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At the kart track in Migliaro, the Barbi family kept an autograph from the years when Andrea Kimi Antonelli still needed help deciding what to write. Nicola Barbi, whose father, Mario, built the circuit, remembers the boy turning to his father. “Dad, what should I write?” He settled on a short message addressed to the track itself, affectionate and careful. He had been coming there since he was seven.

After he reached Formula 1, he kept returning. Barbi told the story to La Nuova Ferrara once Antonelli had won his first Grand Prix.

Today, the same driver is twenty years old, and he goes into the United States Grand Prix with his first chance to clinch the title.

The championship math is simple: If he wins in Austin, and George Russell finishes ninth or lower, and Lewis Hamilton finishes fifth or lower, Andrea Kimi Antonelli becomes Formula 1’s youngest world champion. Sebastian Vettel was twenty-three when he set the mark that still stands. The last driver’s champion to race under the Italian flag was Alberto Ascari, in 1953.

Antonelli was born in Bologna on 25 August 2006 and grew up in Casalecchio di Reno. Racing was already coded in his DNA. His father, Marco, competed and later ran Antonelli Motorsport. His grandfather, Giordano, ran a workshop at Croce di Casalecchio. Regional Rai reporters followed the child’s first steps in karting back to that workshop.

At two, he sat in a kart and found he couldn't reach the pedal. Around five, he drove alone for the first time at Forlì, in a small kart called Delfino. In his own telling, it was very, very slow. On weekends they watched Formula 1 at home. On other weekends they went to circuits because Marco worked there.

Kimi’s interest grew.

By seven, he had also learned that Formula 1 kept its youngest visitors outside the paddock. At Hockenheim in 2014, while Marco raced in the Porsche Supercup, his father hid him inside a stack of tires and wheeled the stack in on a trolley. Years later, Antonelli described the hour he spent looking around once a friend of his father’s found him a proper pass.

Gwen Lagrue, then leading Mercedes’ young-driver program, first watched him in 2017. Antonelli was not winning every race. Lagrue watched how the boy treated his equipment and how he behaved after a bad race. The first agreement came in 2018. He joined the junior program in April 2019, at 12. Even after the results arrived, Lagrue kept handling questions unrelated to lap time. Antonelli liked to please people. He still needed to learn the moment to stop. “Sometimes we need to teach him to say no,” Lagrue said.

In Emilia-Romagna, racing is also a way of making a living. Ferrari, Lamborghini, Ducati, and Dallara are factories and employers, and people travel to see them. The region calls itself Motor Valley and invites visitors into that history.

At the Dallara Academy in Varano de’ Melegari, university students spend a year learning to design racing cars. Giordano’s workshop and Marco’s team operated at a different scale inside the same working landscape. A child could watch adults earn a living doing what he wanted. He lived roughly half an hour from Imola. When Formula 1 returned there in 2025, he brought his school class into the paddock.

The path from that landscape to a Formula 1 championship still crossed borders. Mercedes invested. PREMA took him through the junior categories. In 2022, he won the Italian and German Formula 4 titles. In 2023, he won Formula Regional championships in the Middle East and Europe. He moved straight into Formula 2 in 2024, skipping the FIA Formula 3 championship, and won at Silverstone and Budapest. Mercedes selected him to replace Lewis Hamilton.

In his first official Formula 1 practice session, at Monza in August 2024, he crashed. He had been eighteen for five days. He said the impact was around 52g. He apologized to the team and to Russell, whose car he had been driving, and said he had pushed too hard for the conditions. Through stretches of his first full season, the confidence he had carried from the junior categories left him.

In a Sportweek interview before this season, he described losing his feel for the car and starting to doubt himself. “Ho pianto tanto,” he said. I cried a lot. He wondered whether he could manage the environment. The team helped him recover. By the time he told the story, he could treat the months as something that had made him better. While they were happening, he had no sense of how quickly the picture would change.

In June 2025, he finished third in Canada, his first podium, then returned to studying for his final exams. Mercedes let him take the trophy home. He set it in the living room and walked past it every day. His mother Veronica had wanted him to finish school. He did, at the Gaetano Salvemini technical institute in Casalecchio.

Alessandra Regina, his business-economics teacher, later remembered a morning when he arrived straight from the airport after a race. His classmates were taking a test. He asked her to explain the material he had missed. When she first asked the class to introduce themselves, he said he wanted to bring Italy back to the top in Formula 1. He had already begun to carry some of that weight.

Italy opened the World Championship with little reason to expect a long absence. Nino Farina won Alfa Romeo’s first title in 1950. Alberto Ascari won for Ferrari in 1952 and 1953. Italians took three of the first four championships. Italian-American Mario Andretti, born in Montona when it still belonged to Italy, became world champion in 1978, albeit for the United States. Michele Alboreto led the 1985 championship after nine rounds before a run of mechanical failures ended the challenge. Riccardo Patrese finished second in 1992, the year Nigel Mansell dominated. Jarno Trulli won Monaco in 2004. Giancarlo Fisichella won in Malaysia on 19 March 2006. Antonelli was born that August. When Antonelli won in China this March, Fisichella noted that the new winner had not yet been born when Fisichella himself last won. Nearly twenty years separated the two.

Italian motorsport produced other successes across those years. Ferrari gave its supporters championships, victories and drivers they loved. The Italian anthem still played for the constructor. For many fans Maranello remained a place to belong every Sunday, even in seasons when an Italian driver was unlikely to win. Before this year’s Italian Grand Prix, ANSA described a father and son walking through the park at Monza in Ferrari shirts and Mercedes caps. Two days later Antonelli won from nineteenth on the grid. At the same circuit where his first practice session had ended against the barriers, he became the first Italian driver to win the Italian Grand Prix since Ludovico Scarfiotti in 1966. Ferrari supporters stood beneath a Mercedes-led podium.

Giusto Ferronato, writing for Gazzetta, spoke to Dario, a 20-year-old from Rome, at his first Grand Prix with his father, Fabrizio. Both wore Ferrari gear. Dario had found someone his own age to follow. He had felt Antonelli’s victory as strongly as a Ferrari win. Asked whether he might buy a Mercedes shirt, he drew a line. He could manage a cap, he said.

After his first home Grand Prix at Imola in 2025, Antonelli returned to the kart track at Fiscaglia. Rai showed him helping another driver whose kart had broken down. He was back among people doing the ordinary work he had done for years. For Motor Valley, a champion from Casalecchio would put a familiar face on a place more often defined by the machines it builds. The teachers and kart-track owners who have celebrated him watched the change up close. They can recognize pieces of their own lives in his, even as his carries him farther away.

He arrives in Austin with eight victories and fourteen podiums from seventeen Grands Prix, a season that has made the title possible in only his second year. He still has to secure it. The exact combination needed today may push the championship to Mexico or Vegas.

On Thursday he said he and his engineer, Peter Bonnington, had agreed to “just have fun.” He also said the job was unfinished.

In May 2024, before his son had raced in Formula 1, Fanpage asked Marco Antonelli whether he felt prouder when people called his son a fantastic driver or a wonderful person. “Without any doubt,” he said, “when they tell me he’s a wonderful person.”

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. Find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Apple sold advertising inside its first season of Formula 1 on Apple TV, and American Express and Ford bought in. Apple Ads VP Todd Teresi told The Hollywood Reporter that F1 is growing Apple’s ad-spend share. He added that the company is starting to sell season two.

Apple TV has no ad tier, and Apple limits ads to live sports like F1 and MLS. Brands appear within the race coverage and programming. Teresi said they are “present and can be felt inside the race,” without getting in the way of fans following their teams.

Apple also built the sale around F1’s existing sponsors. Brands already on the cars and team kit got a second way to reach the same fans, this time through the broadcaster.

Apple points to its own proof. Brand lift studies commissioned by Apple and its advertisers showed gains in familiarity, favorability, and purchase intent for F1 sponsors, beating overall U.S. connected TV benchmarks, according to Teresi. Neither Apple nor the brands disclosed what they paid.

Ford Racing GM Will Ford said Apple TV is helping Ford reach new audiences and that the company is “already seeing stronger awareness of Ford Racing.” Jill Hamilton, VP of global media at American Express, said advertising in F1 on Apple TV lets AmEx show the value of membership, from presale tickets to AmEx Travel to race-day perks.

F1 viewers have a higher median income than NFL or NBA audiences, which still bring in premium brands. Eddy Cue, who runs Apple’s services business, told me last month that F1 viewership on Apple TV is up double digits from ESPN’s last season. ESPN averaged 1.3 million viewers in that final season.

Right now, the limitation comes from audience size. Apple monetizes F1 “really well” and charges industry-leading rates, “but it’s a much smaller, U.S-only audience”

That line is the case for going global. I’ve argued Apple should take F1 in Germany when Sky’s deal ends after 2027. Cue told me last month in New York that he hopes Apple can “grow into other areas and markets.” An ad product that already works for AmEx and Ford in one country gets more valuable with every market Apple adds. AmEx and Ford already both sell well beyond the U.S.

Apple is also investing in the viewing experience. It brought Dolby Atmos to F1 on Apple TV starting with this weekend’s race.

F1 is also selling its own fan base to advertisers. On the same day as the THR interview, F1 and Consumable launched the F1 Audio Network in the U.S., with sound-on ads across mobile apps.

Will Apple add categories beyond AmEx and Ford, or will it sell more of the same race to the same two brands?

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. Find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Christian Horner says he isn’t rushing to return to Formula 1. He has no team in mind. At the end of our conversation at Autosport Business Exchange New York on October 21, I asked what the top of the mountain looks like for him now; Horner said he doesn’t know where it is or how high it is, and called that uncertainty exciting.

That was the line I kept coming back to. Horner knows what drives him. He just hasn’t picked the next thing to drive toward.

I began by asking why he was hungry. “I’m a competitive kind of person. I enjoy competition, always have done,” he said. Winning got him out of bed in the morning; he thinks the instinct is nature, not nurture, and that passion has to burn within.

There is still fire there.

What has Christian Horner said about returning to Formula 1?

