Winning Formula

The data & dollars that put F1 into hyperdrive

In 2009, Ross Brawn bought the former Honda Racing F1 team for £1 after Honda decided to leave Formula One racing. Toward the end of that year, Daimler and Aabar Investments bought a 75% stake in the team, which was rebranded Mercedes GP for the next season. Today, eight constructors’’ championships later, that Mercedes team is valued at $6 billion. It’s a dramatic example, but one that is emblematic of F1’s meteoric rise in popularity over the past half-decade.

Today, F1 fans – of which there are an estimated 52 million in the U.S. – can watch not only live races but go behind the scenes on Netflix’s “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and watch Brad Pitt play a star driver in F1 the movie. They can attend races in person at one of three grand prix held in the U.S. in the 2026 season, plus races in Mexico City and Montreal. If they have the budget, the can follow the circuit across Europe, Asia, and Australia. As its popularity has soared, F1 has become more than a racing circuit, it’s a lifestyle brand.

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“The sport is embedded in culture now, via streaming, storytelling, and social media, and that’s helping more people connect,” F1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali said in a statement.

New Markets

Viewership in the U.S. for the 24 races on the F1 calendar in 2025 averaged 1.3 million people, with two thirds of them garnering record viewership for those particular races.

“The 2024 Miami Grand Prix “attracted the largest live U.S. television audience on record for F1 as an average of 3.1 million viewers watched,” ESPN said, “audience in the persons ages 18-49 demographic averaged 1.3 million.”

The circuit’s rise in the U.S. coincided with the rise of Dutch-Belgian driver Max Verstappen, who unseated seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton for the 2021 title. Verstappen went on to win four straight titles of his own, prompting concerns that his dominance might drain the excitement from the sport. But Lando Norris’ title clincher at the dramatic final race of the 2025 season in Abu Dhabi capped a season in which the title seemed up for grabs for the first time in years. Though Verstappen won eight races, including Abu Dhabi, to Norris and Oscar Piastri’s seven each, Norris edged Verstappen by 2 points for the championship.

That the drivers kept fans on the edge of their seats all season was another triumph for a circuit that has made fan experience an art form. Legions of fans descend upon whatever city is hosting a race, and they are greeted with driver meet and greets, driving simulators, and merchandise giveaways. On race days, the Paddock Club experience includes gourmet dining, live entertainment, and encounters with legendary drivers and celebrities. They can take a guided track tour and walk pit lane and watch teams perform last-minute work on the cars before the green flag. It’s enough to make fans for life.

Data-Driven

The fan experience thrives on TV as well as at the race. Broadcasts update viewers constantly on drivers’ speed, engine RPM, gear, and best lap times to show how their favorites are performing. F1 TV displays live telemetry and driver maps during race streams using data collected from 300 on-car sensors that generate over a terabyte of information each race weekend. Each car generates more than a million data points per second during a race. AWS’ Track Pulse helps turn all that info into a thrilling story to watch.

“Covering F1 is tricky; it’s very complex and there are multiple things happening simultaneously over a large expanse of real estate,” Dean Locke, Director of Broadcast & Media at F1, said. “It is really difficult to get all that information over to fans without bombarding them. Track Pulse allows us to take fans on a journey with data and graphics in a way that feels intuitive.”

The drivers and their teams, of course, make the most of all this data to strive for a winning edge. Teams use data on aerodynamics during test laps to make adjustments to wings. They measure tire temperature, pressure, and performance. They measure G-forces in turn and braking. They measure fuel efficiency and other fluids. They measure just about everything under the sun, and they transmit that info to the pit in fractions of a second.

“It’s interesting to look at the scale of data we’re working with. No human would be able to trawl through all of it – it’d take a person years to just get through a single race weekend. These AI models, on the other hand, can trawl through it in seconds. It enables our team to look through all the data we get from the car quicker than we’ve ever been able to do,” McLaren data scientist Jude Hunt said.

Those precious seconds can mean the difference between the podium and devastation.

Private Equity

As F1 has surged in popularity and embraced the analytics age, team valuations have soared as well. In September, a 30% stake in McLaren was sold at a $4.7 billion value, a record until Mercedes’ co-owner Toto Wolff began talks to sell his third of the team for $2 billion a couple months later.

Decades ago, investing in F1 was a vanity project, a great way to show off how much money you could afford to lose. The joke was that the way to become a millionaire in racing was to start out a billionaire. A team turning a profit wasn’t necessarily even the goal. The race was a long commercial for the automaker, with victory being rewarded by car sales. That fateful 2021 season, though, saw the introduction of a spending cap. That, coupled with relatively new Formula One Group owner Liberty Media’s overhaul of the circuit’s media rights, sent profits sky-high. Mercedes topped the circuit with $799 billion in revenue in 2024, and the average value of F1 teams is now around $3.4 billion.

Like in other sports, where team valuations are now so high that it’s growing difficult to find individual buyers, the revolution has attracted private equity investment. Dorilton Capital bought the F1 team Williams for $200 million in 2020; it’s now valued at over $2 billion.

“We wouldn’t have invested if not for the cost cap. There’s just no way we could have caught up otherwise. What it did was it turned the sport into a business competition,” Dorilton co-founder Matthew Savage told Front Office Sports.

Other F1 teams have PE investors too, including an investment in Alpine by Maximum Effort Investments, a group backed by Ryan Reynolds, Rob McElhenney, Patrick Mahomes, and Travis Kelce.

Carlyle Group doesn’t have a stake in Red Bull Racing, but it is the team’s official investment management partner, introducing it to global clients.

In total, the moves of the past few years have catapulted F1 into a truly global brand. They’ve happened quickly but been undertaken smartly. As any driver can tell you, speed without intelligence is just noise.