|
Drive to Survive is great to get your interests peaking. You get exposed to some personalities too which makes the sport more enjoyable when you know a bit more about each driver. Unfortunately, there's a whole lot of it that is fake/exaggerated. One example is last season they showed a tense situation between Norris and Ricciardo at McLaren and realistically, there was no tension there at all between the drivers. Only Ricciardo and the car.
There are currently 3 legends on the grid: Verstappen (Current 2x World Champion that ended the Hamilton/Mercedes terror), Hamilton (7x World Champion - only Schumacher has as many; absolute legend as a driver but his personality is loved by many and despised by many too), Alonso (2x World Champion who has a history of horrible business decisions by switching to terrible teams, would easily have twice as many championships by now)
There are only two drivers on the grid who in terms of skill level are almost impossible to defeat in a decent car: Verstappen and Hamilton; Verstappen is younger and more aggressive so even as a biased fan of his, it's hard to deny that from a purely skills point of view he has an edge on Lewis. The battle between these two will always essentially come down to the constructor and Red Bull Racing has only recently usurped Mercedes as the best constructor.
There is 1 driver right now that has serious potential to become a world champion: Charles LeClerc
There is 1 constructor right now that has serious potential to become the constructor champion: Ferrari - they probably have the fastest car at the moment but are plagued with mismanagement, reliability, setup issues. I think they may be a dark horse to win next year.
There is another driver who would have serious potential if he ever gets a half-way decent car: Lando Norris (Very popular choice)
Besides Red Bull Racing, Ferrari, Mercedes - there are 7 other teams worthy of support/being a fan of.
The most worthy is probably McLaren. They are responsible for creating the greatest F1 car of all time (MP4/4) driven by the greatest pilot of all time (Ayrton Senna) ran by the legendary Rod Dennis. Very rough years for them lately but they'll bounce back at some point. They were my team for a very long time but they got a little too "woke" for me lately. I've been a Verstappen fan since he got out of karting so it felt natural for me to be an RBR guy now.
The second most worthy is probably Alpine who is essentially Renault - they're moving up the order pretty quickly and have a lot of history in the sport.
Williams is one of the greatest F1 constructors of all time but you would have never guessed it based on their performances for a very long time.
Audi will be joining F1 in 2026 and I guarantee they will be a dominant team so very easy team to get in on the fan train early for.
|