Dear Stefano, 25 F1 races are fine but not if Max Verstappen is winning all of them

F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali and Max Verstappen are at two extremes in the direction they want the sport to take. On one side, we have Domenicali with aspirations of a 25-race calendar in 2024 and even a 30-race calendar in the future. On the other side, you have Verstappen making it clear that the more gimmicky the sport gets, the earlier it pushes him to leave.

This feature is not about Verstappen's desire to leave the sport. It's about Domenicali, who appears to be obsessed with bringing sweeping changes to the sport. What we're trying to address is that while these changes could be accepted, Stefano might be barking up the wrong tree.

In other words, the sweeping changes are not going to make the F1 product better in any way until it addresses the big fat elephant in the room.

What changes does Stefano Domenicali want to bring in F1?

The former Ferrari team principal has a lot of ideas when it comes to bringing changes within the sport. Here's a short list encapsulating what he's already mentioned in the media.

A 25-race calendar in 2024
Tweaking the race weekend format, reducing Free Practice sessions
Modified sprint weekend format (trial in Baku)
Possibly a 30-race calendar in the future

Now, let's keep one thing in mind, except for the modified sprint weekend format in Baku, everything else is still a work in progress. Having said that, the conviction with which Domenicali has talked about it, he appears to be very interested in going ahead with it.

Where does the current Max Verstappen dominance come into the picture?

This is where the current F1 ecosystem comes into the picture. If we ask an F1 fan these days about what is the one thing that they don't like about the sport, it's not the number of races. Surely a fan would want a race in his/her home country, but the demand is not for more races. The demand, however, is for more competition. Max Verstappen was involved in an epic championship battle with Lewis Hamilton in 2021.

Even though it's been two years since that season, the Max Verstappen-Lewis Hamilton rivalry still evokes emotion (and engagement) from the fans. Not only that, the season saw F1's popularity cross boundaries. We had boxing heavyweight champion Tyson Fury commenting on the world title showdown in Abu Dhabi and we had celebrities keeping a close watch on the proceedings.

What made the 2021 F1 season unique and what is missing in 2023 is arguably one word - competition. The 2021 F1 season had Max Verstappen, a young talent competing in similarly-paced machinery against Lewis Hamilton. The 2023 F1 season does not have that.

Max Verstappen is still at his ruthless best but it appears as if he's the only one at the top of the mountain. There are potential challengers like Fernando Alonso in Aston Martin, Charles Leclerc in Ferrari, and the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.

None of them, however, have the machinery capable of challenging Max Verstappen and hence the competition factor has been thrown out of the window. The Dutchman is the runaway favorite to win every race as the Red Bull machinery is far superior to anything put together by anyone else.

An F1 fan wants entertainment and action, there's no denying that, but if the race winner is known before even a single lap is covered, that kills the interest in a major way.

This is exactly what plagued F1 during the Michael Schumacher era, or the Sebastian Vettel era, or even the Lewis Hamilton era. After an epic 2021 season, we're back to an F1 where single-team domination risks putting off the viewer.

Why we could end up making the product worse

You know what's worse than having a 23-race calendar where you know who's going to win the race? A 30-race calendar where you know who's going to win the race. Sprinkle six to 10 sprint races in between and you have a viewer that is not only exhausted but also put off by what he's watching.

Any sporting competition thrives on unpredictability and competition. That's what Stefano Domenicali needs to understand at the moment. Even if we ignore the massively ridiculous challenges involved with the 25-race calendar (although we shouldn't), one cannot ignore the fact that the current F1 product is broken.

Having 25 races in a season knowing that it is highly likely that Max Verstappen would win most races and the championship is not intriguing enough. On the contrary, the sheer volume could dissuade fans from the races as there won't be any stakes to fight for.

Focus on technical regulations and single-team dominance

It is unfair to penalize Red Bull for the stupendous job the team has done. Their car is a class apart from the rest of the grid, with everyone else playing catch-up. Having said that, the restrictive nature of the regulations was supposed to not let that happen. The field was supposed to be bunched up and we weren't supposed to have these big performance gaps. It's safe to say that this issue has not been addressed.

Red Bull is running away with titles under current regulations just like Mercedes did in the turbo era. While that is not the Austrian team's fault, it is a detriment to the type of product that F1 is putting out. One area that Stefano Domenicali needs to focus on is the predictable nature of the sport and how F1 can end single-team dominance.

As we said earlier, having 25 races and six sprints is fine, but if we know that Max Verstappen is winning all of them then it's a tough hang for even hardcore fans. If we take the sporting nature into consideration, this is arguably not the best thing but for the business side, it's imperative that this gets addressed.