When I asked whether a particular team had his interest, Horner said no. He is taking time and feels fortunate that he doesn’t have to rush. It was a simple answer, without a hint of a timetable.

He told me he’s loved his time in Formula 1 and the people he’s worked with, but he also knows what the job would ask of him: time away from family and a schedule he called brutal. If he returns, it has to be for a project and the people around it. “I don’t want to go back just to take part,” he said.

I heard no nostalgia in that answer, and no need to fill the empty space with a prediction. He can be proud of the years he’s put into Red Bull and still take his time over what comes next. The calendar will keep moving. His decision doesn’t have to match its pace.

We also talked about his book, Drive. Fitting just over 50 years into roughly 400 pages meant cutting stories; when I asked what didn’t make it, he joked, “100% of them.” He could have written a book about the 2021 season alone, and his wife suggested opening on that year’s starting grid. I told him to sell this book and the next one. He laughed: “I was only saying.”

The book reaches back across a career. His answer about the mountain left the future unwritten.

Why is Christian Horner taking time away from F1?

Horner has been using the pause to look at other sports. He went to a MotoGP race and Formula E in Monaco, and told me he’s enjoyed learning how other sports work. He is also doing work with Oakley Capital, owner of GB1, the British America’s Cup team. Reuters reported in May that Horner was advising Oakley on premium sports investments, giving him a view of the sports business beyond the F1 paddock.

There’s a difference between being away from the paddock and stepping away from competition. Horner is still close to sport; his time is simply spread across different rooms, different rules, different audiences. He didn’t describe Oakley as a bridge back to a particular team. He said he is interested in understanding other sports.

I asked what it would take to add a 12th team to Formula 1. Horner reached for an example he’d lived through: Red Bull Powertrains, a hole in the ground five years earlier, built in 55 weeks, with its first engine firing within 15 months. Formula 1 reported those milestones as the project took shape.

He was describing the scale of a build, not announcing a new one. When he talks about the Red Bull engine project, he emphasizes the commitment and backing needed to turn an idea into something that runs. That’s the kind of work he knows, and clearly still respects.

What kind of project could bring Horner back to F1?

He did name conditions. Horner said he would want equity in a project and a position that lets him enable change; asked about buying into an existing team, he said a minority stake without influence made little sense. Those details matter because he wants to shape the work. They don’t make up the whole story.

The bigger question I took from the interview is what project could be worth the family time and the brutal schedule again. Horner hasn’t answered that yet. He doesn’t seem troubled by the gap. In his final answer, the mountain was still somewhere ahead, unnamed and unmeasured.

“I would only go back to do it with like-minded people on a cool project,” he said. “Otherwise, I’m happy living in the countryside.”

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. Find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Malaysia’s sports minister, Dr Taufiq Johari, is considering a Formula 1 arrangement that would bring the championship to Sepang once every few years, in partnership with another country. He told Parliament on October 15 that the proposal remains in its early stages.

I think F1 should pursue it.

A recurring place on the calendar could give historic circuits a workable route back, without adding another race to the season. The cooperation behind it could also give countries facing conflict an agreed alternative when racing at home becomes unsafe.

The Bahrain Grand Prix moved to Sepang on October 4 after regional conflict forced it away from its original venue. Malaysia has already demonstrated that a country can host another country’s race.

The reports don’t identify a partner or explain the proposed commercial terms. The government is expected to complete an assessment by the end of November.

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A circuit can belong without hosting every year

Stefano Domenicali has already signed a similar arrangement in Europe. Spa is scheduled to host in 2027, 2029 and 2031, with Barcelona taking 2028, 2030 and 2032.

That agreement gives two established circuits future dates while using one calendar slot each subsequent season. Malaysia’s proposal raises the possibility of extending that approach to other countries.

I’d happily take a properly funded Hockenheim race every third year, and I’d like to see the Nürburgring’s Grand Prix circuit considered on similar terms. An occasional race would give us a reason to look forward to going back.

With 24 Grands Prix already scheduled for 2027, every returning circuit needs room. Rotation lets Domenicali offer more venues a relationship with F1 without asking the teams to work another weekend.

A promoter with guaranteed dates every second or third year could approach sponsors with something they can plan around, while fans would know which summer to save for and a government would know how often it was being asked to support the event.

The contract would have to make the savings real. Fewer races won’t help much if the hosting fee absorbs everything the promoter saves.

Germany supplies a useful warning here. Hockenheim and the Nürburgring previously shared the German Grand Prix under an alternation agreement, and the race still disappeared from the 2015 calendar.

Running a circuit continues during the years F1 stays away. Maintenance still costs money, while ticket and hospitality income from a Grand Prix disappears, along with the expense of staging it. Anyone funding upgrades has fewer F1 weekends across which to recover the bill.

Under the arrangement used for Sepang’s return, Bahrain covered the F1 hosting rights fee. A recurring Malaysian race would need a plan for paying that fee, even if Sepang hosted only once every few years.

Taufiq has good reason to question whether demand can repeat annually. A return after nine years away gives fans a reason to make a special trip. An annual race has to persuade them to come back the following year.

A race every few years might suit that behavior. Fans can save for a return to Sepang when they know the next chance is far off, and local sponsors can focus their spending around those race years. Nobody should budget for a scarcity premium before they’ve sold the tickets.

A race can also move when its home becomes unsafe

Planned rotation addresses how often a circuit hosts. Conflict creates a different problem because nobody can reliably schedule the safe years.

The Bahrain arrangement showed that a Grand Prix can retain its national identity while the racing happens abroad. F1 and the FIA announced the agreement in July, with the governments of Bahrain and Malaysia involved. The event kept Bahrain’s name and Gulf Air as title sponsor.

Before the race, Sepang chief executive Azhan Shafriman Hanif said Bahrain would pay the hosting rights fee and that ticket proceeds would also return to Bahrain under the discussions then underway.

That gives us something concrete to work from. A country facing unsafe conditions could preserve its association with F1 through a partner venue. The circuit hosting the race gets an opportunity to host without necessarily taking on the full commercial burden.

I’d like to see those relationships agreed before they’re needed, so the decision to move a race comes with a partner circuit and financial terms already in place. Negotiating all of that while conditions deteriorate puts everyone under pressure.

Sometimes cancellation will make more sense. A partner venue needs time to prepare, and teams need a practical route for freight and people, so any alternative has to be assessed against the conditions at the time.

The country also makes a commercial sacrifice by moving its race. The broadcast can still carry its name. The visiting fans spend their money near the circuit where they actually watch the cars.

For a government hoping to fill domestic hotels, that is a large part of the original case for hosting. Paying for a race abroad buys a different set of benefits. Each partner would have to decide whether the retained exposure and relationship with F1 justify its share of the cost.

Keeping a reserve venue available would also cost money. A circuit holding a weekend open for F1 could be turning away another paying event. Any agreement would have to make that worthwhile for the people running the circuit.

A circuit could host on confirmed years and also be available, by separate agreement, when another venue cannot stage its race. That would give Domenicali more choices when conditions change and give the circuit another way to earn money from its readiness to host.

I want Sepang and Hockenheim to have their own dates, with enough money behind them to host again more than once.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. Find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Stephan Schmitter wants RTL and Sky to stop producing the same Formula 1 race twice. According to DWDL’s account of his appearance on Der Standard’s CEO podcast, the RTL Deutschland CEO plans a shared production for the two German broadcasters beginning in 2027, the final season of Sky’s current German rights contract, with its next agreement still to be decided.

I want Apple to go global with F1, and Germany is where I’d start. I’ve suspected Apple could go outside the US, and believe they should. In fact, if things work out well in the USA, I could see there being a case for some level of Apple broadcast globally.

Eddy Cue has a credible case for making the sport easier to follow across a full weekend. The German deal should also keep races on free television, where someone can become interested before deciding whether to pay.

Motorsport-Magazin named Apple in July, after Stefano Domenicali said the tender for rights beginning in 2028 had more than one interested operator. BILD named Apple again in September. Neither Apple nor F1 has announced a German agreement.

RTL can cut costs while keeping a route into F1

Schmitter has sound reasons to combine the crews. RTL completed its purchase of Sky Deutschland on June 1, bringing together businesses with around 12.3 million paying subscribers. RTL is targeting approximately $280 million in annual savings within three years, mostly from cost reductions.

Sending two teams to cover the same race is an obvious expense to examine after buying the company next door, especially if Schmitter can preserve good reporting and commentary while freeing money for other work, although we haven’t seen which presenters or commentators would remain.

Digital Fernsehen points out that Sky’s race coverage is ad-free while RTL interrupts for commercials, so a shared production will have to keep the paid coverage running through those breaks if you’re following a pit-stop sequence on Sky.

Schmitter already has free television, a subscription business, and German commentary teams viewers know, which lets him introduce a race on RTL and sell the full season through Sky without first teaching people who’s covering the sport. Apple will need German voices.

But F1 faces a larger problem. Until 2020, RTL carried every race live on free television. Sky became the exclusive rights holder in 2021, with selected races subsequently returning to RTL.

That makes RTL’s free channel an asset a new rights holder should consider keeping in the arrangement. Apple could buy the full-season rights and sublicense selected races. RTL would still have something to sell advertisers, and Cue would have a place to introduce the paid coverage to people outside its subscription service.

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Apple’s US coverage offers more than a new destination

Under the five-year US agreement that began in 2026, you get every practice, qualifying session, sprint and Grand Prix inside an Apple TV subscription, with all practice sessions and selected races free in the app, while subscribers also get F1 TV Premium and can keep using F1’s own service.

If you already subscribe to Apple TV, you get the season without buying a separate sports pass. If you subscribe to F1, you also get Apple’s shows and films. The current US monthly price is $14.99; no German F1 package has been announced.

At the Paley Center in New York on September 24, I asked Cue why Apple would work with competitors, after Apple had allowed Netflix to carry the Canadian Grand Prix for US viewers alongside its own coverage and Tubi to carry creator-hosted broadcasts of selected races. He said, “Because I care about growing F1, first and foremost.”

Those arrangements give Apple ways to reach someone who hasn’t decided F1 deserves another monthly charge. They also leave room for a German free-TV partner. Cue has already shown he can share selected races while holding the full-season rights.

