Lash,
I based my comment this morning on some interviews done in Austin this week of people who are there for the race this year. I too think this is due to the short attention span crowd having found Netflix. One group was a group of 20 somethings, very weird, no real telling what they were. (refer to opening stanza of "I'd Love to Change The World" by Ten Years After). They were all there for the Alpha-Tauri fashion show... the first of its kind on US Soil... WTF? When asked who they were rooting for, they didn't know any names, not even the Alpha-Tauri drivers. I'd bet the house not one of them could tell you what a cylinder is, let alone how many are in a current F1 motor. Is this really the Fan F1 wants? How long before the FOMO crowd latches onto the next "in" thing and are gone? Squirrel?
I remember being at the first Indy F1 race and seeing a family with 2 little boys and a lady near me asked the boys who their favorite drivers were... the younger of the two... 7ish went on a 15 minute dissertation of Michael Schumacher and his brother and every other driver on the grid... why he liked the Ferrari over every other car on the grid. That little guy is probably still a fan today. Dad and the slightly older brother were certainly watching the Pit Girls.
F1, like everything else has waded into the global WOKE (ces)pool and they are losing the old guard left and right, not just here, but in Europe and Asia. Yeah they are courting the woke crowd, but how many long term fans will that really bring? The SJWs will follow the next crisis. The pack mentality will tire of racing.
Don't know about you, but I much preferred "Rush" over "Drive to Survive".
Yep, "Rush" era had every crass aspect of society the Woke rail against today... but it was a grand era of racing. If you were around, you loved it. They were heroes.
And before anyone says I'm just old and <something>phobic... NO, I have no irrational, unfounded fears of anything. The correct root term in Latin for my "pneuma condición" is not phobia... it's pertaedet. So at least use the proper term.
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