The Formula One season looked like a two-man race all year between McLaren’s two young drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
Following the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, Piastri led Norris by 34 points, but the gap between the leader and third-place Max Verstappen was a season-high 104 points with just nine races remaining.
However, just two months and four races later, Verstappen has built some intrigue for the last five races. The Dutchman has won three of the last four Grand Prix, and beat the two McLaren drivers during his lone runner-up finish in Singapore.
After winning the U.S. Grand Prix on Sunday in Austin, Verstappen trails Piastri by 40 points for first and is only 26 points behind Norris for second.
ESPN’s Last Hurrah
Verstappen’s resurgence continues just days after ESPN confirmed it would be their last season holding F1’s broadcasting rights.
On Friday, Apple announced it agreed to a five-year deal for F1’s U.S. broadcasting rights. According to Puck, the deal is worth $700 million, or about $140 million annually, far more than ESPN currently pays.
ESPN took over from NBC in 2018, a year before Netflix docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive dropped and brought new fandom to the league. Viewership for F1 races rose from 550,000 to 1.2 million between 2018 to 2022.
The success pushed F1 to add two more U.S.-based races on its calendar: the Miami Grand Prix in 2022 and the Las Vegas Grand Prix in 2023. ESPN signed a new, three-year media deal to keep F1 until 2025 worth an estimated $75 to $90 million.
However, viewership had plateaued over the last two seasons, leading to questions about whether the sport had reached its ceiling in the United States. After hitting a high of 1.2 million in 2022, average viewership in 2023 and 2024 dipped to about 1.1 million.
It didn’t help that, following an exciting drivers’ championship battle between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton in 2021, Red Bull began to dismantle the competition.
In 2022, Red Bull won 17 of 22 races, with Verstappen winning 15. The next year, Red Bull won all but one race, and Verstappen took home a record 19 first-place trophies.
However, much like in 2021, last year laid the groundwork for a more competitive season. McLaren generated one of the quickest turnarounds in history to upset Red Bull for the constructors’ title, while Verstappen managed to fend off Norris for the drivers’ title.
While the constructors’ title is locked up, the drivers’ championship—and the intrigue of the four-time World Champion chasing down new blood—is helping F1 have its best season. F1 is averaging 1.4 million viewers this year on ESPN networks (following Singapore), tracking to be its most-watched season ever just before it passes the league to Apple.
