{"id":839093,"date":"2026-07-31T22:33:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/839093\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T22:33:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T22:33:10","slug":"what-f1-can-learn-from-the-world-cup-plus-is-george-lucas-right-about-f1-regs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/839093\/","title":{"rendered":"What F1 can learn from the World Cup. Plus: Is George Lucas right about F1 regs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here<\/a> to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.<\/p>\n

Welcome back to Prime Tire, where I\u2019m wondering if Lewis Hamilton has won a race with Ferrari while I wasn\u2019t away covering the World Cup? No? So I\u2019m the problem, then. Got it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Patrick, back just in time for summer break (classic), and Luke Smith will be along shortly. Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n

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, \u201cGet a load of these guys,\u201d then that\u2019s also valid. Spread the good\/bad word. Send the heralds. Etc.<\/p>\n

Sports Crossover: Lessons from the World Cup<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

1. Everybody is exhausted.<\/p>\n

As the World Cup began, there was some worry<\/a> 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\u2019s hard to argue with that. Soccer never really got an offseason this year.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

2. Nobody likes post-match steward chicanery.<\/p>\n

The Folarin Balogun red card reversal<\/a>\u00a0is multifaceted. Something about it in particular is also emblematic of F1:\u00a0Results can change after the whistle!\u00a0Pierre Gasly\u00a0can lose a podium<\/a>\u00a0he won in Monaco hours after the race!\u00a0And then get it back days later<\/a>! And this is normal!<\/p>\n

F1 fans have long known that results often aren\u2019t decided until hours or days later, in stewards\u2019 rooms and after appeals. Thanks to VAR reversals<\/a> and the Balogun controversy, fans watching the World Cup learnt the same lesson.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really have a solution for F1. Post-race scrutineering and bureaucracy are baked into the sport. But it\u2019s also quite a buzzkill sometimes!<\/p>\n

3. The people cry out for underdogs.<\/p>\n

There is a constant tug-of-war in F1 between merit-based dominance and some sense of parity. F1 markets itself as \u201cthe pinnacle of motorsport\u201d\u00a0\u2014 the best drivers in the best-engineered cars win. Develop the best, drive the best and the glory is yours. If you can\u2019t keep up, that\u2019s on you.<\/p>\n

And yet, the World Cup showed you can pull the lever, expand and level the playing field a bit,\u00a0and it doesn\u2019t dilute the end product or keep the top dogs from being top dogs.\u00a0Spain still\u00a0won it all as a worthy champion<\/a>, but a 48-team format let\u00a0Cape Verde captivate fans<\/a>\u00a0and led to traditional powers such as Germany bowing out early in thrilling matches;\u00a0the ceiling stayed exactly as high<\/a>\u00a0while the ever-moving floor made the stakes more interesting.<\/p>\n

In F1, the already-existing regulations to keep tinkering with are the number of teams, tighter spending ceilings and resource-allocation rules, I think.<\/p>\n

4. Hydration breaks opened a door.<\/p>\n

Everyone hated them, but they sure seemed to work seamlessly<\/a>\u00a0while presumably\u00a0making Fox Sports a lot of money<\/a>\u00a0\u2026 and you know other leagues and their broadcasters took note.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t 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\u00a0getting hotter faster than anywhere on Earth<\/a>. You can imagine mandatory red flags twice a race for \u201csafety\u201d as ads roll on Apple TV and Sky Sports.<\/p>\n

Not saying I want this to happen, but \u2026 we\u2019re in a timeline now where it could!<\/p>\n

5. The bill comes due.<\/p>\n

High ticket prices (some World Cup final tickets reached $12,000<\/a>) didn\u2019t stop the World Cup from hitting 99.7 percent occupancy and a record attendance of 6.8 million people. But you can\u2019t buy back goodwill. FIFA is\u00a0now in turmoil and federations are in open revolt<\/a>\u00a0after president Gianni Infantino planned to sell stakes in the tournament to private investors.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s business, reigning champion Lando Norris said this last week<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that\u2019s a shame is that Formula 1\u2019s (become) too heavily led by the fact it\u2019s a business nowadays and not how can you make the sport the best possible. It\u2019s how can you just make the most money as a business, and that\u2019s just not what it should simply be.\u00a0That\u2019s not how a sport should be run.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public opinion debt does not come due as gradually as it erodes. Ask FIFA!<\/p>\n

