Nobody Is Interested in How You Drive Your Car
F1 CEO weighs in on fan interest
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In The Fast and the Furious, Edwin (played by Ja Rule) says to Brian (played by Paul Walker), “Everyone knows it’s not how you stand by your car, it’s how you race your car; you better learn that.”
Apparently, Stefano Domenicali has other thoughts.
The Formula 1 president and chief executive spent part of his Saturday at the Hungaroring talking to George Lucas about how new fans watch the sport. On a media call at the start of the summer break, he reported back what he had taken from it.
“I think that the truth is exactly the other way around, because no one is interested in how you drive your car,” he told reporters, in quotes carried by Autosport. “The people are interested if you’re overtaking or not. That’s the vast majority of the people.” Lucas, he said, “was giving me an incredible view on how the new fans are watching Formula 1. They are fascinated by the fact that there is a lot of action.”
The question that prompted it was about battery state-of-charge graphics, which ran on the world feed at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix and then thinned out through Silverstone and Spa as driver criticism of the 2026 rules got louder. Domenicali allowed that “for a niche of our fans, this data is relevant. And of course, it is available.” On the BBC, he took on the energy-management complaints directly, saying fans “don’t understand our technology, division of ‘clipping’, or whatever it is, because it’s too technical for the wider base that we have.”
That answer is what the sport sounds like when the people running it treat it as a business first and a sport second, which is the only way Liberty Media has ever asked Domenicali to think about it.
Sounds like an insult to many on the outside.
