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Welcome back to Prime Tire, where I’m wondering if Lewis Hamilton has won a race with Ferrari while I wasn’t away covering the World Cup? No? So I’m the problem, then. Got it.
I’m Patrick, back just in time for summer break (classic), and Luke Smith will be along shortly. Let’s dive in.
Oh, and, also, a quick ask today: If you know someone who might like Prime Tire, forward this email their way. Or if you think, “Get a load of these guys,” then that’s also valid. Spread the good/bad word. Send the heralds. Etc.
Sports Crossover: Lessons from the World Cup
I have returned from four weeks of World Cup duty and, I regret to inform you, I spent most of it thinking about F1. Here are five things the World Cup can teach F1, should it care to listen.
1. Everybody is exhausted.
As the World Cup began, there was some worry about player burnout from an expanded 48-team tournament, on top of a Club World Cup and club seasons stacked into one year. A record 104 World Cup games later, it’s hard to argue with that. Soccer never really got an offseason this year.
Neither did F1, after 24 races in 2025 and an early start to testing in February. Every year, we hear similar warnings from drivers and the people who work in the paddock. There is a real cost to expanding the schedule.
2. Nobody likes post-match steward chicanery.
The Folarin Balogun red card reversal is multifaceted. Something about it in particular is also emblematic of F1: Results can change after the whistle! Pierre Gasly can lose a podium he won in Monaco hours after the race! And then get it back days later! And this is normal!
F1 fans have long known that results often aren’t decided until hours or days later, in stewards’ rooms and after appeals. Thanks to VAR reversals and the Balogun controversy, fans watching the World Cup learnt the same lesson.
I don’t really have a solution for F1. Post-race scrutineering and bureaucracy are baked into the sport. But it’s also quite a buzzkill sometimes!
3. The people cry out for underdogs.
There is a constant tug-of-war in F1 between merit-based dominance and some sense of parity. F1 markets itself as “the pinnacle of motorsport” — the best drivers in the best-engineered cars win. Develop the best, drive the best and the glory is yours. If you can’t keep up, that’s on you.
And yet, the World Cup showed you can pull the lever, expand and level the playing field a bit, and it doesn’t dilute the end product or keep the top dogs from being top dogs. Spain still won it all as a worthy champion, but a 48-team format let Cape Verde captivate fans and led to traditional powers such as Germany bowing out early in thrilling matches; the ceiling stayed exactly as high while the ever-moving floor made the stakes more interesting.
In F1, the already-existing regulations to keep tinkering with are the number of teams, tighter spending ceilings and resource-allocation rules, I think.
4. Hydration breaks opened a door.
Everyone hated them, but they sure seemed to work seamlessly while presumably making Fox Sports a lot of money … and you know other leagues and their broadcasters took note.
You don’t even have to think too hard to imagine what this looks like in F1. Heat hazards at races are becoming more common, and Europe in particular is getting hotter faster than anywhere on Earth. You can imagine mandatory red flags twice a race for “safety” as ads roll on Apple TV and Sky Sports.
Not saying I want this to happen, but … we’re in a timeline now where it could!
5. The bill comes due.
High ticket prices (some World Cup final tickets reached $12,000) didn’t stop the World Cup from hitting 99.7 percent occupancy and a record attendance of 6.8 million people. But you can’t buy back goodwill. FIFA is now in turmoil and federations are in open revolt after president Gianni Infantino planned to sell stakes in the tournament to private investors.
Attending F1 races is also becoming a pricey luxury. Ticket prices continue to rise, with Silverstone general admission having more than doubled since 2016. About F1’s business, reigning champion Lando Norris said this last week:
“The thing that’s a shame is that Formula 1’s (become) too heavily led by the fact it’s a business nowadays and not how can you make the sport the best possible. It’s how can you just make the most money as a business, and that’s just not what it should simply be. That’s not how a sport should be run.”
The public opinion debt does not come due as gradually as it erodes. Ask FIFA!
Oh, the last thing I learned: We should make the cars quieter so fans can come up with fun chants. And now …
A Rant About F1 and ‘Star Wars’
Iconic American filmmaker George Lucas was at the Hungarian GP last weekend. That Lucas likes F1 shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s watched the pod race scene, the speeders in “Attack of the Clones,” or his film “American Graffiti.” Dude loves fast things.
What was a surprise to me was F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali citing a conversation with Lucas to defend F1 broadcasts not showing cars’ battery-charge data during races.
“I had an interesting discussion with George Lucas in Hungary, and he was giving me an incredible view on how the new fans are watching F1,” Domenicali said.
Domenicali said Lucas told him new fans have no interest in the process of driving or overtaking, and are instead “fascinated” by the increases in overtakes and action on track. To Domenicali, this argument was validation for keeping it simple on broadcasts.
Oh, boy … I am conflicted here. I’m in a real bind. “Star Wars” is my religion, I think? I could go on for days about my reverence for Lucas and how he sees the world. And … dang it, I think his gut instinct is right here, too. Is “Star Wars” the deepest storytelling or writing? Not always, no. Does my heart sing, and do I mutter “pew pew” when I watch some X-Wings do some cool stuff? Yeahhh. Yeah. Yes. I do. I like the Star War when it does Star War things and makes Star War sounds.
And I like when the F1 cars do that fun racing stuff, even when I know, intellectually, there are flaws underneath the hood. And stew about those the week after. And agree when the drivers grumble about Anakin Skywalker’s fall to the dark side being written with too much interior subtext and thus coming off rushed on-screen the batteries.
Lucas, as always, has a point. There is not one single type of fan consuming F1 these days.
Let’s end this newsletter and send us off to summer break with one last dispatch from Luke.
Inside the Paddock with Luke Smith
The Circuit of The Americas is braced for a record-breaking United States Grand Prix weekend attendance in October, according to the track’s chairman.
On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, COTA has gone from almost falling off the calendar to becoming one of F1’s biggest events in the past decade. Last year’s weekend crowd exceeded 400,000, putting it behind only the British and Australian GPs for gate figures.
But that figure looks set to be surpassed this year, according to COTA co-founder Bobby Epstein.
“We’re actually on pace for a record year,” he told reporters this week. “(We’re) seeing massive demand, and could easily break our record, our prior year record.”
Epstein said there’d be “good meetings with the highway department” over road improvements to get fans from downtown Austin to the track. He estimated it could allow for an extra 15,000 to 30,000 fans per day thanks to additional lanes.
COTA has also added Thursday action to its schedule this year with a “Grand PrixView” day, when fans can get into the track starting at $20. F1 Academy will be on the track that day, and fans can also access the pit lane walk and the fan zone before the race weekend fully begins.
On the debate over the impact of F1’s new rules on the sport’s overall health, Epstein said the event itself held massive interest regardless.
“So I’m not as focused on the rules and rights that affect the competition,” he said.
Back to you, Patrick.
Outside the Points
📅 F1 will end its season in Europe if the planned rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi cannot go ahead. It’ll make the call on the Middle East races in September.
😅 Nothing else to share here other than I missed you all. So much that I’m taking the next two weeks off and Prime Tire will be coming out once a week over F1’s summer break, on Wednesdays. So, uh, …. see you in Zandvoort? It’s nothing personal, I promise. You lot are fine.
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