You've just brushed upon one of the biggest debates in modern motorsport. If you are interested in reading further there's many great opinion pieces on both sides of the fence. Here's one interesting piece written recently by ex-F1 driver Stefan Johansson [1].

[1] http://www.racer.com/more/viewpoints/item/143400-johansson-m...

I've been watching MotoGP recently instead of F1 for some of those reasons. Much more enjoyable, dangerous and unpredictable. And you don't go around an oval unlike indycar.

> And you don't go around an oval unlike indycar.

I just came back from looking up the IndyCar tracks for this reason, to see what non-ovals there are. :-) I prefer road courses, myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IndyCar_Series_racetra...

It's attractive to the manufacturers. F1 is stupendously expensive, so manufacturers want to get maximum bang for their buck in terms of marketing. Trickle-down technology is a major marketing hook, particularly for McLaren and Ferrari. Both companies introduced KERS- and DRS-inspired systems on their road cars when they were added to the F1 rules.

This is much clearer in other racing formulae, where the cars being raced may be modified versions of commercially-available road cars. Audi, Subaru and Mitsubishi built their reputation for performance almost entirely off the back of the World Rally Championship.

> manufacturers want to get maximum bang for their buck in terms of marketing

Sure, and I thought that you would have to do something that was attractive to the audience for the marketing to work.

F1 is the pinnacle of motorsports, it's the most expensive racing series out there and one of the most advanced. Every team builds designs and builds their own cars and has new models for every season and then throughout the season they work hard and spend untold millions and man hours improving the cars.

A lot of the fan base is really engaged in the technology race while others are engaged in the personalities, that is what makes the sport so popular as it has a lot of entertainment to offer outside of what actually happens on the track.

People watch F1 for different reasons.

Some people love the crashes, others love the personalities.

Me? I love the racing, the personalities, but most of all I love all the technical developments on the cars. These are fragile prototype cars with state-of-the-art engines (approaching 50% efficiency, which is insane) - new car launch time in F1 just before winter testing is one of my favourites!

This. I watch F1 because it's the closest thing I can find to a public engineering competition.