Formula 1 is no longer the Champions League but the Premier League, says Sainz

For as long as anyone can remember, die-hard Formula 1 fans have planned their lives around race weekends. But if they continued to do so in the modern era, they would have almost no time left for family trips or catching up with friends. Carlos Sainz has noticed this shift too, suggesting Formula 1 is reaching saturation point.

Many of today’s fans no longer even remember when the Formula 1 calendar featured sixteen or seventeen grands prix. There was a weekend off between almost every race, making it fairly easy to plan other leisure activities. During the autumn of 2026, however, that is practically impossible: of the final fourteen weekends between September and early December, only three are free.

“Well, I think if I would be a fan, I would love it because the more F1 I can watch on TV, the better,” reflected Carlos Sainz. “I remember when I was a kid and there were only 16 races in the calendar, or 18, I used to miss Formula 1 for a lot of weekends.”

Sometimes, though, less is more. Whereas fans once saw F1 as a truly premium product that was not on television every weekend, they now have to accept that they will need to miss some races because they have other commitments.

“We also need to consider as a sport if that’s something that maybe is also counteracting. Like sometimes you need to miss the sport to get the people engaged. When maybe you get so many races in a row, the sport can maybe feel a bit like a league, like Premier League rather than Champions League,” said Sainz, drawing a comparison. “So maybe you pay a bit less attention to the matches or to the races in this case.”

Indeed, Liberty Media’s new chief executive Derek Chang has confirmed that this is the intention. “You no longer think about F1 as sort of something that you’ve got to go to every race or watch every race on television to be a fan right now.”

Owners Liberty Media are therefore beginning to focus more on fans who watch the highlights in the evening or browse teams’ and drivers’ social media accounts, but do not necessarily watch the races themselves. That presumably also explains Stefano Domenicali’s comments that the current generation does not even care whether overtaking is artificial. What matters is that overtaking happens and looks spectacular in the highlights, even if it is something of a Potemkin village.

What is more, the more race weekends there are, the more money Formula 1 brings in. But everything has its limits, according to Sainz. “So it’s more a philosophy for the sport to consider whether you want to keep having so many races in a row. But more important than that, as the GPDA, I think we’ve been told more or less 24 races, 25 races is the limit that the championship is willing to go for. I don’t know if that will be the case the more offers there are to keep increasing the venues. But I think that is the limit.”

“It’s the people in the teams that get it on the tougher end, rather than the drivers. I think we are more in a privileged position in that sense. So let’s see. I have the motivation to do however many races we need to do. I have the will to race. I love racing. But it is true that this three triple-headers in a row is going to be tough for the body, tough for the people, tough for the mind,” he concluded.