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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where we’re wondering why everyone made such a big deal about the eclipse yesterday. Max Verstappen has eclipsed the F1 grid for, like, two years now! Har har har!
Anyway, hope everyone is resting up for the Chinese Grand Prix on April 21. I’m Patrick, and Madeline Coleman will be along shortly. Let’s get to it.
Verstappen dominates the Japanese GP
Man, we were so hyped for the Japanese GP. We talked it up all week as one of the greatest races on the calendar. There was no way this wouldn’t be a thrilling race right off the bat! Let’s do this!
2024 #JapaneseGP 🇯🇵 Timelapse#F1 #Formula1 pic.twitter.com/nttutgKK98
— F1Visualized (@f1visualized) April 7, 2024
Oh, yeah. When you put it that way, the Japanese GP kind of slipped on a banana peel right out of the gates when Daniel Ricciardo and Alex Albon’s crash red-flagged things for half an hour.
Once things got underway again, Verstappen set out with a script revision. After his shock Australia retirement, you just knew the Red Bull driver would want to make a statement in Suzuka: That was a fluke, and no, none of you can lay claim to my rule over this sport. He beat the rest of the field by 12 seconds.
“No one is going to catch Max this year,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said. “His driving and the car are just spectacular.” The Athletic’s Luke Smith called it “the kind of domination that quickly silences serious talk of a title fight.”
Rate the Japanese GP
I’m going to borrow steal a bit from my colleague Jeff Gluck. (I’m having dinner with him next week ahead of the NASCAR race in Texas, so he can hand me the cease and desist papers then.)
Was the Japanese GP good or bad? I want to hear from you fine folks. Follow this link to rate the race and explain your answer. We’ll go over the results on Friday!
Sidenote:
I love this hat.
Respect for YOU, sir. (Philip FONG / AFP)
Let’s talk TV ratings
With the return of the Chinese Grand Prix next weekend, we’ll finish up a month-long F1 tour through Australia, Japan and China. In 2024, F1 won’t race in the U.S. or Europe until May. That’s not inherently a problem (a theme for this section, as you’ll soon find out). Still, it is notable for a sport with powerful European roots and a burgeoning interest in expanding the American market.
The Aussie race began at midnight ET (4 a.m. GMT), the race last weekend in Suzuka started at 1 a.m. ET (6 a.m. BST), and the Chinese GP will begin at 3 a.m. ET (8 a.m. BST). These aren’t unreasonable times for the European audience, but they do limit the American interest.
I wanted to know whether there was a noticeable dip in viewership, so I looked up the ESPN/ABC TV ratings for the first four F1 races going back to 2019. (I didn’t count the 2020 season, which was delayed until July due to the pandemic.) Japanese GP ratings weren’t in when I wrote this, but I’d be surprised if they were higher than the usual Suzuka ratings (around 750,000).
F1 U.S. TV Ratings (First Four Races)
| Season | Race 1 | Race 2 | Race 3 | Race 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
2019 |
659,000 (AUS) |
711,000 (BAH) |
260,000 (CHN) |
539,000 (BKU) |
|
2021 |
879,000 (BAH) |
906,000 (IMO) |
902,000 (POR) |
857,000 (SPN) |
|
2022 |
1,353,000 (BAH) |
1,445,000 (SAU) |
568,000 (AUS) |
1,003,000 (IMO) |
|
2023 |
1,318,000 (BAH) |
1,523,000 (SAU) |
556,000 (AUS) |
958,000 (BKU) |
|
2024 |
1,120,000 (BAH) |
920,000 (SAU) |
541,000 (AUS) |
Three takeaways here:
- Yes, accessible timeslots matter.
- Even in 2022’s viewership bounce, there was a sizable drop-off from Saudi Arabia (which started at 1 p.m. ET) to Australia (1 a.m. ET).
- Australian GP viewership is pretty consistent, with anywhere from 400,000 to 500,000 viewers every year.
- In those five seasons, F1 has averaged 1.101 million U.S. viewers in the second race and only 565,400 viewers in the third race. There wasn’t a steep drop-off in 2021 when they raced at Imola in Round 2 and Portugal in Round 3.
Again, this isn’t necessarily a problem. This is only one audience; the U.S. audience is arguably F1’s freshest. The long-time European fans have a good shot at catching these races live. (There are also plenty of ways not to watch live in 2024.)
One way this becomes an issue: Let’s say Red Bull and Verstappen keep dominating, and the sport continues its slide into competitive monotony. At some point, it might behoove F1 to sustain consistent U.S. and European viewership across every month of the calendar. One possible solution, if you’re looking for one: In 2022, the sport returned to Europe after the Aussie race, and the ratings recovered. In 2019, they sandwiched China between Bahrain and Azerbaijan. Creative scheduling could create buffers for harder-to-watch races.