At Chelsea Studios in New York on October 6, Apple and Dolby let me hear F1 in Dolby Atmos, and an engine passing through the room made me want to hear how that sound would carry a full live race weekend on my own equipment. The US debut is scheduled for the Grand Prix weekend beginning October 23.

I was convinced. It gave me a reason to look forward to the next broadcast, including the stretches when the running order barely changes. You’ll need compatible equipment to hear the full effect at home, and a preview can’t tell us how many people will renew a subscription.

Cue told me at Paley that race-day viewing was up by a double-digit percentage, with a younger audience and more women. Apple hasn’t published comparable race averages.

USA TODAY’s Jared Beilby reported Samba estimates showing lower US household TV reach year over year for eight of nine races analyzed, including declines of 68% for Miami and 66% for Monaco, two races that had aired on ABC in 2025 and therefore had a broad free-TV audience to compare against. Samba measures household TV reach using smart-TV data, which covers part of Apple’s audience and differs from Nielsen’s average audience measure.

Domenicali told USA TODAY that total hours watched were up 13%. Samba also found more minutes watched per household for Australia and Monaco. A smaller TV audience can watch for longer, and viewers can move to other devices. We need comparable measures to know how much of each is happening.

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A global F1 service would grow one contract at a time

Cue has said he wants to expand. In Miami on May 1, he told Reuters, “Do I hope that we are able to grow into other areas and markets? Yeah, I do.” He also acknowledged that F1 licenses rights by territory.

Five days later, Domenicali and Sky agreed to extend the UK and Ireland partnership through 2034 and Italy through 2032, leaving any ambition to make Apple the worldwide home of live F1 dependent on contracts that will keep three countries with another broadcaster well into the next decade.

Germany would let Cue build a second version of the service while those agreements continue. The same technical work could support several markets, with local commentary and different free-TV arrangements. A fan could learn the same app in each country where Apple holds the rights, even as the contracts and prices differ.

Domenicali has already explained why he approaches expansion cautiously. He told Motorsport.com that each country has different needs and described the US as the most mature market for streaming. Germany would test how far Apple’s approach travels, particularly among viewers accustomed to getting F1 for free.

I don’t think Cue needs to wait for every territory to become available. He can start in Germany, build coverage with an audience that understands the sport, and let viewers watch the full weekend in the subscription while giving RTL enough free races to introduce the sport to someone who hasn’t considered paying to watch Hülkenberg.

Domenicali should put a free-TV sublicense into the German agreement, so Apple pays for a chance to win back the people who stopped watching when RTL lost the full season.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. Find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Formula 1 has agreed to race in Rwanda for 10 years, confirming on October 13 that the African Grand Prix, presented by Visit Rwanda, will join its calendar in the early 2030s.

The race will take place at a purpose-built circuit in Bugesera, about 40 kilometers south of Kigali, near the capital’s new international airport. Its debut depends on completing that circuit. F1 hasn’t committed to 2030, the year cited in earlier reporting.

Africa hasn’t hosted an F1 race since the 1993 South African Grand Prix at Kyalami. Reuters reports that Stefano Domenicali, F1’s CEO, put the sport’s African fan base, over 100 million, above the sport in Tuesday’s statement.

That audience gives F1 a reason to go. Rwanda’s ability to build and pay for a race will determine what it can deliver.

Bugesera comes first

Former F1 driver Alex Wurz and Carsten Tilke are designing a six-kilometer, anti-clockwise circuit with 17 corners. F1 reports 197 meters of elevation change across a lap, with the course running over two hills above a lake. The design includes cambered turns and banking. Tilke calls it a “roller coaster track.”

The full layout hasn’t been released. Tilke says the design prioritizes overtaking, different race strategies, and keeping spectators close to the cars. The track is planned to meet FIA Grade 1 standards, the requirement for hosting a Grand Prix.

The wider plans include a karting facility, driving experience center and off-road courses, with paddock buildings drawing on Rwandan architecture. The Rwanda Development Board intends to host concerts, other motorsport events and conferences. Those facilities give it more ways to earn between Grands Prix, though the business case will depend on bookings and spending after construction.

The nearby new international airport is due to open in early 2028, according to F1. That gives Rwanda an infrastructure target ahead of the race’s expected debut. F1 hasn’t announced the circuit’s construction milestones or the date of the first race.

Rwanda’s pursuit has lasted years. BoS covered the talks in August 2024, when Domenicali was preparing to meet the country’s representatives about a permanent track. Tuesday’s announcement turns those negotiations into a long-term agreement.

A place on a crowded calendar

The commercial question reaches beyond Bugesera’s construction schedule.

Louise Young, F1’s chief race promotion officer, said at Leaders Week London that the series intends to maintain a 24-race calendar. As BoS reported on October 11, she described the standard for new hosts as “really high” and acknowledged that making room can mean ending relationships stretching back decades.

Young’s requirements include government support, easy travel between the airport, hotels and city, and enough entertainment to keep visitors occupied throughout the race weekend, all of which will matter in Rwanda as the country builds its first F1 venue beside a new airport.

We’re still missing the calendar decision. F1 hasn’t named an existing Grand Prix that Rwanda would replace, and a broad launch window doesn’t tell us which season’s contracts will matter.

Host agreements are a large part of F1’s business. Liberty Media’s 2025 annual filing says race promotion generated 26.7% of F1’s revenue that year. That category includes Las Vegas ticket sales; it shouldn’t be read as hosting fees alone. Most promoter contracts also include annual fee increases.

Rwanda’s government is selling the agreement as an investment in tourism and jobs.

Jean-Guy Afrika, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, told Formula 1 that the African Grand Prix name makes it easier to approach partners. Rwanda is hosting the race while pitching a continental audience to sponsors. That gives Visit Rwanda a chance to connect its destination marketing with a broader African story. Its commercial test is how many partners buy into that audience and how many fans can travel to Bugesera.

Asked whether Formula 1 was too big for a small country like Rwanda, Kagame told critics to “take a deep breath and calm down and wait to see what is coming.”

He pointed to Rwanda’s experience hosting the Basketball Africa League, the FIA General Assembly and the UCI cycling world championships. Kagame placed F1 within the country’s broader development plans and said he wanted other Africans to participate and benefit.

Afrika projects close to 300,000 people across a race weekend, with spending in shops, restaurants and hotels feeding sales and corporate income taxes. He also expects new business investment and jobs. The attendance projection alone doesn’t establish how many visitors will travel to Rwanda, how long they will stay or how much they will spend.

The choice of host has already faced objections. In February 2025, Congo’s government asked F1 and other sports organizations to end their dealings with Rwanda over the conflict in eastern Congo. That month, the UN Security Council called on Rwanda’s forces to stop supporting M23 and withdraw from Congo. Rwanda denied backing M23.

Kagame said the project involved “a big private sector effort”, pointing to participants in the audience and others who had been unable to attend. He didn’t identify their financial commitments in that exchange. Rwanda’s annual hosting fee and the circuit’s construction budget weren’t disclosed in Tuesday’s announcement.

Domenicali described the negotiations as a “chicken-and-egg” problem. The agreement gives Rwanda a confirmed F1 commitment to take to prospective investors. That makes the announcement part of the fundraising pitch, while the public still has no budget against which to judge the promised return.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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At the Paley Center in New York on September 24, I moderated a conversation between F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and Apple’s services chief Eddy Cue.

Cue told me about watching an F1 race and wondering why the broadcast hadn’t shown Kim Kardashian again after a shot before the start. He texted Stefano Domenicali to ask where she was. Stefano replied that they’d been looking for her, but she was inside.

So Eddy texted Kim directly and asked her to come outside where a camera could find her. She did.

My first thought was, “Damn, this guy can just pick up his phone and text Kim K?” My second was that Apple and F1 had the right guy to help make the sport bigger in America. He was thinking about viewers who might pay attention to racing because Kim was there, and he could do something about it.

Later, when I asked what kept younger and female audiences coming back, Eddy returned to that moment. “I told you the Kim story because it matters.”

I understand why it matters to Eddy, even though I don’t care for celebrity coverage during a race. When I sit down to watch, I want to follow the racing, and I struggle to see what a shot of a celebrity adds.

Someone who follows Kim has a different reason to look at the screen. Her presence can spark interest in F1 before they’ve learned enough about the sport to have a favorite driver.

The scale of that opportunity helps explain why Eddy reached for his phone. According to HypeAuditor’s October 10 figures, Kim had roughly 344 million Instagram followers, compared with 44.3 million for F1’s official account. That’s nearly eight times the follower count, with no guarantee that a follower sees a post or watches a race. If you’ve followed her for years, though, you already have a reason to notice where she goes and who she’s with.

That interest can carry racing into coverage you’d read anyway, and fashion already matters to many newer fans. In the opt-in 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey, 59% of respondents who had followed F1 for five years or less said fashion and style were important to their fandom. Vogue’s Christian Allaire wrote about Kim’s Monaco appearance on June 7, leading with Lewis Hamilton’s second-place finish and Kimi Antonelli’s win in an article filed under Celebrity Style. A reader looking for what Kim wore encountered a Formula 1 result along the way.

The business Kim has built around that attention is why I think she’s brilliant. I have questions about how much of anyone’s private life should become something to sell, but I admire the discipline it takes to turn years of public scrutiny into a company you own a stake in.

SKIMS, which she co-founded with Jens Grede, raised $225 million at a $5 billion valuation in November 2025. At the time, the company said it expected more than $1 billion in net sales for 2025. Its expansion into sports gives that business a connection to the audiences F1 wants to reach: SKIMS became the official underwear partner of the NBA, WNBA and USA Basketball in 2023, and Nike and SKIMS introduced their first NikeSKIMS collection in September 2025, with Serena Williams and Sha’Carri Richardson appearing in the campaign alongside Kim.

Those partnerships give SKIMS access to sports audiences. At a Grand Prix, Kim can shift attention elsewhere, bringing racing to the media that already cover her. Hamilton’s place in American celebrity culture gives that coverage a person to follow into the competition.

An existing interest can make an unfamiliar sport feel worth trying.

