For years I struggled to understand the hype about F1, What is so entertaining about this race where few ugly looking cars racing each other and collide? I honestly and cordially gave a few attempts to watch this game; I was bored to my core in fifth minute, every time. It was more boring than watching chess, for which I probably could gather little more patience, may be half an hour.

Seriously, what’s the deal with F1? Let me see,, to start with, this is an over expensive entertainment where only rich teams get to race and rest sit and watch. Each racing team has its own R&D team, who continuously research on their model, to make it more fast and efficient. They come up with a highly dynamic car (car is it?), which almost look like a mutated frog. These cars are completely useless outside those circuits; you can’t drive them on the roads without risking lives of you and people around you. Besides this, they have a big team of helpers, paid just to change the tyres and fill fuel, greatest job on earth. And then there are these star drivers with their costume covered with stickers from the fuel companies, most of them read “burn our oil”. Looks like I have endless complaints.

Totally pointless, just like golf. You know golf! Hitting a ball with a stick and walking behind it! Apparently this is another multi-billion dollar sports (sports!?). But at least golf can be customised to your pocket, can be played in your backyard. F1 is not your cup of tea, unless you are a billionaire and don’t have a way to burn your money.

Surprisingly, it has a big fan following in India. I recall my college days, when it had more fan followers than tennis and basketball, combined (India dint even have F1 then). It’s the same crowd which read “The Alchemist”, watched “Chicago” and listened to “Cradle of filth”. Simple rule, if you follow something which a layman can’t understand, you are the man!

Anyways, Indian government agree with me on this, rather its other way round. It said that Formula One race “does not satisfy conditions which focus on human endeavour for excelling in competition with others, keeping in view the whole sports movement from Olympic downwards.” Ministry says “Formula One is expensive entertainment and the outcome is determined by technology hence it is not ‘pure sports’”. Totally makes sense, India doesn’t need F1. Instead same R&D team can be dedicated to do something more useful in same area, may be making electric car more efficient.

I am waiting to see a day when this hype dies down, and all this money spent on something useful.

*****Update 02/07******

I have one more thing to add here, on F1 “being sports”. What are we judging here? Is it technology? Or ability of the driver? Or just efficiency of pit boys?. My point is, if you want to judge few drivers then you need to give all of them same car. If you give different (technology wise) cars to different drivers then you simply do not have a scientific methodology to decide the victor.

This post makes few more points, please read