But then, travel in F1 is complicated, expensive, and time-consuming. I don’t blame F1 for squeezing these three regional races into the same month—and I don’t envy the schedule-makers, who have an impossible list of priorities to sort. Is the travel sustainable? Efficient? Taxing? Are there enough off-weeks? Are the host cities happy? Is the TV audience maximized? Do the F1 races conflict with other track events?
It’s almost impossible to build a 24-race, world-spanning F1 calendar and tick every box. Usually, one element loses. In this case, regionalization and sustainability beat out favorable start times in the American and European markets. I think F1 is just fine with that—even if my body is still recovering. (Won’t F1 think of me!?).
GO DEEPER
Regionalization, Saturday races and more GPs than ever: How F1 made its 2024 calendar
I ran across a couple of bite-sized numbers that didn’t quite fit in the above section. I didn’t take statistics four times in college to let data go to waste! (Look, I was too busy working for the student paper and writing a short story about alpacas running a food stand.) (Yes, I did.) (No, I haven’t tried to get it published.) (Yet.)
There has been some scuttlebutt among fans that American viewership is down year-over-year. And that’s true. Each of the first three races of 2024 came in lower than their 2023 or 2022 versions. But “down” doesn’t necessarily mean “plummeting.”
Okay, the Saudi Arabian GP might be plummeting. But overall, if anything, ratings might be reverting to the peak ESPN saw before 2021’s legendary late-season championship fight between Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen. We’ll monitor this as the season progresses, as three races is hardly a substantial 2024 sample size.
Anyway, let’s throw it to Madeline Coleman in the paddock.
Sergio Pérez’s seat at Red Bull feels like his to lose. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)
Inside the paddock with Madeline Coleman
“I’m a lot more comfortable, a lot more happier and the confidence is slowly coming back.”
Sergio Pérez struggled last season as qualifying became a weakness. After securing pole position in Miami last May, he didn’t secure a front-row qualifying position until this year’s Japanese Grand Prix, when he qualified P2 and started alongside teammate Verstappen.
“Everything was on a margin–it was so easy to lose a tenth or two (and) just be over-pushing a little bit in some of the corners,” Pérez said Saturday. “Everything, the amount of energy that we put into the tires around here is quite high, so it was quite difficult just to get the perfect lap nailed.”
Only 0.066 seconds separated the Red Bull drivers during Q3 and come Sunday, the Red Bulls secured their third 1-2 finish of the season. This starkly contrasts how the 2023 season ended, when Verstappen pocketed win after win (except in Singapore), and Pérez only secured two podium finishes in the 10 races after the summer break. He seems more confident on-track, nailing bold overtakes on the Mercedes drivers on the inside of 130R, a rather fast corner, on different laps.
Fastest part of the circuit?
Yeah, that’ll do – sublime stuff from Checo! 👏#F1 #JapaneseGP pic.twitter.com/9dpF0VXEA1
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 7, 2024
It’s a contract year for Pérez, and last year, questions arose about the status of his seat. When team principal Christian Horner was asked what the Mexican driver needed to do, Horner kept it simple after Sunday’s race: “He just needs to keep doing what he’s doing.”
The drivers’ market should be hot and seems to have started relatively early this season. As Horner said, “Everybody seems to be rushing around, and we’re only four races into the year. We’re not in a huge rush, and obviously, there’s a significant amount of interest in our cars, as you would expect, but Checo has the priority, and it’s going to be a few more races yet before we start to think about next year.”
Here’s a fun story you might have missed during the Japanese GP weekend. Did you know Pérez and Horner made a bet … and Bernie Ecclestone benefited from it?
“I had a bet with him because his best qualifying performance had been P4 here. I had a bet with him to put it on the front row,” Horner said Sunday. “And somehow, having won the bet, he told me that he owed Bernie Ecclestone exactly the same amount of money, so has passed the bet on to Bernie, who was the beneficiary of Checo’s front row. So dear old Bernie is still making money while not even being here.”
GO DEEPER
In the toughest seat in F1, Sergio Pérez finds purpose outside the grid
Outside the Points
Our full takeaways from the Japanese GP are here. Quite a start to the season for Yuki Tsunoda, huh? I didn’t expect him to be outracing Ricciardo so thoroughly this early.
Luke has a good piece up this morning on the interesting dynamic between Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz at Ferrari so far in 2024. Namely, the guy they’re keeping in 2025 (Leclerc) is being outfinished by the guy they’re saying goodbye to (Sainz).
Lead images of Sergio Pérez and Carlos Sainz: Mark Thompson/Getty Images, Clive Rose – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images
