With five rounds down and 18 rounds to go, the 2022 Formula One World Championship looks set to be Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen faceoff for the title.
Leclerc leads the title race with 104 points to Verstappen’s 85, while Verstappen holds three race wins to Leclerc’s two. Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz sit third and fifth in the standings, with George Russell and Lewis Hamilton parked in fourth and sixth in a Mercedes that has proven unexpectedly cumbersome.
Meanwhile, in the corporate meeting rooms of Liberty Media, we can safely assume there’s a jovial atmosphere.
One of the key tenets of Liberty Media’s strategy for expanding F1 in a more international direction has been the aim of capturing the large, but historically elusive market that is the United States. After Miami, we have to wonder whether it’s a matter of if or when.
With ESPN citing a viewership of 2.58 million, the 2022 Miami Grand Prix became the second most viewed F1 race in the United States, second only to a delayed airing of the 2002 Monaco Grand Prix.
While NASCAR barely (2.61 million) topped F1 in terms of American viewership last Sunday, the key demographic — adults aged 18 to 49 — sat on the open-wheeled side of the fence.
For 2023, the Formula One calendar will include three races in the United States. Miami and the Circuit of the Americas will be joined in the rotation by the freshly announced Las Vegas Grand Prix, set to be held on a temporary street circuit in November. Much has been made of the image and atmosphere that F1 aims to present and cultivate with the race weekend structure and experience, and with the addition of the Las Vegas Grand Prix, that goal may well have reached its peak.
NASCAR, on the other hand, may not be experiencing an irredeemable fall from grace; the direction of the sport is far from clear.
In particular, the broadcast put on by FOX Sports over the past few seasons has been widely panned as increasingly…
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