Fast Paced Sport Gaining Popularity

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Every Sunday, people across America wake up to start watching football, baseball, and other popular sports. But I am awake watching a different sport. A sport that is much more popular in Europe, but becoming more and more popular in America. This sport is a high-speed racing sport. One with cars going two hundred miles-per-hour down a straight line just to brake and turn within seventy meters and two seconds. The sport is called Formula 1.  Formula 1 is a racing sport with ten teams competing to be the best. Many Americans are currently getting into Formula 1 thanks to the new Netflix show Drive to Survive, which shows the sport’s excitement and the interesting background details. 

Formula 1 is one of the most exciting and popular sports combining strategy, close racing, and money management into one high-adrenaline event. With teams such as Mclaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull, all named after well-known companies, F1 fans are able to follow the sport with ease. Along with only ten teams, there are only twenty drivers. With so few athletes, F1 fans get to know the personalities involved even better. Even when just entering the sport, you will connect quickly to the drama. 

However, there are some things that everyone needs to know before becoming a fan of the most popular racing sport on the planet.

Ben Houston, an American Formula 1 fan, states, “In order to become an F1 fan, you need to first realize that it isn’t Nascar. The drivers aren’t driving in the same loop every race, but like every sport, it has exciting races and less exciting races. It is the less exciting races that allow the exciting races to look even better.” Houston, a current resident in Israel, has been an F1 fan since 2016 and supports the Mclaren F1 Team, a team that is having great success this year. However, even while being a supporter of Mclaren, Houston says, “Sometimes you’re not rooting for your team to win; you’re just excited to see them finish.” 

Right now would be a fantastic time to start following Formula 1 and getting to know the drivers.  The Formula 1 sport has been dominated by the Mercedes F1 Team since 2014, with driver Lewis Hamilton dominating the competition and winning five drivers’ titles in the last six years. This domination is due to how much money the Mercedes team has compared to the other teams in Formula 1. Because of this one-team supremacy, many fans of F1 only cheer for their teams to do well and get in the top ten in finishing, as opposed to winning the race. However, changes are coming to the sport causing tons of drama and allowing the sport to become much closer and more exciting. 

Formula 1 will have new engine changes soon, resulting in new drama. Fergal Spencer, Mclaren F1 fan and Liverpool resident, told me, “If you listened to the cars now vs. a car from fifteen years ago, you’ll notice the cars sound different. This is because the cars used to have v10 engines, and now they have v6 hybrid motors.” V6 engines are much more powerful and can also use electrical energy for the cars to run. Spencer adds, “The new engine is coming out next year, which means that there is going to be another power shift. What you usually see is when a new era comes in, a new team dominates.” A new era could mean that Mercedes may lose its momentum, and a new team could emerge as being the best for the next few years. 

With new engines coming into play and new drivers joining the sport, now would be a perfect time to become a fan of F1. So join one of the most popular sports on Earth, and start watching Formula 1 today.