Have you ever watched a sport and asked yourself, “How is that even allowed”? Well, Formula One is a great sport to have people asking that question. Rules are all over the place, favoritism between drivers, and the overall tense and overbearing regulation changes of the sport are telling people that F1 isn’t even worth following sometimes.
A great way to start this off is with the rules. The rules can be all over the place when it comes to Formula One, and it shows. Penalties are thrown left and right for no reason, and it could be at random.
For instance, in 2024, the Australian Grand Prix. At Turn 6, second to last lap, Fernando Alonso and George Russel got into a battle. Fernando employed his signature defensive style, braking earlier than usual to aid his exit and force George into mistakes, which he did. He got caught up in Fernando’s dirty and shunted himself into the wall, causing his suspension to detach from his car, making him DNF. This caused an investigation from the FIA to try and figure out if this was an intentional wreck, and eventually it came to a conclusion. They had given Fernando Alonso a 20-second time penalty for dirty driving and causing a wreck. And while yes, this was quite the aggressively defensive move from Fernando, there is absolutely no reason why he was given a 20-second penalty for it when George could have easily saved his Mercedes by braking just a little more to stabilize his car.
Things like this can easily make the sport unfair and unwatchable because of silly things like these.
Fernando Alonso was defending the way he did in Suzuka 2005 against Michael Schumacher, and while yes, times were different, they still could have given him a penalty as easily as they did then in Australia 2024.
Silly rules like this can ruin the sport and make it very difficult to follow along and have fun with the sport, as there is barely any drama that isn’t heavily penalized.
Another example of Formula One being a problematic sport is cursing. Cursing is a large reason why the sport can just be too dramatic.
Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the FIA President, had talked about this before in press conferences. And he eventually made a rule that if any F1 driver intentionally cursed during conferences or even whilst driving, they could receive a very heavy fine or penalty. Nobody had wanted this, and it was heavily disliked and hated for even existing.
Think about it. Yes, this is being broadcast, and not many people want to hear the drivers saying the F-word while driving. But these drivers are driving 200 miles per hour, rocketing around tight circuits, losing around 4-6 pounds of body weight through sweat and having to endure G-Forces of up to 6.5 G’s during heavy braking. That is insane on the human body. So why blame them for saying a couple of curse words after crashing or when someone makes a life-threatening mistake? Why Penalize them? And that is something a lot of people don’t understand. Yet, people like Ben Sulayem keep making these silly rules that shouldn’t apply in the first place. They are completely unnecessary and unethical to the drivers.
Max Verstappen is an example of this happening in 2024. He had said a curse word during a press conference while talking about how his car wasn’t good enough for the weekend. He was fined $30,000 and given community service. And while yes, $30,000 is barely a dent in his bank account, and to a normal person’s standards, that is like $100 to the middle class, it is still ridiculous that he even has to pay that amount while doing community service on top of that. And it’s all because he said one singular curse word.
Favoritism also runs rampant in Formula One, and it is awful.
The Formula One team, McLaren, is an example of this in the 2025 season. They heavily favor the driver Lando Norris for no reason, even though the driver Oscar Piastri is a great and arguably better driver than Lando Norris. He gave great pace and led the championship for the entire season until Max Verstappen and Lando had comebacks and led them to gain on Piastri.
They favor Norris a little too much, causing Piastri to even make claims that he doesn’t feel like enough and that he has to fight back against his own team just to finally win and have a chance at the World Drivers Championship.
The Formula One team, Red Bull, is also at fault for things like this, as well, heavily favoring Max Verstappen while barely even caring about their second driver, only focusing on Verstappen’s car and making the second Red Bull Formula 1 car completely undrivable. This issue has caused Verstappen to have a total of eight teammates.
Formula One has a massive problem, and that is it’s unbalanced and very unfair for no reason at times. And while yes, skill and team development are extremely important within the sport, and it’s all based on the team’s budget and riders ‘ skills to win races, they still don’t make the sport any more fun to watch. Because it’s either a weird rule, favoritism, or an undeserved penalty that gives everyone disinterest in the sport, and just makes people angry, split, or disappointed after watching one of the races.
