I’m going early with the moaning:
Obligatory Season’s Too Long marker 
Obligatory Too Many Dictatorships marker
It’s genuinely denting my enjoyment.
I accepted the first races in the Middle East as a necessity. The wrong necessity, maybe. But a necessity none the less (at the time).
I naively accepted this, and thought it was OK because it was only temporary.
As time goes on, it has become clear that is anything but temporary.
Too many petrochemical based economies, too many “new” controlling interests.
U.S. ownership hasn’t helped.
It ain’t what it was, but still holds my attention. Politics an’ all, I still love it. It’s all grist….etc.
I am convinced that (like Frank) we are only two or three seasons away from a standardised chassis.
(Hence the subscript on the 2024 season thread title.)
If that happens, I will still watch it, but as a disinterested entity. Not unlike when I watch NASCAR, or Le Mans. I can’t get emotionally involved, so I watch as a distant observer.
This will happen. F1 will be dead.
A little bit of me will die along with it.
Bloody well said.
Despite having the Sky F1 channel every time I missed or forgot to watch a race I wasn’t that bothered.
Think I watched about 3 races live this year, it’s all a bit meh now.
The politics have been more interesting than the racing for several years now.
It can be quite exciting guessing who Verstappen is going to force off the track next!
The racing this year has been the best for years, since there has often not been one team with a clear technical advantage at every track, so, far fewer painfully-predictable results.
The politics, however, have been ugly and tedious, and that will clearly get worse while a bunch of yankee vulture-capitalists continue to fiddle-about trying to reinvent the wheel or mash assorted square pegs into round holes…
They’ll drive it to death’s door in the name of a populism it can never attain, just like all of their predecessors, before they realise that one juggernaut with ten drivers all trying to go in different directions might not necessarily work, and revert to letting it blindly grope its way forwards like it’s always done.
Right now though, they’re sucking any vestiges of “sport” right out of it as they fumblesnatch at “entertainment” instead…
There’s a programme on the BBC news channel at 1730hrs “F1 in 10 Years”, looking at he sport’s future.
Could be worth a look…
He’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse 
Now that it is a US media company owning the promotion and increasingly middle eastern money and now FIA furher it is nothing like it used to be, either as a technology or a sport.
The new chassis and engine rules are committee outputs with the financially influential engine makers (though the very insistent Porsche and Renault are out of it 
) dropping the MGU-H, the best part of the hybrid system technically, because it wasn’t cheap enough for road cars.
Now with poor charging potential the chassis rules are trying to compensate for how shit the engines will be.
As always the new rules will lead to field spread, and if it is crucial bits of the engine causing it we will wait a year or two before we get good racing back.
It is very depressing.
I don’t have Sky, follow thw races on the F1 app lap charts and watchg the C4 highlights if it looks interesting and I don’t forget.
Having written all that I got an invitation to a FIA F1 legends dinner and the O2 bonanza announcement completely out of the blue this month. I haven’t had any contact with anybody for 15 years but saw a few old colleagues at Ross’s birthday do so maybe it hails from there.
Involves me going to that there London so maybe not…
As ever Frank an interesting insight. The event sounds like a nice way to meet up with old colleagues, and also get a feel for how those still working in the circus feel about the direction it’s going.
I was invited to the “Formula 1 legends” dinner by F1, which was a great privilege. See how many people you F1 fans can recognise
Did they have to dig out the highchair for Bernie?
Amazing set of pics Frank 