Eddy told me his daughters-in-law became Kansas City Chiefs fans because they were Swifties; they hadn’t watched the team before Taylor Swift’s connection gave them a reason to start.

With Swift at the October 1, 2023 Chiefs-Jets game, NBC’s preliminary figures put viewership among girls aged 12-17 53% above the average for the season’s first three Sunday Night Football weeks. Anecdotally, my female cousin, a massive tennis fan of Jannik Sinner, whom F1 brought on as a Friend of F1 in 2023, heard him talk about the series, which piqued her interest enough to start watching races.

What happens after that first race is the harder question, and that's what I asked Eddy to follow up on. When he talked about drivers as celebrities and their appeal to younger audiences, I asked whether it needed to go beyond their attractiveness. He agreed, pointing to their businesses and the ways they make a difference in people’s lives.

Stefano wants that interest to become part of everyday life in America, with people waking up curious about what’s happening in Formula 1. In our conversation, he described awareness and discussion as steps toward monetization. The Apple-F1 partnership gives Eddy a reason to care whether that curiosity turns into a subscription. Stefano gains an audience that broadcasters and commercial partners want to reach. Both men have a commercial reason to welcome Kim, though neither could provide data on how many people who first encounter F1 through her go on to watch races regularly.

For anyone who does tune in, the broadcast still has to make the racing worth following. Cutting to a celebrity during a fight for position interrupts the competition, including for the newcomer you’re hoping will come back.

Once someone’s curious about Hamilton, the coverage can help them understand what he’s doing in the car. Stefano had talked earlier about explaining the technology and human effort behind performance to people drawn in by other interests.

Everyone who loves F1 had to find a way into it.

Maybe it was going to the racetrack with your dad in the 70s watching Niki Lauda and James Hunt do battle.

Or it could have been 2020, locked down in your home, discovering a series on Netflix that captivated you enough to start going to races.

Stefano grew up in Imola, near Autodromo Dino Ferrari (renamed Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari after Enzo’s death in 1988), where he got up close with the engineers, sparking his lifelong pursuit of motorsport.

Eddy found his through an AutoWeek article at the Coral Gables Library. He was a kid who liked cars and recognized Ferrari; learning that Ferrari raced gave him something to follow. He couldn’t watch the races on television, so he went back to the library every week to read the results.

My uncle took me karting and to a race track when I was a little boy, and showed me F1 on television. I was hooked immediately, and I’ve been following ever since. If a brief shot of Kim before the lights go out, or a mention in Vogue, does for someone today what my uncle did for me, I can live with sharing those few seconds.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Louise Young, Formula 1’s chief race promotion officer, said at Leaders Week London that F1 will stay at 24 races and that the bar for new Grands Prix is “really high.”

“We are in the fortunate position that we will maintain our 24-race number, and any time we want to make a change, that means we would have to let go of a relationship that we’ve had perhaps for 30 or more years,” said Young.

That’s a great way to describe how F1 sells its calendar. While the Concorde Agreement allows for 25 races, the teams are almost unanimous in opposing going past 24. Only four races currently have contracts expiring before the 2030 season: Mexico City, Singapore, Japan and Portugal.

Mexico City signed a three-year extension through 2028. Singapore’s seven-year deal runs from 2022 to 2028. Suzuka is signed through 2029. Portimão has a two-year agreement with the Portuguese government for 2027 and 2028, a return we covered after MSC Cruises bought the 2027 title.

Two governments want one of those seats.

Rwanda is the first. RacingNews365 reported on Oct 6 that Rwanda has agreed to join the calendar in 2030, with a permanent circuit about 40 km from Kigali near Bugesera International Airport, designed by Alexander Wurz’s WurzDesign. On Oct 8, a Rwandan government source told AFP the bid “has been approved, and an agreement has been reached,” with an official announcement expected in Kigali next week. GMM reported that Qatar is backing the project.

Young said F1 wants to write “new history where there isn’t tradition necessarily.” F1 hasn’t raced in Africa since Kyalami in 1993. We’ve been talking about Rwanda’s bid since 2024.

Malaysia is the second. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he discussed a permanent return with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali at Sepang on Oct 4, according to CNA. Anwar said Cabinet will discuss it and that it will “take time” because of the tight schedule and F1’s existing contracts with other hosts.

The relocated Bahrain Grand Prix drew 261,000 people over the weekend, a Sepang record, and a Sepang International Circuit official has estimated a permanent slot would cost Malaysia about USD $73.3 million (RM300 million) a year.

Young’s test for a newcomer goes well past the track. She listed government support, a destination that showcases local culture, easy movement between the airport, hotels, and the city, and a race that grows the audience. “We want to know that this is a venue not just for the sake of holding 125,000 people on Sunday, but because they’re going to entertain them from the start of the day on Thursday until the end of the day on Sunday,” she said.

If the count truly remains fixed at 24, every newcomer’s fee has to displace an incumbent’s, and every incumbent renews knowing someone else wants the date.

When I spoke with Stefano Domenicali and Eddy Cue at the Paley Center in NYC, Domenicali said more places were seeking a Grand Prix than the 24 on the calendar. He linked that demand to raising the quality of what F1 offers paying attendees.

He also put responsibility on F1 to keep its partners satisfied. Both sides have to be happy, he said, or “the marriage will be short.”

Singapore races this weekend, the fifth of seven years on its current deal. Singapore’s government has already put that contract under review. Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong said in October 2025 that an independent committee found the terms “fair and reasonable” and the economic benefits greater than the costs. The same committee identified “areas of improvement for any future renewal.” Singapore will negotiate any renewal with that list in hand.

If F1 signs Rwanda and Malaysia keeps pushing, which of Mexico City, Singapore, Suzuka, and Portimão gives up its date?

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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María was pursuing a place on the grid herself. She had spent years racing, and she also coached young drivers.

Born in Madrid, she grew up in a family that took racing seriously. Her father, Emilio, had competed in Formula 1 and ran a driving school at Jarama. Her younger brother, also Emilio, became a racer. In a 2023 interview with Relevo, their father remembered the siblings arguing after Formula Toyota races, each blaming the other for contact. At home, he had to remind them that the opponents included everybody else.

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María moved through karting and Spanish Formula 3, then raced sports cars and touring cars. Her career took her to the Daytona 24 Hours and the World Touring Car Championship. In Germany’s ADAC Procar series, she won at the Nürburgring in 2007 and finished third in the standings. Returning to faster single-seaters, she represented Atlético Madrid in Superleague Formula and finished fourth at the Nürburgring in 2010.

She kept finding places to drive while working toward Formula 1. Alongside her own racing, she helped young drivers learn at the family school. She also studied physical activity and sports science at the European University of Madrid; her final degree project concerned motorsport marketing.

In August 2011, she finally drove an F1 car at Paul Ricard. Lotus Renault gave her the R29, its 2009 car, and she completed 300 kilometers. Éric Boullier, the team principal, said she had completed the work as expected, built up her pace and made no mistakes.

Her father later described how the test came about. According to his account, Bernie Ecclestone had questioned whether María could handle an F1 car physically and deliver the performance. She proposed putting it to the test. Her reply, translated from Spanish, was: “The stopwatch doesn’t lie. Let’s test it.” Ecclestone called Boullier. Emilio remembered his daughter climbing out at Paul Ricard, convinced that she belonged there.

That confidence still needed somewhere to go. On March 7, 2012, John Booth announced her appointment to Marussia’s test driver program. She would work with the team at races and have an opportunity to drive its new MR01 later in the year. In the team’s announcement, preserved by Motor Sport Press, María described the job as a step toward her ambition to race in Formula 1.

On July 3, 2012, during straight-line testing at Duxford Aerodrome in England, her Marussia struck a support truck in the service area. She suffered severe head and facial injuries and lost her right eye. After operations and months of recovery, she made a public appearance in Madrid that October.

When she returned to the Spanish Grand Prix in May 2013, she told La Vanguardia that she had previously arrived early, stayed late and tried to learn everything she could. She hadn’t expected the affection she received after the accident, including from strangers who stopped her in the street.

She missed driving and the long working days at a circuit. She also described relying on Rodrigo, her partner, and their dog, and discovering that she could enjoy a life away from the car. At the end of the interview, she said, translated from Spanish: “Right now, what I want most is to put my foot down again.”

Earlier that year, in March, the FIA had asked her about women in motorsport. She described feeling alone during her career and wanting to support other women so they could keep going. She had tried to keep a low profile in F1 and concentrate on doing the work. “From a professional point of view, you just want to be a racing driver,” she said.

She continued working with the FIA’s Women in Motorsport Commission and campaigned for road safety. At the 2013 Spanish Grand Prix, she joined F1 drivers in the Long Short Walk, a campaign for pedestrian safety during the United Nations’ road safety week.

There was another family loss during her recovery. According to the account published by her legacy, her nephew Javi died at three from a neuromuscular mitochondrial disease. María went to his funeral while she was still convalescing. In 2012, she created Primera Estrella to help children with these conditions and their families, initially funding it through sales of a charity bracelet.

She also wrote La vida es un regalo, or Life Is a Gift, about the accident and her recovery. Plataforma Editorial published the book in October 2013.

María died in Seville on October 11, 2013. Her family’s account attributes her death to the neurological injuries sustained in the crash. The following year, the family and Fundación Deporte Joven established Legado María de Villota to continue her charitable work.

Primera Estrella continues under the Fundación Ana Carolina Díez Mahou, supported by the legacy’s activities and by companies that had backed María during her racing career. The funding pays for medical care and therapies, including physiotherapy in clinics, at home, and in water. The program’s website reports that it has financed more than 20,000 treatments for 200 children.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Alain Prost needed 72 laps to win his first Williams race. Africa has now spent more than 33 years waiting for another Grand Prix.

On March 14, 1993, Prost beat Ayrton Senna at Kyalami by 79.824 seconds. Mark Blundell took third for Ligier, a lap behind. The official result makes the afternoon look considerably easier than it was.

Today’s 10-year agreement with Rwanda, targeting the early 2030s, gives us a reason to revisit that race. Kyalami’s disappearance shows how quickly a Grand Prix can leave the calendar when its funding fails, even with a circuit and a recent championship result already secured.

