OPINION: Sport vs. spectacle: How the entertainment narrative is reshaping Formula One
- Kavi Khandelwal
- 4 hours ago
- 6 min read
Written by Kavi Khandelwal, Edited by Gabriel Tsui
The Cause and Effect
Change is inevitable in Formula One. It is constantly in progress for something bigger and better. However, the perception of these changes lie within two viewpoints: sports and spectacle.
It is not that these two viewpoints merely exist together. There is one viewpoint that often dominates the other and reshapes the entire culture of F1. It prioritises entertainment narratives and fan rhetorics that overshadow and misinterpret the sporting reality.
Netflix's ‘Formula 1: Drive to Survive’ has had an indispensable role in supporting this reality.
A boom in popularity has created a narrative-focused interpretation of the sport. The show has gained a massive new audience for F1, incentivising the media, and finding it more profitable to sell drama than the intricacies of the sport.
The effect of this spiked sensation is a dominant fan culture where narratives are commonly based on conspiracies, forced rivalries and character assassinations. These narratives are accepted as fact, altering how fans perceive the teams, athletes, competition and sport itself.
The team as a reality show
The entertainment lens distorts an F1 team from a high-performance engineering unit to a dysfunctional family ripe for drama.
Conspiracy theories & team sabotage
Motorsport bloviators frame a team as a cast of characters. Every move is deliberate and designed. A slow pit stop or a suboptimal strategy is not simply a mistake, but a calculated plot of favouritism or sabotage.
For instance, the fan-driven ‘sabotage’ narrative of McLaren weaves many disconnected events such as a team principal’s comment, mechanical failure or pit stop error into a conspiracy where the team is intentionally harming one driver to benefit another.
However, the sport view recognises the team’s goal to maximise Constructors’ points, making the intentional self-harm narrative illogical. Performance differences are a result of complex variables.
Teams like McLaren may have experienced many separate, explainable operational issues over a season. To intentionally compromise one of two assets makes zero financial or competitive sense.
The drama of team orders
Titlebaits and sensationalists suggest that team orders are the ultimate betrayal of competition. Any intervention is seen as “fixing” the result.
This perspective was immortalised by the “Valtteri, it’s James” meme. It transformed a strategic team decision at the 2018 Russian Grand Prix into a career–defining moment of personal sacrifice for Valtteri Bottas, cementing his image as a loyal ‘wingman’, rather than a 10-time race winner.
The sport view believes that team orders are logical and necessary strategies. When there are two championships on the line, maximising points in both fights is often the primary goal.
The call to Bottas was harsh but a pragmatic calculation by Mercedes to secure maximum points for then-championship contender, Lewis Hamilton. It was a rational decision, and not made in personal slight.
The ‘pay driver’ narrative
This narrative has been warped for years as the entertainment view portrays a ‘pay driver’ as a villain. By the definition of the entertainment perspective, a ‘pay driver’ is an untalented rich kid who stole a seat from the real talents.
This story of injustice has often been applied to Lance Stroll, who has consistently been introduced as ‘the son of the team’s owner’. If Stroll were to make any mistakes on or off-track, it became proof of not belonging in the sport or not deserving the seat.
The sport view highlights the brutal expense of F1. A driver like Stroll brings in significant financial backing which is crucial for the team’s survival and development.
The narrative of simple nepotism ignores both the complex financial realities of F1 and Stroll’s proven talent with multiple podium finishes and a pole position.
The athlete as a fictional character
Drivers are often flattened into two-dimensional characters, fit to pre-written media narratives, stripping them of their complexity as elite athletes.
Weaponising personal narratives
Entertainment dictates a driver’s backstory as their defining character arc, filtering every on-track event through the lens.
The prime example for this is Charles Leclerc and the ‘Monaco Curse’. When he finally crossed the chequered flag of the Monaco Grand Prix as the winner in 2024, the broadcasters framed his win in a somewhat Greek tragedy story, focusing on personal history and fate. While the broadcast will always remain one of the best in F1, Leclerc’s real-life pain has become a narrative device for audience engagement.
The sport view provides history for context with analyses on the lack of performance based on many tangible factors. Leclerc’s string of poor results at his home race is due to a real-world mix of mechanical failures, team strategy errors and driver mistakes.
An athlete is a complex individual with many layers. They are not simply characters fulfilling a script.
The “mentally weak vs strong” discourse
The media and entertainers often categorize athletes into two simple boxes: mentally strong and mentally weak. Any emotional radio message or post-race interview can be clipped and framed as a driver “cracking under pressure”.
This is evident in the framing of Max Verstappen’s teammates at Red Bull. Drivers like Sergio Pérez, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon have failed to match the generational talent of Verstappen. The surrounding narratives labelled them as ‘mentally weak’.
Objectively, however, it wouldn’t be false to suggest that all 20 drivers are mentally elite. Expressing frustration in the high-stakes environment of F1 is a normal human response. The challenges faced by Verstappen’s teammates were often technical as they struggled to adapt to a car engineered around a unique driver style. It was not a simple failure of mental fortitude.
The redefinition of competition
The demand for entertainment is changing the definition of an exciting race. It now requires a compelling rivalry fueled by a dedicated fandom.
“Boring” title fights and need for toxic rivalry
The entertainment view dictates that a rivalry isn’t real unless it’s toxic and involves collisions and off-track arguments.
The respectful and friendly dynamic between McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri is a key example. It lacks the overt conflict that media narratives constantly search for. Any hints of tension between the two drivers are twisted to frame their partnership as fragile and implying a dramatic fallout.
However, the sport view finds rivalry in thousandths of a second in qualifying or a strategic masterclass. The pinnacle of motorsport has two athletes at their absolute peak, pushing each other to new heights. Mutual respect like this is the hallmark of true professionalism.
Fandom as a zero-sum game
The media often picks a protagonist and announces their “rival” as the antagonist. This is especially seen in the media-driven ‘civil war’ between the Ferrari teammates Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. after the latter had been announced to be replaced by Hamilton.
Many social media creators latched onto contents with on-track or off-track tensions and asked the fans to pick a side, forcing the passionate fanbase into a toxic, zero-sum game.
The rational view the fandom as an appreciation of elite talent. It believes that one can have a favourite driver while celebrating the incredible skill of every athlete on the grid. The on-track battles between the Ferrari teammates had been a mark of healthy internal competition, and not a feud that required the fans to pick a side.
The engine of the narrative
The modern media is driven by the need for engagement. It favours dramatic soundbites over sporting context, promotes human drama over technical analysis and crafts simple hero and villain mortality because they are more clickable.
While the two ways of watching F1 can coexist, the entertainment narrative often actively dominates, shapes and potentially diminishes what the sport truly is.
It risks creating a generation of fans who may be missing the very essence of what makes F1 the pinnacle of motorsport in the first place.