Oh, the last thing I learned: We should make the cars quieter so fans can come up with fun chants<\/a>. And now \u2026<\/p>\n

A Rant About F1 and \u2018Star Wars\u2019<\/p>\n

Iconic American filmmaker George Lucas was at the Hungarian GP last weekend. That Lucas likes F1 shouldn\u2019t surprise anyone who\u2019s watched\u00a0the pod race scene<\/a>, the\u00a0speeders in \u201cAttack of the Clones,\u201d<\/a> or his film \u201cAmerican Graffiti.\u201d Dude loves fast things.<\/p>\n

What was a surprise to me was F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali citing a conversation with Lucas<\/a> to defend F1 broadcasts not showing cars\u2019 battery-charge data during races.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Domenicali said.<\/p>\n

Domenicali said Lucas told him new fans have no interest in the\u00a0process\u00a0of driving or overtaking, and are instead \u201cfascinated\u201d by the increases in overtakes and action on track.\u00a0To Domenicali, this argument was validation for keeping it simple on broadcasts. <\/p>\n

Oh, boy \u2026 I am conflicted here. I\u2019m in a real bind. \u201cStar Wars\u201d is my religion, I think? I could go on for days about my reverence for Lucas and how he sees the world. And \u2026 dang it,\u00a0I think his gut instinct is right here, too. Is \u201cStar Wars\u201d the deepest storytelling or writing? Not always, no. Does my heart sing, and do I mutter \u201cpew pew\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

And I like when the F1 cars do that fun racing stuff, even when I know, intellectually, there are flaws underneath the hood<\/a>. And stew about those the week after. And agree\u00a0when the drivers grumble<\/a>\u00a0about\u00a0Anakin Skywalker\u2019s fall to the dark side being written with too much interior subtext and thus coming off rushed on-screen\u00a0the batteries.<\/p>\n

Lucas, as always, has a point. There is not one single type of fan consuming F1 these days.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s end this newsletter and send us off to summer break with one last dispatch from Luke.<\/p>\n

Inside the Paddock with Luke Smith<\/p>\n

The Circuit of The Americas is braced for a record-breaking United States Grand Prix weekend attendance in October, according to the track\u2019s chairman.<\/p>\n

On the outskirts of Austin, Texas, COTA has gone from almost falling off the calendar to becoming one of F1\u2019s biggest events in the past decade.\u00a0Last year\u2019s weekend crowd exceeded 400,000, putting it behind only the British and Australian GPs for gate figures.<\/p>\n

But that figure looks set to be surpassed this year, according to COTA co-founder Bobby Epstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re actually on pace for a record year,\u201d he told reporters this week. \u201c(We\u2019re) seeing massive demand, and could easily break our record, our prior year record.\u201d<\/p>\n

Epstein said there\u2019d be \u201cgood meetings with the highway department\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

COTA has also added Thursday action to its schedule this year with a \u201cGrand PrixView\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

On the debate over the impact of F1\u2019s new rules on the sport\u2019s overall health, Epstein said the event itself held massive interest regardless.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019m not as focused on the rules and rights that affect the competition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Back to you, Patrick.<\/p>\n

Outside the Points<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcc5 F1 will end its season in Europe if the planned rounds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi cannot go ahead.\u00a0It\u2019ll make the call on the Middle East races in September<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\ude05 Nothing else to share here other than I missed you all. So much that I\u2019m taking the next two weeks off\u00a0and\u00a0Prime Tire will be coming out once a week over F1\u2019s summer break, on Wednesdays.\u00a0So, uh, \u2026. see you in Zandvoort? It\u2019s nothing personal, I promise. You lot are fine.<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udceb Love Prime Tire? Check out The Athletic\u2019s other newsletters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic\u2019s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":839094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-839093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}