For the longest time, my appreciation for motorsport was through the perspective of video games – I’ve played plenty of racing games, from Gran Turismo and Rad Racer, and enjoyed them immensely. However, when it came to watching motorsport on TV – I never got into it. This past year, out of a desire to get caught up with some former Giant Bomb people (like Drew Scanlon), I started watching the Shift+F1 Podcast and watching more car races as they’ve been available, and want to give my thoughts on some of what I’ve watched.
NASCAR
To be blunt, NASCAR killed a lot of my interest in seeing speedy race cars go around a track back when I was a kid, and as an older adult – it still does nothing. I think the core issue is that NASCAR has the core defect that the drivers are generally turning in the same direction. It’s not that there isn’t strategy, but it doesn’t feel noticeable the same way that it does in the other sports I’ve given a try and eventually gotten into over the past year.
Verdict: Still not interested.
Formula E
Formula E is one of the two major race circuits to come to Oregon over the past year (the other I’ll get to in a minute) – and on the one hand it looked neat to watch, but on the other the particular way that they include a “speed boost” into racing (particularly compared to DRS in Formula 1) felt a little too contrived, like they were trying to stick a little bit of cart racer into motorsport. The presentation wasn’t exactly helpful either.
All of this was also kind of aggravated by the fact that actually watching Formula E was hard to do – in the sense of finding someplace to legally watch it. The first time I tried watching a race I had to (ahem) “sail the sea of stars”) and the second time it was available on streaming on Peacock, but it didn’t do a great job of presenting how things stood in the season so far.
Verdict: If ESPN+ and, say, Sky Sports picked this up, I’d give this a watch.
IndyCar
IndyCar was the other one which made it to Portland this year, and while I was better able to watch the race – and I might give it another try next year, the presentation was pretty dire. The way the presentation was structured was that racers that were under a common team had a common typeface for their number, but didn’t otherwise have any logos to let me tell at a glance that they’re with McLaren or Andretti Racing, or what have you.
This was also aggravated by some of the more… obnoxious elements of NASCAR slipping their way into the presentation – the sponsor of the race giving an extended sales pitch before waving the checkered flag, a tedious pre-race prayer, etc. I don’t mind the racers having a pre-race prayer on their own before the race, but making a big spectacle of it is – putting aside the content of the prayer or the intrusion of religion on so many aspects of sport in the US – just kinda boring.
That combined with an excessive amount of commercials made for a situation where this was just dull to watch, especially since I was jumping in mid-season, and hadn’t had an opportunity to find a team I liked yet, so instead was going for teams with names attached to them that I recognized (like Andretti Racing). I might try again next year to see if that helps.
Verdict: I’ll try again next year, but otherwise this needs a real presentation overhaul.
Formula 1
Oh this. This was a breath of fresh air. Watching this on ESPN+ had limited ad intrusions. The presentation was clear and did a great job showcasing both the track and the racers positions on them. I could tell clearly tell who was on what team, I could tell how things would shake out in terms of who was in the points. Certainly having the Shift+F1 podcast collecting race information and news helped, but I didn’t need that necessarily to enjoy the race, outside of their start of season rules primer.
Verdict: I think I’ve gone F1 Sicko.
So, that’s where my current motorsport experiment stands. If you have some recommendations for other avenues to watch speedy racecars or motorcycles in the next season (particularly if they have some of their races on ESPN+, Peacock, Amazon Prime, or a similar streaming service that doesn’t require me spend $100/month on a cable package), let me know.
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