Prost was returning after a year out, and his confidence had taken a beating. After a testing crash, illness and a threatened disciplinary sanction, he admitted: “I really wondered why I was coming back to Formula One.” David Tremayne’s contemporary report catches the uncertainty beneath what would become his fourth championship season.

Senna had his own reasons to hesitate. Honda had withdrawn, leaving Ron Dennis to negotiate a customer Ford engine deal while Benetton retained the closer factory relationship. McLaren’s account of the 1993 season describes Senna refusing to commit to a full-year contract. He would negotiate race by race.

Saturday gave him encouragement. Prost’s 1:15.696 beat Senna’s 1:15.784 by just 0.088 seconds. Schumacher, third in the Benetton, was another 1.477 seconds behind Senna. The starting grid put the old rivals almost together and everyone else well behind.

Prost lost that advantage at the start. Senna led, Damon Hill briefly took second in his first Williams race, then spun in front of the pack. He escaped without being hit but finished 12th on the opening lap. Schumacher took second, leaving Prost to recover through the two drivers immediately ahead.

By lap 13, Prost had passed Schumacher, and the three leaders were covered by 0.835 seconds. Jean Alesi’s fourth-place Ferrari was roughly 26 seconds back, according to this lap-by-lap retrospective. Senna’s McLaren, Prost’s Williams and Schumacher’s Benetton were running their own race.

Senna put a wheel in the dirt exiting the final corner, giving Prost a run toward the first turn. Prost took the inside for the right-hander; Senna stayed alongside and held the inside for the left-hander that followed.

Prost made the pass stick on lap 24. McLaren’s own history records Senna leading the first 23 laps. Schumacher also got ahead of Senna, but their tire stops reversed the order again. McLaren’s mechanics returned their driver to second, with the Benetton pursuing him.

Senna was now fighting an active-suspension problem, as was Schumacher. On lap 40, the German tried the inside, the cars touched, and the Benetton spun out. Prost continued toward victory while Senna’s remaining job was to bring the McLaren home.

The newcomers had a harsher afternoon. Michael Andretti qualified ninth for McLaren, three seconds behind Senna, stalled at the start and retired after completing four laps. Hill’s recovery ended in a collision with Alex Zanardi’s Lotus. Rubens Barrichello started his first Grand Prix 14th for Jordan and lost his gearbox after 31 completed laps. The Race’s retrospective shows how much unfinished business sat behind the famous names at the front.

Peter Sauber had more to take home. His new team’s black C12s qualified sixth and tenth with JJ Lehto and Karl Wendlinger. An early stop sent Lehto toward the back, but his recovery had pace behind it: his second-fastest lap of the race, 1:20.113. Only Prost went faster.

The weather supplied the final complication. With two laps remaining, a thunderstorm drenched part of the circuit. There was barely any race left in which to make a tire change worthwhile. Prost slowed enough for backmarkers to unlap themselves as the remaining drivers tried to reach the flag.

Blundell finished third, his first F1 podium. Christian Fittipaldi brought Minardi home fourth, and Lehto took fifth for Sauber on its debut. Behind them, Derek Warwick crashed his Footwork in the closing stages. Berger’s Ferrari also stopped; Tremayne reported that newspapers had clogged its radiators, causing the engine to overheat.

Only five cars were still running at the finish. Berger and Warwick were nevertheless classified sixth and seventh, both with 69 completed laps. Berger collected the final point.

The circuit had already been rebuilt for F1’s return in 1992. South Africa was negotiating its transition from apartheid; the first democratic elections followed in April 1994. The financial support that had brought the race back was coming apart.

Stellenbosch University’s Dr. Gustav Venter has traced those problems to shrinking government support, a weakening rand and the collapse of Tollgate Holdings, which had interests in motor racing. The government had helped finance the return to attract international tourists. Its support began to fall while the race’s other financial foundations weakened.

The warning preceded Prost’s win. Motor Sport’s March 1993 diary reported Tollgate’s collapse and rumors that the Grand Prix might move near Durban when Kyalami’s contract expired in 1996. People were still discussing where the race would run several seasons ahead.

In July 1993, a March 13, 1994 South African Grand Prix was still expected.

Later attempts, including the 2022 talks about a return, kept Kyalami’s name in the conversation. Rwanda now has the agreement, but the circuit still needs to be built, and the inaugural date remains to be announced. Its plans for Bugesera include conferences and other events throughout the year.

Kyalami had already developed that kind of business. By December 1995, Grandprix.com reported that its new Automobile Association owners were running the venue at a profit, using the pit buildings for conferences and exhibitions. A driving school added another income source. Bringing back the Grand Prix still required a substantial sponsor or government backing.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Even the race-start sequence had my heart beating in my chest.

Dolby and Apple invited me to Chelsea Studios in New York on October 6 to preview Formula 1 in Dolby Atmos. I went curious. The sound of an engine passing through the room made me want to hear a live race in it.

John Couling grew up just outside Donington Park, where he could hear and feel racing cars from his home long before becoming Dolby’s senior vice president of Entertainment. He told me how those sounds stayed with him. Bringing fans closer to that feeling is why the F1 partnership matters to him.

Formula 1 in Dolby Atmos arrives on Apple TV in the U.S. with the United States Grand Prix weekend, beginning Friday, October 23. The race itself is October 25. Apple launched its F1 coverage in March with 4K, Dolby Vision, and 5.1 surround sound. Atmos is the next addition.

I think Apple is putting its attention in the right place. A race ought to make you want to watch the cars even when the running order hasn’t changed, and hearing an engine arrive, pass, and accelerate away is part of the sport’s attraction that a broadcast can carry into your room.

F1 Already Has the Microphones

Couling told me at Chelsea Studios that Apple and Dolby can use F1’s existing trackside microphones and sensors for the Atmos coverage without adding capture hardware. Apple’s Head of Sports, James DeLorenzo, added that this is Apple’s first use of Atmos in sports.

F1 is already collecting those sounds. Dolby Atmos gives the audio team more choices about where to place them, including overhead on suitable systems, with compatible equipment adapting the mix to your setup.

Both gentlemen described a mix that includes engines, commentary, team radio, and pit-lane sound. You’ll still need to understand the words. When you’re listening to a driver explain a problem over the radio, you need the engine to leave room for the message, so placing all those sounds around you also means deciding which ones should hold your attention at that moment.

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Apple is Still Building its F1 Coverage

DeLorenzo also mentioned that Apple plans to use iPhones for selected camera angles at Austin, getting shots from places a traditional broadcast camera can’t fit. We’ll see those additions when the race arrives.

Those production changes belong alongside the live IMAX screenings and F1 across Apple’s other services. Apple is giving people more places to encounter the sport, more ways to follow it, and now something else to hear when they sit down for the race.

Eddy Cue and Stefano Domenicali announced a five-year U.S. broadcast partnership beginning in 2026, giving Apple time to build on what it’s learned during its first season and keep improving the coverage for fans who decide month by month whether they’re getting enough from the subscription to keep paying.

I could hear the appeal at Chelsea Studios, but the real test is how much of that reaches you at home, on the equipment you actually use, during a race you’re watching for the competition as much as the sound.

Two weeks ago, Cue told me that Apple has more viewers than last year’s linear coverage and is reaching a younger audience with more women. Apple hasn’t published average-minute audiences for individual events, so we can’t yet compare that claim with ESPN’s figures.

For the October 23 debut, the announcement covers the Apple TV app on supported Apple devices and compatible Dolby-enabled TVs, soundbars and home theater systems. You may already have what you need.

Apple’s setup guidance explains that Apple TV 4K’s high-bandwidth Atmos output doesn’t work over a standard ARC connection. If you’re using an Apple TV 4K with a soundbar, check your setup before Friday practice.

For Dolby, F1 gives you another recurring reason to use the sound system you may have bought for films. If you usually save it for movie night, now you have something else to put it to work on.

I’ll admit, the preview was convincing. Now I want to hear a full race weekend on my own equipment and find out how well the mix carries the cars’ movement while keeping commentary and team radio clear.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Max Verstappen slowed almost to a stop on Sepang’s formation lap. Lewis Hamilton stopped altogether and restarted his Ferrari on the circuit, something he said he had never done before. Other cars crawled around them. Race Control abandoned the start.

Rain had already delayed Sunday’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia by 40 minutes. The software fault added another 53 minutes before the field could try again. Every team had to install an FIA update before its car could restart.

In April, the FIA reduced maximum electrical deployment in wet conditions to limit torque when grip falls. Autosport linked the Sepang bug to the software change. Cars crawling behind the safety car hit an energy-limit constraint in certain sectors, according to the FIA. Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s single-seater director, said the FIA and teams developed the software together for the standard electronic control unit. Their tests had missed this low-speed case. The FIA removed the constraint in those sectors and sent the teams updated software.

Tombazis put the update, installation, and checks at roughly 20 to 25 minutes. The full hold lasted longer while every car was readied under the same rules. Verstappen described cars moving five-wide during the formation lap as drivers tried to understand why their power had vanished.

Tombazis told Autosport the patch had not been tested. He believed it did not compromise the safety or fairness of the restart. The FIA has not identified the affected sectors or said how much power the change restored there.

The restart brought objections to both the grid reset and the software behind the stoppage. Fernando Alonso questioned the decision to return stopped cars to their original grid positions. He told RACER that when his Aston Martin stops during a race, nobody suspends the event to restore his place. Asked if Sunday’s treatment was unfair, he answered, “100 percent,” though he acknowledged he lacked the full explanation. Carlos Sainz focused on the 2026 power units, arguing that they depend too heavily on software and central control as conditions change.

The FIA, teams, and power unit manufacturers have promised a full review of the issue.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Liberty Formula One Group stock (FWONK) closed at $95.00 on October 5, up 4.2% on the day, after trading higher intraday. The move came in the first full U.S. trading session after Stefano Domenicali reaffirmed the calendar, with the Qatar Grand Prix on November 29 and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on December 6, conditional on security assurances.

