re getting rid of the fastest lap point next year, which seems dumb on the surface but might be a good sign. If F1 thinks it needs less gimmickry to generate excitement, that theoretically implies the racing itself might be getting less boring.
The weekend schedule:
- Friday, 1:30 PM EDT: Practice (ESPN2)
- Friday, 5:30 PM EDT: Sprint Shootout (ESPN2)
- Saturday, 2:00 PM EDT: Sprint Race (ESPNEWS/ESPN+)
- Saturday, 6:00 PM EDT: Qualifying (ESPNEWS/ESPN+)
- Sunday, 3:00 PM EDT: United States Grand Prix (ABC)
Ferrari’s even closer to Red Bull than Red Bull is to McLaren, so keep an eye out for a second-place shift. The same is true for Charles Leclerc chasing Lando Norris. Leclerc’s closer to Norris than Norris is to Max Verstappen.
Dodgers vs. Yankees, NASCAR Edition
NASCAR and baseball have a lot in common, mostly when it comes to challenges afflicting their presence in the American consciousness. Steering away from those challenges to something more innocuous: They could both use more dynasties right now. Each has only seen one champion repeat in the last eight years, with Joey Logano and the Houston Astros parallel enough to each other that at least a few of you reading this are nodding grimly. It’s been a long time since the Yankees were dominant. It’s been a long time since Jimmie Johnson was dominant.
So, just as the Yankees and Dodgers making their runs is probably helping Major League Baseball, it’s fun to see eight of the biggest current NASCAR figures still alive in the playoffs: Kyle Larson, presently the greatest driver on Earth. Chase Elliott, the golden boy. Denny Hamlin, the veteran and businessman. Joey Logano, the snotty villain mellowed by time. Tyler Reddick, Michael Jordan’s driver. Ryan Blaney, the guy straight out of a Ford commercial. Christopher Bell, the down-to-earth dirt-tracker. William Byron, the sim racer. We complain a lot about NASCAR drivers being too similar to one another, and there’s some of that within this group, but by and large, it’s a good pack.
Who do we want to win, as the series goes to Vegas with four races to go?
As institutionalists, this is what seems best for the sport:
1. Larson
2. Hamlin
3. Reddick
4. Bell
5. Blaney
6. Elliott
7. Logano
8. Byron
For each of the first seven, there’s a compelling reason attached: Larson should be recognized as the greatest in the globe, but NASCAR’s randomness shouldn’t keep holding him back. Hamlin’s lack of a title feels torturous in this era, and him winning a ring would add a fun element to his court case against NASCAR. Reddick and Bell both have the potential to become dominant over this next decade. Blaney or Elliott winning a second title would be an opiate for the masses, with Blaney so good at connecting with fans and Elliott so beloved despite having no interest in connection. Even Logano winning a third would be fun, for the simple reason that no one since Johnson and Tony Stewart’s done it.
What does that mean?
We have nothing against William Byron. But I think we’re cheering against William Byron.
The weekend schedule:
- Friday, 6:35 PM EDT: Xfinity Series Practice (USA)
- Friday, 7:05 PM EDT: Xfinity Series Qualifying (USA)
- Saturday, 4:35 PM EDT: Cup Series Practice (USA)
- Saturday, 5:20 PM EDT: Cup Series Qualifying (USA)
- Saturday, 7:00 PM EDT: Xfinity Series Race – Ambetter Health 302 (CW)
- Sunday, 2:30 PM EDT: Cup Series Race – South Point 400 (NBC)
I checked if 302 is the Las Vegas area code. It isn’t. 302 is Delaware’s area code.
