By Joe Murphy
F1 75 Live showed that Formula 1 has entered a new era. To consider backlash from the more die hard fan, the events used pomp and circumstance to reveal the car liveries in a way we have never seen before. It wasn’t a failure, but it’s hard to label the event a full-on success. It wasn’t a sporting eveng, it was an entertainment show full with singers and comedians to boot.
With the O2’s sell out 15,000 crowd, they got to witness each team show their new car for the first time, with each constructor having seven minutes to showcase its new livery in any way it wanted.
Numbers-wise, it’s positive on the metrics. F1 said there was a peak of 1.1 million concurrent live viewers on its YouTube channel, with 7.5 million viewers in total across various platforms. These are figure even Netflix will be proud of.
This music show had Jack Whitehall sliding his jokes in the middle of set pieces. Poking fun at real life F1 controversy made the humour relevant, albeit tiresome. What was better was the tech ology on display for the reveals.
Formula 1 has never looked this good. Whether or not it ever sounded as good is less clear.
It was refreshing to see all squads afforded the freedom to be creative and fill their seven-minute allocation any way they wanted, a nice contrast to the otherwise constricted and formulaic nature of race weekends.
That approach prevented the event from becoming very repetitive and stale after two or three outfits, but it also became quite uneven and heavily dependent on the quality of each team’s act. Sauber’s cyberpunkesque black and neon green aesthetics got the reveal off to a decent enough start, while Williams rightfully paid tribute to its legacy and founder Sir Frank in a pre-recorded segment before going into a slightly more awkward on-stage rollout. Team boss James Vowles as MC is something I don’t personally need to see again.
VVisa Cashapp Racing Bull’s probably have the best livery of the 2025 lineup. Alpine eschewed a pre-recorded segment for a mini-DJ set by F1 theme composer Brian Tyler but the most ambitious of the bunch was Aston Martin, which paid tribute to a famous scene from James Bond’s “The World is Not Enough” as Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll raced across the Thames on armed powerboats before being hoisted down onto the stage. You can’t say the event wasn’t being well received by audiences in the arena.
It took a back seat, but it’s worn remembering this was a celebration of 75 years of Formula 1 racing, even if eyes were focused on the future (and the summer release of the F1 film).
The event did become slightly less enthusiastic by the time the Mercedes and Red Bulls slot came around.
One late highlight was Ferrari, with the sight of Lewis Hamilton in red raising the roof of a pulsating arena. McLaren also roped in its wonderful legacy with historic F1 cars on stage, but its identical livery for 2025 then further drove home the point that we had been spending two hours just to see nothing of importance.
However, jibes aside, it was a successful milestone for F1. While the show overstayed its welcome while watching remotely, F1 set out what it achieved to do and presented itself to a new audience in a modern way. It just caters to casual fans more than the fanbase which stuck around during the less jazzy era of motorsport. People who care about lights and music are not the same as the fans who watch every week. But F1 has been heading that way for some time now, that’s obvious to see.
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