From the Editor
I’ve loved racing my whole life. Grudge racing, road racing, anything with a starting line.
I’m a driver person first. I’ve covered races for magazines I didn’t work for, and then for Backfire News. I posted so much racing there that I accidentally turned a car news site into a motorsports site. So I quietly launched Backfire Racing, mostly to give Backfire News its dignity back.
Somewhere along the way, I became the thing I used to roll my eyes at: a spectator. I can sit in the stands now and just enjoy it. I don’t feel FOMO about not being in the car, and I don’t panic about not having a press pass. It’s very peaceful. I hate it a little.
But the longer I sit on this side of the fence, the more one thing drives me crazy. There’s a disconnect between the promoters and sanctioning bodies on one side and the fans on the other, even the hardcore fans. Racing acts like a secret club, as if letting too many normal people in would slaughter the sacred cow.
I get it. But if you want racing to still exist in twenty years, you have to let it get popular. That’s how everything works.
My crystal ball, and the paywall
After COTA last year, I said F1 was about to become massive in America. For a minute, I looked like a genius. ESPN’s final F1 season averaged 1.32 million viewers a race, up 20% from 2024 and the best in the sport’s U.S. TV history. Austin sold out, with attendance estimated at more than 400,000.
Then F1 moved to Apple TV.
TV-data company Samba TV found fewer U.S. homes watched eight of the first nine races this year. Miami was down 68% and Monaco was down 66%. Either my crystal ball was broken, or somebody put it behind a paywall.
To be fair, F1 CEO Derek Chang told investors that total U.S. hours watched are up 13%. Samba also only measures smart TVs, so it misses anyone watching on Apple hardware, like an iPhone at their desk. That’s most of you. You’re at work right now. I know.
The Apple deal was the right call
I think the Apple TV deal was brilliant. Apple is reportedly paying around $140 million a year, compared with roughly $90 million from ESPN. For $12.99 a month, you get every race plus F1 TV Premium at no extra cost. And 30% of this year’s F1 viewers hadn’t used Apple TV in the second half of 2025. Those are new people, and new people are the whole point.
Most of the complaints come from people who’ve watched on cable since the Clinton administration and don’t want to download an app. I love you. Download the app.
Then there’s Mercedes
Kimi Antonelli leads his teammate George Russell by 102 points with six rounds left. Two teammates are fighting for a world title, which is the best storyline F1 has had in years. Antonelli could clinch it as soon as next weekend in Austin, if the results fall his way.
Russell has a grid penalty coming for another power unit, and he says Mercedes is likely to take it in Las Vegas. Credit where it’s due: that spares Austin. But Vegas is also America. One of the two drivers in the title fight could start from the back at the race built entirely around American spectacle.
I understand it’s strategy, and I understand engines. It’s still bonkers. If you want Americans to care, give them a fight on American soil, not a math problem.
America matters, whether the world likes it or not
Yes, I know America isn’t the center of the racing universe. Europe has made that very clear, repeatedly. It should be anyway.
We have three F1 races and American teams on the grid. Austin’s promoter says this year is on pace for another record. We love cars. We buy tickets and merch, and we pay for streaming services we forget to cancel.
We are the ideal customer. Act like it.
Rally is coming, and rally has a problem
The World Rally Championship is coming back to America. Rally US runs August 26–29, 2027, out of Knoxville, Tennessee, on gravel stages through Tennessee and Kentucky. It will be the first WRC round in the U.S. since the 1988 Olympus Rally.
I knew something was coming when Red Bull put me in a Toyota with a former two-time world champion a few weeks ago. Totally normal Tuesday. Great move. Love it.
But rally is one of the least spectator-friendly sports on earth. You hike into the woods and stand there for an hour. A car goes by for four seconds, and then you go home. I love it. My non-car friends would rather die. That’s the whole fandom problem in one sentence.
Somebody has to build the bridge
My generation and older will still sit down and watch a full race on TV, and we have the attention span for the whole broadcast. We also watch YouTube when we’re supposed to be working.
Gen Z and younger don’t watch that way. They want the result, the clip, the crash, the radio message. They don’t want the journey. They want the screenshot of the journey. I can say that because no Gen Z reader made it this far. Hi, millennials.
That’s still the future of racing. If the future is clipped shorts and real-time results, fine. But somebody has to build the bridge.
Right now, I’m trying to tell readers how to watch GT World Challenge Europe’s season finale at Portimão this weekend. Max Verstappen is in a Mercedes GT3 for it. In the U.S., the answer is YouTube.
That’s the whole broadcast plan. To be fair, it’s free and it’s live, which is great. The American series gets one-hour highlight shows on FS1. So young people get YouTube, cable people get a recap, and nobody gets told it’s happening. Cool marketing. I guess I’ll find out how it goes.
So
Is this a weird generational bridge we have to cross? Yes. Racing can build it, or it can keep standing on its own side guarding the sacred cow, wondering why the stands are getting older.
I read the fine print, and I’d really like this sport to still be around when I’m too old to drive. For the record, that’s never.
— Elizabeth, Editor
About the Author