At Sepang on October 3, he called it “the direction we’ve taken based on the information and reassurances we have, and which we absolutely must have.” He also said Abu Dhabi was 99% sold. Teams expect a final call by mid-October, with Imola on standby, SportsBusiness Journal reported.

Anthony Berni at Jefferies kept a Buy rating and a $115 price target the same day. He called the management commentary a notable positive after investor worry about geopolitical risk, said it should also support sentiment toward the first-quarter 2027 Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races, and said Middle East races generate some of the highest promotion fees on the calendar.

Race promotion revenue depends on those Gulf weekends staying on the calendar. Max Verstappen said during the week he would rather not finish the season in Qatar and Abu Dhabi while a war sits nearby. Investors were relieved the Middle East races stayed on the calendar, and that relief is what moved the stock.

Malaysia Wants In

Malaysia sits on the other side of the same fee question.

Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said he met Domenicali before the October 4 race and discussed bringing the Malaysian Grand Prix back as a permanent fixture. He said the Cabinet will discuss it, the proposal is early, and it will take time because of the crowded calendar and existing host contracts.

Sepang International Circuit chief executive Azhan Shafriman Hanif has estimated that a permanent calendar slot would cost at least RM300 million a year, about $73 million. FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem told a media roundtable that Malaysia needs a business plan covering at least five years and said Formula 1 Management is open to the idea.

Another Way

What if there was another way?

I believe Bahrain and Malaysia have shown us another way for fans to get back the circuits we love, funded by entities or governments that may not otherwise have that chance.

It wouldn’t surprise me if a circuit like Sepang makes the calendar in the future by playing host to the Qatar GP or the Abu Dhabi GP.

Business of Speed covered the Sepang one-off on October 2: Bahrain paid the hosting fee and kept ticket revenue, while Malaysia supplied the track and local operations. That weekend drew a record 261,000 spectators at Sepang, above the previous circuit mark of 126,690 in 2008. It still left the permanent-fee question unanswered.

In 2025, then-sports minister Hannah Yeoh set the annual hosting fee at around $73 million, with a three-to-five-year contract potentially costing $220 million to $367 million. The SIC estimate now on the table matches that scale.

The Gulf races show what those fees are worth when investors think they might disappear. Malaysia shows what a country has to pay to buy back onto the same calendar after leaving on cost in 2017.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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It’s 0330, and I’m patiently awaiting the second practice in Malaysia… for the Bahrain Grand Prix. Strange, yes. But these are strange times.

It’s been nine years since we’ve had the privilege of watching an F1 race at Sepang, and it’s long overdue. The unusual circumstances of why we’re here aren’t great, but this is still a silver lining to the whole situation.

Sepang International Circuit chief executive Azhan Shafriman Hanif said 95,000 three-day tickets had sold for the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. He expected sales to reach 100,000 before the race weekend. He also added that half of buyers were from overseas.

A 100,000-ticket target is a healthy opening for a race that last ran at Sepang in 2017, though I’ll keep one eye on the qualifier: these are three-day passes, and the number is still a forecast. It is also an oddly named business arrangement. Bahrain’s race is in Malaysia because war made Bahrain unsafe to host. Bahrain pays the F1 rights fee, chooses ticket prices, and receives the ticket revenue. Malaysia supplies the track, the workers, and the local welcome.

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I still think this is a useful test of Malaysia’s ability to turn a major race into local visitor spending. I wouldn’t use it to decide whether Malaysia should buy a permanent place on the F1 calendar. The one-off removes the highest recurring cost from Malaysia’s side of the equation: hosting fees.

F1 and the FIA confirmed Sepang as the host venue in July, restoring the race to the 2026 calendar after the original Bahrain and Saudi Arabian rounds were called off amid the war in the Middle East. The official name is the Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia. Quite the mouthful.

However, the structure matters more than the novelty.

Sepang CEO Azhan told local media Bahrain would pay the estimated $70 million to $80 million hosting rights fee. The two sides would share about $9.8 million in track preparation and local organizing expenses. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim separately said Malaysia would spend around $3.9 million on minor circuit upgrades, according to CNA’s report. Those are different buckets, and the distinction matters. Malaysia still has a bill. It simply does not have the annual fee that pushed the old Malaysian Grand Prix off the schedule.

Bahrain also controls ticket prices and collects ticket revenue. Under this agreement, Bahrain handles the commercial side. Malaysia supplies the venue, and local operators hope to capture spending around the event. The deal keeps Bahrain’s round on the calendar and Gulf Air attached as title sponsor.

It’s easy to see why Malaysia took the deal. A full circuit sends people to hotels, restaurants, taxis, shopping centers, and the airport. The race falls between Azerbaijan and Singapore, giving traveling fans a reason to make a longer trip to this part of Asia. The Malaysian government has promoted tourism packages and weekend events (remember, the Sepang CEO said 50 percent of ticket buyers were overseas). Those are real channels for local businesses.

But forecasts have started to outrun the evidence. Malaysia’s tourism ministry set a target of 300,000 visitors, including 50,000 international tourists, and cited a Hong Leong Bank estimate equivalent to about $318 million in economic impact in an RTM report.

Bahrain International Circuit chief executive Sheikh Salman Isa Al Khalifa separately told Bernama that the race could generate about $240 million for Malaysia. A Bernama TV report cites a forecast equivalent to about $612 million in indirect economic benefits.

Those figures may not measure the same thing. They’re projections made before the gates opened, and the gap between $240 million and $612 million deserves a plain explanation. I wouldn’t lump every outcome into the word “impact.” A hotel night, a tax receipt, or a supplier contract are very different.

This is where F1's commercial mechanics become clear. For this particular race, Malaysia doesn’t collect the gate. Its case depends on spend beyond the gate, plus the value of the circuit work that remains after the trucks leave. I want to know what local hotels, restaurants, transport operators, and suppliers actually bank. That is worth measuring. It still won’t prove a permanent race can pay back its fee.

In 2025, then-sports minister Hannah Yeoh said Malaysia had no plans to bring F1 back because the annual hosting fee was around $73 million, with a three-to-five-year contract potentially costing $220 million to $367 million, according to CNA. The current deal lets the country test what F1 demand looks like after nine years away without taking on that annual fee.

I keep thinking about Silverstone. In our account of Silverstone’s turnaround, the British Grand Prix survived through a fee reset, land development, hospitality, and a deeper calendar of events. A packed race weekend helped, but it was one piece in a circuit business that had to work all year. Sepang already has MotoGP and other events. The F1 question should be whether a race strengthens that year-round business, not whether a big weekend can carry the whole case.

The BoS guide to F1 circuit economics explains why promoter fees rarely get recovered at the gate alone. The upside sits in premium hospitality, sponsorship, event programming, tourism, and public support. Each circuit has a different mix. Malaysia’s 2026 mix is especially unusual because Bahrain holds the ticket revenue while local operators hope to keep the visitor spend. That difference matters.

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I can see a credible upside beyond this weekend. A Malaysian Grand Prix could pair with Singapore and sell international travelers a two-race trip. F1 could treat Southeast Asia as one itinerary, with Sepang’s daytime circuit and Singapore’s night race offering different reasons to stay. That model would need travel packages and transport that work, plus more than two neighboring dates on a calendar. It would also put Malaysia in the same argument as Thailand, which has been pursuing its own future race.

The risk is that the one-off sells a scarcity story that cannot be repeated. Half the ticket buyers being foreign is promising, but the unusual relocation and nine-year absence created a novelty premium. A permanent race would need fresh reasons to return each year. Sepang sits about a 90-minute drive from Kuala Lumpur, and CNA recalled traffic complaints from the 2017 race. A hotel surge helps local businesses only if fans can get around and stay long enough to spend.

My bet is that Sepang will become a more valuable regional contingency venue before it returns as a permanent stop. The 100,000-ticket target gives F1 a strong crowd story. The tougher proof comes after Sunday: how many foreign visitors stay, what they spend, which local businesses benefit, and how much public money Malaysia puts in. If those figures hold up, Malaysia can negotiate from evidence. If they don’t, the strange Bahrain weekend will still have given the circuit a useful upgrade and a reminder of what it can host.

For now, I’m reserving judgment on a permanent return. But damn, it feels so good to be watching a Grand Prix Championship race in Sepang again.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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Chip Ganassi joins Vincenzo Landino and Lali Michelsen as our special guest to discuss Scott Dixon’s move to Arrow McLaren after 24 seasons with Ganassi, and Christian Lundgaard taking his place for 2027. Ganassi talks about Lundgaard, team dynamics, and how he manages drivers who are free to race each other.

The episode also examines how racing attracts and retains fans. Vincenzo shares takeaways from his conversation with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and Apple’s Eddie Cue, including how they first discovered Formula 1 and how broadcast choices can introduce the sport to new audiences. Later, the hosts get into MotoGP’s commercial growth, McLaren’s cross-series sponsorship appeal, Haas’s budget constraints, Esteban Ocon’s next move, and what fan and ticket numbers reveal about demand.

In this episode

04:30 | Stefano Domenicali, Eddie Cue and the paths into F1
Cue discovered Formula 1 through an AutoWeek magazine in a Miami library. Domenicali grew up near Imola. Their different beginnings lead to a discussion about the Apple partnership, emotional connection to sport, and how fans enter the F1 audience.

13:10 | Celebrity, cameras and fan discovery
The hosts discuss Eddie Cue’s account of arranging a camera moment with Kim Kardashian at a race. The question is whether those moments help someone find the sport, and what gives a new fan a reason to stay.

18:15 | An unsettled F1 calendar
The discussion turns to uncertainty around Imola, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, including the challenges the scheduling and logistics teams face while waiting for a decision.

22:17 | IndyCar’s driver market
The hosts discuss Scott Dixon’s departure from Ganassi, Christian Lundgaard’s move to the team, and Connor Daly’s full-time ride.

26:24 | Chip Ganassi on the 2027 lineup
Ganassi joins to talk about Dixon, Lundgaard, contract timing, and how his drivers compete as teammates. INDYCAR confirmed Lundgaard’s signing and Dixon’s move to Arrow McLaren for 2027.

43:05 | Talent, timing and open seats
After Ganassi leaves, Lali and Vincenzo discuss the long road to top-level racing. Talent matters, but so do funding, timing, and seat availability.

