F1 2022 Season Spoiler Filled Race Talk

Oh, the deep irony of cancelling a race because it's becoming too hard to ignore the host country's provocative politics and human rights issues, and then moving it to Turkey.

That said, from a racing perspective, that track IS pretty sweet (although of the likely options I think Portimao is sweeter still), and logistically it makes a lot of sense for the spot in the season they are trying to fill.

Final results for day 2:

Ferrari and McLaren continue to be looking strong. Fingers crossed, we might have four teams legitimately fighting for podiums on a regular basis.

Check the original post for more details (I'll be updating it a bit more as we approach the first race), but if you live in the US ESPN (or ESPN2) is basically the way to watch through a cable subscription. Otherwise, the F1 app and subscription is the way to go (that's how my wife and I watch).

As Pink Stripes said, we're in the middle of preseason testing right now. The way it works is a bit different every year, but because there's been such a large regulation change between last year and this year, there are two testing sessions. The one happening this week in Barcelona is technically not televised (although you can see a lot of on track footage nonetheless on the official app, the official youtube channel, and via the Sky F1 youtube channel as well).

The second session will be in Bahrain March 9 through 11, and will be fully televised, at least on Sky in England. I don't think ESPN will be broadcasting it here, but I assume it will be on the official app -- I'm pretty sure it was last year?

As Pink Stripes said though, it's a bit dry to watch in any kind of extended fashion, although I very much enjoy watching the various highlight and analysis packages that are produced by the various official sources as well as several fan youtube channels, because it's the start of the drama/story that runs in the background of the on track action throughout the racing season.

Day 3 results:

A lot more reliability issues and other minor chaos today, although nothing that would significantly change impressions. Ferrari and McLaren seem to have had the strongest/cleanest sessions, with Merc and Red Bull looking good too. Alpine, Aston and Alpha Tauri are showing some promise at times, but are having more trouble getting laps done due to reliability and other issues. Alfa Romeo and Haas have had miserable tests, so it's really hard to say where they might be, while Williams has had a clean but mostly anonymous time.

The final best times from all three days of testing:

Heh, true, but also Ferrari and Red Bull never even ran anything softer than a C3 in anger. There's lots being hidden all around.

Alfa Romeo finally showed their new livery over the weekend. Cool throwback script logo!

I bet after watching a season or two of the Netflix show you'll have your answer -- like most sports, there's a very strong personality and narrative driven component to being a fan, and the show does a very good job of establishing that framework in a way that just dipping your toes in on a race weekend does not. And since there are only twenty drivers and ten teams, you will very quickly develop a sense of who the drivers are as individuals both on and off track, and what the character of each team is.

That said, especially the because the first season or two doesn't cover all the teams (the first season didn't have access to Mercedes and Ferrari at all, the two teams that were fighting for the championship in 2018) you won't necessarily get to know everyone right away, but it's still a great place to start.

(There are also certainly places where it takes a bit of dramatic license to create story arcs, perhaps most notably in the way season three will try to paint a picture of rivalry between the McLaren drivers that REALLY stretched reality thin, but still, overall it's about as good a primer for what's fun about the sport as could possibly exist.)

Outside of the Netflix show, the standard broadcasts do a pretty solid job of communicating the bigger picture of who is fighting for what and what the stakes are, although at least during the races they often get a bit too focused on what's happening at the front. One of the other cool things about following the sport is that there is exciting drama all the way up and down the field -- exciting racing action happens in the middle and the back of the pack just as often -- or perhaps more -- than at the front, and for the teams even the difference between last and second to last in the championships can mean millions of dollars in prize and sponsorship money, so every small victory even by the worst team can be thrilling to watch happen live.

Anyway, each of the standard ways of watching the sport will be bookended by pre and post race coverage where you can get interviews and analysis that will help you get to know the drivers and teams. Outside of that, there are various official channels that provide more coverage (ie, on the F1 app and youtube channels), and then once you start to develop and interest in any particular driver or team, many of them have very good social media operations. Not all are created equally, of course, but some are quite good.

For example, one of a number of things that endears the Mercedes team to me is that their official YouTube channel publishes postmortem videos after every race where a rotating selection of their senior technical staff spend ten or twenty minutes answering fan questions and breaking down how the race went for them. Certainly there are times where they play the party line a bit, but much more often they can be surprisingly honest and candid about issues they had and the mistakes they made, and overall they communicate a culture of honesty, transparency, ingenuity, team cohesion and strong work ethic that makes it hard to not like them. As a result, I'm just as much a fan of the nerdy little British dudes building the car and planning the strategy of the team as I am of their driver lineup.

Finally, there is the sponsorship thing, which is kind of just generally uncomfortable. Quite frankly, there is disgusting big money all over the sport. Granted, that's kind of true in nearly every sport, but I suppose in the major American ones you aren't literally staring at it on the jerseys of the players. (Now, if you're a soccer fan...) Certainly, two of my three favorite teams are supported by some very obviously nasty money -- Mercedes has Petronas and Ineos as their primary backers, and McLaren has British American Tobacco (one of the few remaining tobacco sponsors in the sport with Marlboro finally giving up their association with Ferrari) as well as less directly visible investment by all kinds of nasty oil money. Oh, and just as tobacco money is finally fading away, it's being replaced by crypto scams up and down the grid.

So yeah, I don't know man -- everyone's going to have their own personal lines to draw, but to some extent I just try to enjoy what the drivers are doing on track and the work the teams are doing to build the cars behind the scenes as one thing, and worry about the rest separately.

Oh, one last thought on the topic: it can often be quite easy to love the drivers but really not like the team they drive for (and to a lesser extent at times, vice versa).

Sometimes that will be due to the somewhat mercenary nature of how some of the drivers move around; they might land in a team you don't really care about one way or the other -- for example, I love Valtteri Bottas, but he's moving to Alfa Romeo this year, a team I couldn't really care about one way or the other.

Sometimes it will be because you can't stand the politics or personalities of one of the team bosses, or the general ethos of the team, but the drivers just seem like genuinely good, likable dudes, or are just super exciting to watch on track -- Ferrari, for example, is a team that seems a bit backwards and unpleasant in a lot of the ways in which they operate, but I'm a huge fan of both of their drivers.

And sometimes it's all just a big confusing mess, like with Aston.

The core of their team is a scrappy bunch that under previous ownership managed to do impressive things on small budgets, but their new owner is pretty unlikeable and as you noted, he's bringing in some pretty objectionable money with him. Oh, and also he bought the team to secure a driver seat for his son, who seems like a fairly innocuous and pleasant dude who has moments of brilliance on track surrounded by being mostly unremarkable. Granted, there are far worse examples of similar dynamics in the sport right now (see: the Mazepins), but it all leads to a bit of a confusing meh feeling.

But on the bright side, their car is f*cking beautiful and their second driver is Sebastian Vettel, one of the most genuinely good and likable people involved in the sport -- even if maybe his talent is fading at this point?

Anyway, hopefully that helps you start getting a sense of the interesting dynamics that fill the sport all the way up and down the field, and gives you something to look for as you start out.

EDIT:

Yup! Kind of hard to imagine what kind of person wouldn't immediately love Ricciardo. Seems like a genuinely great guy in every possible way.