> Some might say it's not much of a sport anyway, but it seems popular

Yeah, that is another argument. Not many people understand that driving a F1 car is hugely physically challenging though and drivers need to be in top shape. Us mere mortals would be exhausted after 2 laps and could not hold our head straight for even one high speed corner.

Never mind that we wouldn't have the technique and balls to be able to drive around one high speed corner.

Watch Richard Hammond, who's spent more time than 99.9% of us driving fast cars round racetracks, spend an entire day and not getting it quite right: https://youtu.be/EGUZJVY-sHo

Exactly. Anyone who has driven a go-kart in an open track knows how incredibly tough and exhausting that is already, I can't even imagine scaling those forces to 300km/h+.