F1 Changes Marketing Tact Amidst Verstappen's Dominant Season

On the back of Max Verstappen’s record-setting tenth straight race win, F1 supremo Stefano Domenicali has changed tact in how he promotes F1, encouraging people to witness history rather than the usual talking points of close racing and lots of overtaking.

“If someone is great, we need to celebrate what they’re doing,” said the Italian.

Greg Maffei, Domenicali’s boss as the CEO of Liberty Media, is backing this approach, for now…

He said “Stefano Domenicali is rightly trying to pivot and say ‘Come watch this historic event, you’ve never seen success like this, you don’t want to miss it.”

Full article: Max Verstappen Dominance A Challenge To F1’s Appeal

Personally, I think this is the right approach to take as we head into the closing stages of the season.

Why?

Well for one, it is safe to assume that all the key metrics Liberty Media track such as TV ratings, visits the the official F1 site, and social media impressions are all down.

At the start of the season, after annual the Drive to Survive spike, our traffic was way up. It has progressively gone down with each trophy Red Bull added to the cabinet.

The story is the same for every other F1 publisher I know, whether they run a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel.

The second reason is that what is happening now is worth being a witness to.

As a long-suffering McLaren fan, I have no allegiance to Red Bull whatsoever, yet recently I find myself kinda sorta hoping Max will win and keep the streak alive.

It’s a streak we’ll tell our grandchildren about, when we’re complaining that the F1 they’re watching isn’t as difficult, isn’t as close, isn’t as competitive as it was ‘back in our day’ 🤣

And the third reason this change of approach is a good idea is this: the reality is nobody cares about a driver in P9 making an overtake for P8.

If people do try and claim these midfield overtakes are what makes the racing interesting, I promise you, they’re deluding themselves.

Anyone remember who finished sixth in Azerbaijan? Or who finished eighth in Hungary?

Monza was a week ago, without looking it up, where did Zhou finish? I watched every lap and I’ve got no idea either, because in the grand scheme of things, it simply doesn’t matter.

With Singapore coming up this weekend, as a community, we should get behind Stefano Domenicali’s new initiative.

When we tell our friends we’re busy watching F1, we should encourage them to join us so they can watch as more history is written by one of the greatest drivers we’ll see in our lifetime.

Here’s to watching history together,

Jarrod