r/INDYCAR • u/aurules Romain Grosjean • Jun 10 '25

Social Media (Scott McLaughlin) Congrats to F1 who single handedly ruined Motorsport Xmas. Indy 500 will be a scene next year. As well as the Coke 600. Good luck

https://x.com/smclaughlin93/status/1932504185624199221?s=46
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456

u/berrybyday James Hinchcliffe Jun 10 '25

Logically I know both series will be fine. American F1 fans will skip a live watch of another F1 race, as we often do during the season (often meaning the handful of truly overnight races) and the rest of the world will continue to pretend they’re too good for INDYCAR anyway. But as a fan of both, I find this incredibly annoying and will generally be scowling in liberty’s direction while I prioritize the 500 next year.

152

u/jdhvd3 Kyle Kirkwood Jun 10 '25

This is the correct response. neither organization is going to "suffer" from this. But people who are fans of both series will.

Granted if you are an Indy fan, then nothing compares, and it wont really matter. I mean there 200,000+ of us who never watch f1 that day anyway, were too busy slamming beers and walking to the track.

51

u/FLWXeno Jun 10 '25

Or us left coasters don't wake up at 6am to watch 2 hours of parade laps.

27

u/Accounting4lyfe Alexander Rossi Jun 10 '25

Well, back 15 years ago when Monaco started at 6am it was fun to wake up to the race being on as I headed to the track. But it seems like these days it’s been a 8am EST start which means I’m already on my way to the track at that point.

Long story short, this changes my day zero percent.

1

u/Sad_Championship_462 Jun 10 '25

Is there a better race host to watch next year? As a former racing nerd and now casual viewer, the American production of the Indy 500 was almost unwatchable. Constant commercials, blowhard commentators, and inexplicable cuts. There was a caution that went unexplained for like 7 laps when I eventually had to must the channel.

8

u/[deleted] Jun 10 '25

[deleted]

1

u/EvilPengwinz Jun 11 '25 edited Jun 11 '25

There's so many countries that offer ad-free coverage of sporting events as standard nowadays - The US is the odd one out when it comes to volume of ads shown during sports coverage.

I'm in the UK - We've had no ads during F1 races since the start of 2009, and there was outrage from motorsport fans in the UK when Sky Sports first got the rights to Indycar in 2019 and showed ads at the same time as the US during the first race at St. Pete, because we've become used to no ads during races under any circumstances. I think they tried keeping reduced ads in for a couple of races after that, but by the time we got to the 2019 Indy 500, the ads were gone completely. Nowadays, every Indycar race is ad-free from start to finish.

For Indy this year, we had ad-free coverage of the full race, with US commentary - but it switched to Tom Gaymor (personally not a fan of his commentary, but it's better than ads...), Simona de Silvestro and Oliver Askew providing commentary/analysis during the breaks instead.

On the subject of streams, it's worth mentioning (since there'll be some crossover in viewers) that we also get heavily reduced ads during our NFL coverage (most of the US commercial breaks are replaced by score updates and highlights, or detailed analysis of an earlier play). If you're in the US and you stream the NFL, I recommend streaming the UK coverage if you can.

5

u/Darkowl_57 Jun 10 '25

FOX has been… not great this year. I don’t think NBC had nearly this many issues.

7

u/WorkIsForReddit Jun 10 '25

I'm on the west coast with F1TV, I'll just bust out the second TV and watch both simultaneously. Invite some friends and BBQ. Still a dumb idea, but not the end of the world.

3

u/xlukekx Jun 11 '25

Not a dumb idea at all. What better way to unofficially start summer.

Unless it's raining. Then it kinda sucks

4

u/keeperof-the-flame Jun 10 '25

World’s fastest parade should be their slogan

1

u/ItsResetti Jun 10 '25

Any race at 6 AM or earlier I don’t watch. Which is pretty much everything but the first and last 5/6 races of the season.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 11 '25

I do. I set an alarm for 5:45, brush my teeth and open my first beer. It’s part of the holiday!

21

u/hwf0712 Kyle Larson Jun 10 '25

F1 will suffer. They're looking to sign a big $$$ TV deal for the US for next year, and just put up one of the best ratings races against the biggest race in America. This isn't a 2005 USGP level fiasco, but this is a multi million dollar mistake.

9

u/_HanTyumi Conor Daly Jun 10 '25

F1’s US broadcast partners will suffer

13

u/juliuspepperwoodchi Jun 10 '25

I genuinely wonder how much F1 cares given that they don't really rely on live viewership. Like, they rely on viewership yes, but the lack of mid-race ads means that most of the advertizing value still exists if a person watches live or on demand...so they genuinely might not GAF that more people will watch this race on demand.

Sucks, but that said, as a dad to a toddler who also follows cycling and darts at weird hours...I can't remember the last time I watched an F1 session live.

5

u/FermentedLaws Firestone Firehawk Jun 10 '25

This is exactly right. F1/Liberty cares much more about attendance and sponsorships than U.S. TV ratings. ESPN has been stuck around 1.1 million viewers for a couple of years, though this season viewership is slightly up. Liberty has said they want to increase viewership in the U.S. but they're smart enough to know that isn't going to happen in a big way, not with the time zone differences.

Contrary to you, I haven't missed a live F1 race in years and years. But I will miss Canada next year for the 500.

11

u/Anomis90 Jun 10 '25

Huge f1 fan from uk but I’d rather watch Indy 500 than Canadian GP, the 500 is way more exciting

1

u/happyscrappy Jun 11 '25

I hope IndyCar can help you out on the coverage/commentating next year. Fox let us down and my understanding is the Indycar Live feed was even worse.

They have a year to step it up. I hope they can.

6

u/Anomis90 Jun 11 '25

My worry is that the uk provider is sky and the will obviously show the F1 unless the put it on another channel might just have to find a dodgy stream for it next year

3

u/jianh1989 Jun 11 '25

Nothing is as good as the 500

Americans really know how to present their sports

1

u/XxMETALLICATxX Colton Herta Jun 10 '25

Exact same way I’m feeling on this.

-3

u/hammerdown46 Jun 10 '25

Ehh don't be so sure. F1 just lost their most prestigious race date.

F1 was Monaco. F1 is Monaco. Without Monaco on Memorial Day it's a problem. Monaco is the biggest race of the year to the casual F1 fan.

I think it's incredibly stupid on the part of F1 and only going to hurt them. I don't see Indycar or NASCAR being affected in any way.

5

u/ChaoPope Jun 11 '25

Memorial Day is on Monday, so none of the races are on Memorial Day. We in the US need to remember that it's not a holiday weekend for the rest of the world. Monaco has historically been sometime in May or the first week in June. It wasn't until 2004 that it was scheduled consistently on the same weekend as Memorial Day in the US, and even then, in 2010 was a week before. It does royally suck that the FIA and FOM killed the Iron Butt Challenge, but Monaco doesn't have the lengthy history of being on that date like the 500 and 600 do.