F1 75 Live: The one missing factor that could have transformed the at-home viewer experience

Elizabeth Blackstock 19 Feb 2025 6:30 PM

Formula 1's 10-team F1 75 Live launch nearly nailed the perfect formula.

For the first time in Formula 1 history, all 10 teams gathered together to celebrate a full-field livery launch heading into what will be the sport’s 75th anniversary — and it was very nearly a hit.

The folks sitting in London’s O2 Centre were naturally enthusiastic about a chance to celebrate the sport in person at the F1 75 Live launch. Many viewers at home, though, felt like something was missing: Consistency.

F1 75 Live: Ten teams, ten different briefings

Let’s start out with one very obvious fact: The F1 75 Live launch at the O2 Center worked. Whatever your personal feelings about the full-field livery launch concept or its execution, Formula 1 came out the other winners.

The YouTube stream of the launch topped out at 1.1 million consecutive viewers, with over 4.6 million combined viewers tuning in at some point during the two-hour program. During the intro alone, before Sauber kicked off the livery reveal portion of the event, more fans had tuned in than F1’s previous record peak for a livestream event: 289,000 people.

Much has been said about the launch, both from folks who were seated in the sold-out arena as well as from pundits viewing the event at home. But for a lot of viewers, it felt like something was missing.

I joined Ash Vandelay for a live Twitch stream where we watched the event with our audience, while Sean at The F1 Word hosted a similar stream with Chain Bear. Over and over again, fans pointed out one big flaw: There was no consistency between the various launches.

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I respect that the briefing was a challenging one; what was originally pitched as a full-field car launch was quickly undermined by the teams’ insistence on keeping their 2025 machines under wraps until they said otherwise. So, it turned into a livery launch… but almost every team had committed to running a very similar livery to 2024.

As a result, every team brought something different to their seven-minute presentation slot, and while that could have introduced freshness and novelty, it mostly just felt like F1 had failed to issue clear instructions to the teams.

Sauber, for example, kicked things off with a cyberpunk laser show and a dramatic voiceover sharing hopes for the year to come, all backed by a massive drum line.

But when Williams took the stage next, it did so with a dramatic vibe shift — one that highlighted the team’s history and introduced team principal James Vowles as a kind of pseudo-celebrity.

Up next came a pre-recorded clip from Racing Bulls that introduced personality Munya Chawawa poking fun at the fact that the outfit has gone through so many rebrands in the past few years that even dedicated F1 fans have a tough time remembering what to call it now.

Alpine introduced a DJ set, Ferrari paid tribute to its founder, Aston Martin cosplayed James Bond, and while every seven-minute set was compelling on its own, scheduling them back-to-back made for some jarring transitions. Pair that with the fact that all this hype was building up to the reveal of livery that, in most cases, was exactly the same thing you saw last year, and a lot of the viewers at home — myself included — began to wonder what could have been if there had been just a little more consistency.

Which isn’t to say it would have been inherently better to have had all 10 teams debut slightly different versions of a choreographed dance, or to use their seven minutes for a dramatic voiceover. But the overall affair could have used a little polish, perhaps with F1 advising, “Create a presentation that shows fans where you came from, what you’ve learned, and how you’re moving forward this year.”

Something that simple is broad enough to allow for a variety of interpretations, but there would still be a common theme linking one team to the next. It’s the difference between digging through a bin of books from all genres, and browsing carefully organized shelves; you might find some gems in both activities, but only one will help you feel anchored while you hunt.

The F1 75 Live launch had a lot of potential, and for the most part, it lived up to its own hype. But if F1 wants to recreate a similar event in the future, the consistency of a theme would go a long way to feeling like a truly world-class event.