49:40 | MotoGP’s commercial buildout
The hosts look at MotoGP’s expanding commercial operation under Liberty Media and what Formula 1’s growth could teach the series.

55:01 | McLaren’s sponsor appeal, and Haas’s challenge
Edward Jones’s presence across McLaren’s F1 and IndyCar programs prompts a discussion about cross-series partnerships and hospitality. The hosts contrast that opportunity with Haas’s effort to bring in enough partners to use more of its cost-cap budget.

1:06:20 | Esteban Ocon’s departure from Haas
Lali and Vincenzo consider Ocon’s career options, the competition for F1 seats, and the possibility of a move into another racing program.

1:13:04 | F1’s fanbase and ticket demand
The hosts discuss Domenicali’s billion-fan claim, what a global fanbase figure measures, race attendance and rising ticket prices.

1:20:05 | Australia’s calendar place and race times
The episode closes with Australia losing its 2027 season opener and a conversation about the appeal of early-morning races.

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Edward Jones has secured exclusivity in the private wealth category with McLaren Racing, becoming the Official Private Wealth Management Partner across the McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team and Arrow McLaren IndyCar.

The agreement is the St. Louis firm’s first motorsport sponsorship.

The F1 activation starts light. Edward Jones will appear on a driver’s helmet visor at a select Grand Prix and at marquee events. Co-branded digital and social content rounds out the 2026 package.

IndyCar takes the larger visual role in 2027. Edward Jones becomes Primary Partner of the No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet at the 111th Indianapolis 500, with Scott Dixon driving, and at additional select races. Dixon’s move to Arrow McLaren was public before the sponsorship.

The buyer logic goes beyond car branding. Hema Widhani told BlackBook Motorsport that Edward Jones wants to reach motorsport’s growing, younger and more diverse fanbase, whose demographic and wealth profile overlaps with the firm’s current and prospective clients. She also pointed to client experiences the firm can offer through McLaren and the geographic mix of a global F1 calendar with IndyCar. That overlap matters.

Widhani said Edward Jones’s activation goals are equal across both series, even though the IndyCar car will carry more visible branding. She also described Dixon as an extension of the brand, citing an alignment in values. His profile gives the firm a recognizable face in client activations.

Widhani joined Edward Jones in June 2025. The firm already has a ten-year relationship with the St. Louis Cardinals and announced a college sports deal in July covering Duke, UNC, and Oregon. Motorsport adds an international platform to that existing sports portfolio.

Edward Jones holds a different McLaren seat from SharkNinja, which has an Official Partner deal across the team’s broader multi-series program. Edward Jones bought private wealth exclusivity and a staged F1-to-IndyCar rollout. SharkNinja’s deal spans a wider range of McLaren racing programs.

The question for 2026 is how quickly Edward Jones builds the client experience and content side before the Indy 500. Widhani framed both series as central to the commercial plan.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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At the Paley Center in New York on September 24, Eddy Cue told me how he pitched Stefano Domenicali and Liberty Media CEO Derek Chang for Formula 1’s U.S. media rights. He had named another company that could do the job: Netflix.

“You should either do the deal with Netflix, or you should do it with us,” Cue recalled. Netflix had built Drive to Survive and knew how to bring the sport to a wide audience. Apple, he argued, would make F1 its top priority. He gave the people selling the rights a reason to consider his rival while asking them to choose him.

I think that was the most honest moment of our conversation. Cue understood what Netflix had done for F1, and Apple had already spent three years showing Domenicali how it worked. His pitch carried the weight of a partnership F1 could inspect for itself.

F1 signed a five-year agreement for Apple TV to carry every race for U.S. viewers beginning in 2026. The financial terms were not disclosed. Reuters reported an annual figure of around $140 million, compared with roughly $90 million in ESPN’s previous deal. A check large enough to change F1’s U.S. media revenue mattered, but so did trust and passion.

Domenicali was moving the sport away from a broadcaster that had just delivered its largest U.S. television audience, averaging 1.3 million viewers per race in 2025. Those fans had to learn a new destination, with most races behind a subscription. Apple would also have to reach people that ESPN never reached. A larger rights fee paid to F1 immediately, with growth happening over years.

The Audition

The relationship had a working product before the rights negotiation. BoS covered Apple’s film project in June 2022. When the television deal was announced in October 2025, Domenicali said the two companies had spent the previous three years working together on F1: The Movie. The film put Apple inside live Grand Prix weekends, where the schedule belongs to the race and every extra piece of equipment needs a reason to be there.

The camera story is a useful measure of what that meant. Cinematographer Claudio Miranda and his team worked with Sony and Panavision on miniature cameras and mounts for the movie cars. Apple built separate wing-mounted cameras to capture footage at real races. According to Panavision’s account of the production, the crews also had to solve vibration, wireless coverage, and frequency conflicts while coordinating with Mercedes and F1. The film cars ran at more than 180 mph. Nobody was going to move a race timetable because a camera lost its signal.

Making the movie required access to teams, drivers, circuits and broadcast positions during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. When the rights deal was announced, Domenicali cited their three years of work on the film and said, “We are no strangers to each other.” F1 had a finished project and years of collaboration to judge before Apple offered to buy the races. The public record does not show how much weight the film carried in the rights decision. My read when the deal was announced was that it served as a proof of concept.

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Why Domenicali Cares about Passion

Cue’s attachment to the sport predates Apple TV. He has spoken about discovering F1 at about 10 years old in a Miami library, where he found a magazine page about a championship he couldn’t watch on American television. He liked cars, and he liked Ferrari because it was red. He told that story himself when the rights deal was announced, as he did again during our discussion.

Domenicali grew up in Imola, watched races from Tosa, and remembers sitting with Ferrari mechanics at the circuit. He later ran Ferrari’s F1 team and now runs the championship. Their childhood routes into racing were different, but both men can recall what first made the sport feel close to them.

Their relationship predates the movie, too. Cue told Autosport in October 2025 that he had known Domenicali since his Ferrari years and stayed close through Stefano’s time at Lamborghini and F1. Cue, a Ferrari board member, called him “a very, very dear friend.” By the time Apple sought the rights, they had years of shared history in the sport.

Onstage, Stefano said the deal would not have happened without the passion. I took him to mean something specific to commerce. Cue could speak to a fan’s first encounter with F1, and the years of film work let Domenicali judge whether that interest survived the hard parts of a partnership. Shared enthusiasm opened the conversation, but the movie tested whether Apple could finish the work.

Stefano also described the result he wants in America: people waking up curious about what happened in F1. That asks more of Apple than moving existing viewers from one screen to another. It requires a reason for someone to check the sport between races, then come back when the cars are on track.

Executive chemistry makes a convenient story after a contract is signed. F1 could also point to the film’s production record and to the product Apple subsequently shipped: every race on Apple TV, free practice sessions, multiple live feeds, and F1 woven into Sports, News, Maps and Music. BoS has covered that distribution system in detail. It gives the rights holder more opportunities to meet a prospective fan on days other than Sundays.

Why Eddy Cue kept Netflix in the plan

Cue’s advice was about the live U.S. rights. He told F1 that Netflix, which had worked with the series since 2018, was a credible alternative to Apple. He also said the documentary should continue on Netflix.

I wouldn’t mistake that pitch for charity. Cue narrowed a crowded field to two companies, then explained why Apple should be one of them. But admitting what Netflix had built lent credibility to his case. He was asking F1 to trust Apple with the live product without asking it to dismantle the series that had helped create the audience.

After Apple won, the companies acted on the logic Cue described. Season eight of Drive to Survive appeared on Apple TV in the U.S. while remaining on Netflix. Netflix, in turn, carried the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix live for U.S. viewers alongside Apple. Apple held the exclusive domestic season package yet still allowed a rival to put one race in front of its subscribers. It also put creator-led race altcasts on the free service Tubi.

When I pressed Cue as to why Apple would play nice with the competition, he didn’t even skip a beat: “Because I care about growing F1, first and foremost.”

These choices have a commercial purpose. Netflix keeps the series that introduces viewers to drivers. Apple puts the same series beside live races. Viewers on Netflix and Tubi can sample a Grand Prix without first subscribing to Apple TV. What I gather from all of this is that Cue is willing to share a small amount of live inventory to reach more people who might pay for the next race on Apple.

We don’t have public conversion figures for that path. Cue said at Paley that race-day viewing was up by a double-digit percentage year over year. He singled out Saturday viewing and said Apple’s audience was younger and more female than ESPN’s. Apple hasn’t released comparable race averages or enough data to show how many Netflix and Tubi viewers became regulars. But both men seemed happy about the current state of the numbers.

The Check Still Matters

Apple’s reported bid was higher than ESPN’s previous annual fee, and Reuters reported that ESPN would not match Apple’s offer. Cue acknowledged onstage that if another company offered a wildly outsized fee, F1 should take it.

F1 had watched Apple build a movie under race-weekend constraints. Domenicali knew Cue well enough to take his account of the sport seriously. Cue gave an honest assessment of Netflix’s strengths. Apple then offered a rights fee that met Liberty Media’s financial test. Each piece strengthened the next.

The governing question remains whether Apple can turn its expensive first season into repeat viewing that endures into the next season and beyond.

My bet is that more premium sports rights negotiations will be preceded by smaller joint projects. A film, a data product, or a distribution experiment lets a league see how a would-be broadcaster works before committing an entire season. Apple put cameras on F1 cars before it put a price on the U.S. races.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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McLaren’s new wordmark draws from the sign above the service station run by Bruce McLaren’s parents in Remuera, Auckland. You would not learn that from the text of McLaren Racing’s September 22 announcement on X. The post called it a “unique legacy,” showed the finished identity in a video and invited fans to “Learn more.” It left the family garage out of the caption.

The replies went straight to the lettering.

One fan wrote, “The current logo and swoosh are iconic.”

Another said the new typography had “no personality, no spirit”.

Two replies cannot tell us what the audience thinks, and the garage story may not change either person’s taste. They do show how quickly people judge a rebrand in the feed where they first encounter it.

