The word that’s plagued the motorsports world this last decade is “domination.” It became endemic to the top level of motorsports when Formula 1 introduced its turbo-hybrid regulations in 2014, and the Mercedes factory team had engines so far beyond any other team that the championship became a foregone conclusion for almost seven years. Meanwhile, constructors were dropping in the World Endurance Championship and Toyota Gazoo Racing became pretty much the only game in town from 2018 up until 2023. Now, both series have boosted ratings through unpredictability—WEC with balance of power (BoP) regulations in its top Hypercar class creating new competition and interest from manufacturers, and suddenly the McLaren F1 team picking up the pieces from where the more recently dominant Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen have fallen off.
Stateside, meanwhile, F1 and WEC were considered boring watches up until very recently, the US’s equivalents—IndyCar for open-wheel and IMSA for sports cars—have been thrilling. That is, until this year when they’ve also been taken over by the “domination” conversation, with Alex Palou on a historic run in his Chip Ganassi IndyCar, making the championship already seem wrapped up only a couple months in in a series that usually comes down to a last-race shoot-out, and with the Penske-operated Porsche 963s seeming unbeatable in IMSA. This last weekend, both proved why they are dominating.
At the Sonsio Grand Prix on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course, Palou took a stunning pole lap, clearing the rest of the field by 4/10s of a second when the five drivers behind him were separated by less than 2/10s between all of them. The next day at Turn 1 on Lap 1, Graham Rahal dove deep from the outside and was able to hold onto it through the corners. Rahal held off Palou for almost 58 laps until Palou grabbed him on the inside, and then, like most of the rest of the races this year (and a lot of them the year before), Palou pulled away, completely gone.
That was Saturday in Indiana, but on Sunday in California, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan team had the edge with their BMW M Hybrid V8 piloted by Philipp Eng qualifying the two Penske Porsches to P1. The Porsches would get around that 24 car piloted by Eng and Dries Vanthoor. Although, it wasn’t the defending champion and winner of the last three races No. 7 car, but the No. 6—which put on a hard scrap with its sister car, especially in the last few laps until GT traffic would slow the 7 down enough to be back in striking distance of the RLL BMW, which the 7 bumped shoulders with in the penultimate turn sequence, sending the 24 off track and nearly into the wall.
While IMSA’s Porsches (and the rest of the field) still put on a good show even when having boringly “dominant” race results, Indycar has suffered (or, at least, certain fans want people to think that) because of Palou’s domination. With Palou headed for his fourth driver’s championship in five seasons, the only thing the series can really offer TV-wise is good on-track product, lacking at road and street courses ever since the introduction of a new hybrid unit last year at Mid-Ohio.
The root of the problem isn’t what’s happening on track or not, but how it’s sold. Motorsports didn’t become proper televised TV-fare until 1979, when the BBC started regularly live broadcasting full F1 races. Before that, motorsports existed as highlight reels and trackside glimpses. Racing drivers could be famous, but in the car they by-and-large lived secret lives when they ran between villages in Spa or disappeared off into the forest at Hockenheim. There were no TV cameras, on-board telemetries, or even radios with their engineers. The only people who knew where they were were themselves or someone lucky enough to keep pace with them. They’d be a blur in front of a grandstand, leave existence for a minute-and-a-half, and then round back in front of the audience to show them they were still ahead. Racing drivers supernatural existence has been turned completely scientific with the introduction of TV as a microscope on their every movement. They’re not illusive anymore, they’re mechanical.
TV products want ratings. When suddenly there’s a generation-defining title fight, like with what happened in F1 in 2021—which also coincided perfectly with the rise of F1-as-reality-TV for a new American audience post-Covid—the broadcast rights holders will be as happy. Then when it gets “boring” again, the sport is suddenly thrown into free-fall. This leads to manufacturing interesting stories where none exist, or push for battles which aren’t happening on track. It also rejects achievements which are going on—after, it’s impressive what Red Bull pulled off during Max Verstappen’s recent years of domination, or what Alex Palou is managing to do in IndyCar against a field that is largely equal in terms of machinery. However, people act as if these things are a problem inherent to the sports themselves, when they’re really just a problem with TV.
In the content age, it’s natural to try and draw people towards something that holds events that have non-stop racing for 24 hours—but, really, how many people sit down and watch every second of Le Mans? The enthusiasts, maybe, but for most, maybe motorsports is best left as a series of highlight reels, leaving the aura intact as they watch something magical happen in an instant, without being mired by everything by-the-book that brought them there.