For years, F1 was all Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes. You could pretty much assume that on any given weekend he would out-qualify everyone else and win the pole. Once he started on the pole, he would almost always pull in front of the field and would stay there for the rest of the race. I often wouldn't bother to watch the rest of the F1 race. On those rare occasions when Lewis got beaten at the start, someone else could sometimes win. Usually it would be Vettel when he was still at Ferrari or Bottas at Mercedes. I haven't liked F1 for the reason that I was tired of seeing Hamilton win everything in sight.
F1 has started to improve in the past 2-3 years in my opinion however. McClaren is looking stronger and so is Red Bull. Verstappen has been becoming more and more competitive with Hamilton. I also enjoyed watching George Russell drive the 44 Mercedes car last year when Hamilton was out quarantining because of covid. Russell will probably become the next big Mercedes name. After years of boredom and frustration with F1, I am finally starting to become optimistic and enthusiastic about it.
Here is a link to a good recent article about it below and there is a good series about it on Netflix called "Formula 1: Drive To Survive". The Netflix series is getting a little dated by now though.
I've been following Indycar for much much longer than I have F1, since way back before the IRL/CART split (which i thought was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen in racing). I have always preferred it to F1 because of my aforementioned comments about lack of competition in F1. There is much more parity in Indycar in my opinion and you are much less likely to see one driver dominate a season. I also like its lineups of drivers, team owners, and tracks. There's no way I would miss any Indycar race while I have quite often in the past been willing to miss F1 races.
I also think that Indycar has the best broadcast team in auto racing with Leigh Diffey, Paul Tracy and Townsend Bell. I really think they do a great job of broadcasting a race. Back when NBC was still covering F1 races, I thought THAT was the best broadcast team in racing (Leigh Diffey, David Hobbs and Steve Machett). I've always especially enjoyed listening to Steve Machett broadcast a race. I don't really care for ESPN's F1 coverage that much although I do like that they don't have commercials.
One thing about BOTH F1 and Indycar is that there is a likelihood that whoever wins the pole in either series is likely to win the race. I think that is much more likely to happen in F1 than in Indycar though. In NASCAR, the pole winner is very much less likely to win the race of course.
jalopnik.com
