Saying āWhat does the driver do best? Drivingā as an argument to silence drivers in the age of Drive to Survive, in the age of YouTube and TikTok videos, in the age of Twitter, in the age of basically every single team having their own app may be one of the most uninformed statements one can make
Even if we exclude the already way too few things drivers do to use the platform they have, F1 is a rich people sport - both in term of drivers AND (thanks to Liberty Media with the decreasing accessibility of the sport for viewers both on and off track) the fans - so showing that these men are more than just good drivers is literally what F1 needs to survive AS A SPORT
FFS, the whole point of Drive to Survive is to attract new viewers by showing that F1 is more than just a bunch of rich men driving in circles, that these rich men have a personality and we should CARE who wins and who loses and that every race is a story
Literally how can you misunderstand your own marketing this badly???
W Series (while always kind of a half cooked idea, yes, I know) couldnāt finish its last season and doesnāt know if it will be able to start this season because of lack of sponsors
Formula E is currently struggling to attract sponsors because itās becoming less and less accessible, because it doesnāt do enough marketing, because despite having an amazing concept with VERY likable drivers who burn for the sport NON of the team invest in well done multi platform marketing - which is what you NEED in this day and age to survive as a sport, as a brand
and now the president of the FIA wants to stand there and tell us that race car driving is only about driving? Omg. Oh. My. Fucking. God.
Honestly, I feel like F1 is becoming a victim of its own success.
They literally sold out their old fashioned values (rightly!) in order to grow their brand. They brought in cameras to capitalise on their petty behind the scenes dramas, they built their drivers up into ācharactersā and embraced their personalities, literally encouraged them to show them off, they embraced social media, they actually followed other sports lead in making time and space for the grid to make a politic statement on issues they felt strongly about (albeit poorly and clumsily executed).
But change makes their old straight white male demographic uncomfortable, and rather than embracing their new following and understanding how they achieved it, instead theyāre rushing to undo all the small steps they took towards modernising and growing in order to appease the old guard.
