The 2025 Formula 1 season can be summed up in one word: entertainment.
The sport’s 75th anniversary year meant an over-the-top reveal party in London, complete with a red carpet and an awards show-style format of bad puns and musical performances. Apple not only released Brad Pitt’s F1: The Movie but also bought the sport’s media rights for $140 million per year. Drive to Survive’s seventh Netflix season, a series of governing body scandals, and Christian Horner’s (and Helmut Marko’s) departure from Red Bull kept spectators satisfied with a plethora of drama, and a looming 11th team only ensured more was on its way.
Mark Thompson
But for all the noise that drifted viewers’ attention off track, F1’s 2025 season ended with renewed hope. Hope that the real entertainment doesn’t come in the form of caviar bumps on Miami yacht decks parked atop plastic vinyl posing as seawater, or Elvis impersonators roaming the Las Vegas Strip paddock.
Hope that the real entertainment still lies on track—even if a championship win from third place tastes bittersweet.
As more fans flocked to the sport this year, F1 seemed to be everywhere and inescapable: from beauty advertisements to social media campaigns to Vogue magazine spreads. I heard from several fans—both from the V12 era and the DTS generation—that they were experiencing F1 exhaustion as the sport’s pursuit of new spectators and revenue streams meant it reared its head around every corner.
I, for one, decided to hit the brakes on my race reporting for a number of reasons, but something I’m calling “Formula Fatigue” was one of them. Even the drivers, the very people central to the sport’s sustained success, expressed frustration with a shift toward Hollywood as Max Verstappen chose to forgo the driver-exclusive screening of “F1” and continued to criticize F1’s anniversary additions.
Kym Illman, Paul Bonser, Jakub Porzycki via Getty
Yet as the championship fight narrowed in the final few races, F1 showed that even as the sport increasingly appeals to a mass commercial audience, a three-way battle for the first time in 15 years can provide the glimmer of magic dedicated viewers—or jaded journalists—desperately desire.
And the numbers proved it: The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix hit a new race viewership record of 1.8 million spectators on ESPN.
That hope and viewership may not have stuck around as the gap between first and second place grew on the final lap of the season, but it still showed that F1’s best product remains racing.
When Verstappen crossed the checkered flag first in 19 out of 23 races in 2023, it seemed like most of the globe began to root against him. But in the year 2025, he became something far from synonymous with his name: an underdog.
Suddenly, the driver who seemed to outwardly despise F1’s American show business venture became the provider of entertainment. As the season finale neared, McLaren team principal Zac Brown even likened Verstappen to a horror film villain who refused to be beaten.
Mark Thompson, Clive Rose, NurPhoto via Getty
In fact, against all odds, the 2025 F1 season became a story of entertainment through underdogs: from Hulkenberg’s podium at Silverstone to Williams’ fifth-place World Constructors’ Championship standing.
But it was the trio of underdogs fighting for a title that seemed to hook viewers.
McLaren’s two drivers may have won seven races each—far from the traditional idea of an expected loser—but Norris or Oscar Piastri bringing home the title was never guaranteed. It’s easy to look back at Norris winning the first race of the season and build a narrative of a dominant car, but it took him seven races after the Australian Grand Prix to stand on the top podium step for a second time.
If Verstappen’s underdog story was turning a 104-point deficit into two points in just nine races, Piastri’s was playing the team game. And Norris, even when leading the championship, exemplified an underdog story of being everything athletes are told not to be: candid and vulnerable, sometimes to a fault.
Clive Rose via Getty
When the fireworks painted the pitch-black sky, and Norris sprayed championship-winning champagne from third place, the result may not have had the “wow-factor” that spectators felt they were promised with a tight title fight, like a photo finish or last-lap lunge.
But F1’s finale was possibly exactly the ending it deserved: a slightly sweet, slightly bitter finish that forced fans to reflect on the season and think: Maybe the sport is greater than the sum of its wins. Or at least greater than its advertising space.
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