Luckily, my friend Christina changed her mind after I posted about the logo's history.

I like the new wordmark. I wish McLaren had led with the story that gives it so much more meaning.

That sign is the source of the new lettering. It hung above the service station owned by Les and Ruth McLaren. Bruce spent his first nine years living in the flat upstairs, then kept learning at the garage after the family moved around the corner. The business shaped him decades before his name appeared on a Formula 1 car. McLaren has kept the familiar Speedmark alongside the wordmark.

Where McLaren’s New Wordmark Came From

When Les McLaren bought the service-station business in 1936, he took over a decade-old building at 586-592 Remuera Road with pumps out front, a workshop at street level and flats above. Bruce was born the following year. Heritage New Zealand’s record of the property describes a boy who worked on his tricycle beside the mechanics and later learned from the garage foreman, Harold Bardsley.

The family moved around the corner to Upland Road in 1946, but the garage remained part of Bruce’s education. He and Les rebuilt an Ulster Austin Seven in the workshop behind their new home. Jack Brabham later based racing cars at the Remuera garage, where Bruce and Phil Kerr also worked on a Maserati in the 1950s. Bruce grew up among people who fixed and raced cars, and his family’s business gave them a place to meet.

McLaren’s announcement says Bruce built the car that took him to his first victory at the service station.

McLaren made the origin a second click

The X announcement had an embedded video and a link to McLaren’s fuller explanation. The caption spoke of ambition, creativity and legacy without naming Les, Ruth, Bruce’s childhood home or Remuera. That matters on a platform where people can reply without opening either asset.

I would have made this a slower reveal, opening on the sign above the pumps and the family who lived upstairs. From there, McLaren could trace the lettering from “McLAREN’S” to “McLAREN” and save the finished wordmark for the end. Fans would reach the design knowing why it looks the way it does.

I’ve written about what happens when a team leaves its story for someone else to tell.

A longer history than the Speedmark

The familiar McLaren symbols came later. Michael Turner’s first team crest placed a kiwi at its center in 1964; Doug Eyre’s Speedy Kiwi followed in 1971; and Raymond Loewy’s chevrons arrived as sponsors gained greater influence over the team in the early 1980s. Then came the Speedmark in 1997. McLaren’s own history traces those changes through shifting owners, sponsors and ambitions.

Each mark had a job. The kiwi declared Bruce’s New Zealand roots, the chevrons suited a sponsor-shaped Formula 1 team, and the Speedmark gave the company a symbol that could travel from race cars to road cars. The service-station sign reaches further back. It belongs to the family who gave the team its name.

McLaren Automotive chief creative officer David Woodhouse told Autocar that the company had spent a period “not recognizing our founder”. That is unusually candid language. The new wordmark now gives McLaren Automotive and McLaren Racing, which operate independently, a shared reference to the person behind both businesses.

That reference will have to travel farther than a launch graphic, however.

McLaren Automotive has plans for a performance SUV, and the McL 6GT concept has already brought Bruce’s road-car ambition back into view. I want to see the Remuera sign wherever McLaren explains why those vehicles belong under his name.

I expect the complaints about generic lettering to soften as more fans see the garage photograph and share it themselves.

There will always be critics.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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MSC Cruises will title Formula 1 races in Belgium, Portugal and Türkiye in 2027, preserving the three-race package it bought for 2026 while rotating which event is titled each year.

The titles are the FORMULA 1 MSC CRUISES GRANDE PRÊMIO DE PORTUGAL 2027 at Portimão on June 18-20, the FORMULA 1 MSC CRUISES BELGIAN GRAND PRIX 2027 at Spa-Francorchamps on July 23-25, and the FORMULA 1 MSC CRUISES TURKISH GRAND PRIX 2027 at Istanbul Park on October 1-3.

This is the second consecutive season in which MSC has taken three race titles. The 2026 package covered Barcelona-Catalunya, Austin and São Paulo. For 2027, the company replaced all three with Spa plus the two returning races.

Portugal is back for 2027 and 2028 after last hosting Formula 1 at Portimão in 2020 and 2021. Türkiye returns under a five-year agreement running through 2031.

The race titles fall under MSC Group’s broader Formula 1 partnership, signed in 2022 and extended through the end of 2030. That agreement covers MSC Cruises and Explora Journeys, as well as trackside branding and hospitality at selected Grands Prix.

For me, the strongest commercial moves sit in Portugal and Türkiye. I see both as destination plays: returning races in tourism markets, with a direct connection between the title rights, hospitality, and cruise sales. Spa gives the package prestige on Formula 1’s longest circuit.

If I were planning the activation, I’d use Spa for European clients and the return races for consumer travel stories.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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On January 27, Formula 1 announced Standard Chartered as its Official Wealth Management and Corporate and Investment Banking Partner. Roberto Hoornweg, the bank’s corporate and investment banking CEO, said the deal reaches 19 of the 21 markets on the F1 calendar. Judy Hsu, who runs wealth and retail banking, said Standard Chartered would bring clients closer to the sport through exclusive experiences.

Standard Chartered is paying for a global meeting place.

A bank with a cross-border client base has a reason to gather people around a global sport that already spans their markets. The race supplies the setting. The bank supplies the relationships.

That is the greater commercial story underneath F1’s boom. We discussed it a bit on our live show, and wrote about Madrid’s hospitality options, which are creating outright business-first spaces at the race.

The sport has become relationship infrastructure. Audience growth makes the room more valuable, while emotional investment gives companies a warmer way to earn time with clients, investors, employees, and media. The sponsor is buying a reason to invite people somewhere they already want to be.

Fabricio Drumond made a related argument in The Race. A leader who turns on a race by choice is in a different mental posture from the same leader attending a sponsored industry conference. F1 reaches the business audience through the fan identity first.

The next question is what a company can do with the attention once it has earned the room.

Formula 1 has begun answering that question publicly. In 2025, F1, Liberty Media, and CAA created the F1 Business Summit during Las Vegas Grand Prix week. The agenda put Derek Chang, Michael Rubin, Toto Wolff, Disney’s consumer-products chief, LEGO’s global marketing chief, and American Express’s chief marketing officer in the same commercial frame. The packages included access to the summit and the Paddock Club rooftop.

F1 built an agenda around a room full of business folks.

The summit matters because it turns an abstract audience claim into a physical product. A conference can put executives in a room. A Grand Prix can give them a reason to stay there, talk about something they care about, and bring a client who might decline a standard industry event.

This is where I believe the commercial mechanics become clear.

Liberty’s 2025 annual filing says most F1 sponsorship contracts run for three to five years, with payments often rising each year. The same filing describes a business built from race promotion, media rights, sponsorship, hospitality, licensing, and Paddock Club sales. F1 is selling the broadcast, the event, the data, the logo, and the room around the logo.

The room itself is the sticky part.

Liberty’s second-quarter 2026 results show the calendar’s power over the books. Revenue fell 38% to $764 million, while adjusted OIBDA fell 61% to $139 million. F1 held five races in the quarter, compared with nine in the same period a year earlier. Liberty said the decline was primarily due to the calendar difference, while increases in contractual fees and new and renewed sponsors offset some of the damage. Business of Speed covered the calendar distortion here.

F1’s financial results move with the number and timing of races, while the best partnerships run on a longer clock. A sponsor signs for the season, builds client plans around the calendar, and expects the relationship to compound across markets.

That makes hospitality the part of the product that connects the media asset to commercial accounts. A bank can use the race to host a founder, a sovereign investor, a family office, or a corporate treasury team. A technology company can bring a customer into the story of data, engineering, or energy. The meetings have built-in meaning and direction around a shared interest.

F1’s own audience research supports the emotional part of the argument. The 2025 Global Fan Survey drew more than 100,000 responses from self-identified, highly engaged fans in 186 countries. Ninety percent said they were emotionally invested in race outcomes, 61% engaged with F1 content daily, and 76% said sponsors enhance the F1 experience.

The relationship begins with speed and drama, then spreads into identity, habit, and cultural belonging.

Pinterest found the same movement from another direction. Searches for “Formula 1 aesthetic outfit” rose 483% in its Summer 2026 Trend Report, which analyzed behavior across more than 600 million monthly active users. We wrote about what that means for sponsors: F1 is entering ordinary life through clothing, food, beauty, and social rituals. That gives a brand more surfaces to work with, provided it brings a useful reason to be there.

A corporate bank has an obvious role in cross-border business and wealth. Standard Chartered’s footprint gives it a reason to host clients in multiple race markets. A software company with real expertise in protecting high-value data can explain the problem of securing telemetry and strategy systems. A brand that brings only a camera crew and a stack of talking points is borrowing relevance from the sport and spending heavily to prove it.

This is also where editorial credibility comes into play in the model.

F1 can put a brand next to a race, a driver, or a summit. It cannot make the audience believe a weak idea. The company still has to contribute knowledge, access, a product that solves a problem, or a point of view that improves the conversation.

The commercial opportunities go one step further. F1 can become a place where those people exchange trust before they exchange business.

That sounds soft until you look at how expensive enterprise sales have become. A sponsorship that produces only impressions is easy to cut when budgets tighten. A partnership that helps a bank deepen five client relationships, gives a CEO a credible stage, and creates content that survives race week has more ways to renew. The value sits in the sequence of interactions, not one exposure report.

The risk is that F1 sells the room too aggressively. When every partner gets a panel, every panel becomes a sales pitch, and every hospitality suite becomes a branded waiting area, the emotional advantage disappears. Executives still know when they are being processed through an activation plan.

Here’s my POV: the fastest-growing F1 commercial inventory over the next two years will lie between sponsorship and business media, in summits, premium content, client experiences, and recurring gatherings built around real expertise.

As I've written and talked about ad nauseam, television exposure will remain the easiest number to print in headlines, but increasingly become the least interesting.

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Business of Speed covers the business, technology, and lifestyle of racing: Formula 1, IndyCar, IMSA, WEC, NASCAR, and more. From Vincenzo Landino, entrepreneur and creator, featured in Bloomberg, TBPN, Yahoo! Finance, Forbes, Adweek, and Front Office Sports. You can find us on Instagram, Substack, and LinkedIn.

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