In general the driver's perspective has always seemed underused to me. In F1 at least (where the cars are insanely stiff), unless there are overtakes in progress, watching from the trackside cameras just looks like cars driving round a track. Whereas from the driver's view you can see the car reacting to the track and the driver reacting to the car.

People complain a lot that the TV coverage spends too long on the driver's girlfriends. For me I think it spends too long looking at the cars (from the outside)!

I guess part of this is just that the image quality from onboards is not so sleek. But if it was up to me I think like 60-70% of the airtime would be from onboard.

Sounds like a killer app for VR- observing from the driver's perspective, being able to switch to whoever you want. How many cameras are in those cars I wonder?

If you have an Apple Vision Pro, you can. See https://www.lapz.io/, https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2024/10/02/this-in..., https://youtube.com/watch?v=Z9OlYcfLmTY

They have a lot of cameras and they offer a paid service where you can stream from any driver's onboard. Unfortunately this is out of sync with the main broadcast which kinda kills its value for me...

I think VR would make most people sick as it's a very bumpy view.

I once got free tickets to a race (DTM, German touring cars), and to be honest I don't know why people go to them. You saw a small section of the track, and occasionally cars whizzed by. No idea who was in the lead, who was behind, or what was happening in the race in general. Much better to watch on TV.

Yeah I've never had any urge to go in person at all! Also, F1 is EXTREMELY expensive to watch in person at most of the venues. (I assume most other motorsports are at least cheap to spectate).

> unless there are overtakes in progress

I don't think F1 cars have overtaken each other since the 1990's.

If you want to see overtaking, stick to watching the Superbikes instead.

The poor advertisers don't get great exposure from the helmet cam shots, so we mostly get the boring, wide-angled shots instead on the broadcast.

They get fantastic exposure from the other onboard cameras though! The one by the air intake is the best view for spectating and probably one of the best for advertisers too.

Some of the most racing fun I've had in video games was actually NASCAR games.

The whole race was constant jostling for position. There was almost always someone within a car length/width, and zero room for error. From what I've seen on TV and YT, it seemed pretty spot on.

Unfortunately I was also bad at driving with a PS2 controller so I was the danger on the track.