What really happened at Formula One's big glitzy launch party?

A Haas car revolves slowly on a dolly.
The crowd goes wild!

A wild gyrating DJ pretends to twiddle some knobs.
The crowd goes wild!

Lando Norris flicks his hair.
The crowd goes wild!

Max Verstappen waves politely.
The crowd boos.

Welcome to F1 75... 

“What is F1 75?” asked reigning world champion Max Verstappen when, ahead of the O2 launch event, he was asked if he was looking forward to it. “What are you talking about?” 

Provided with a vague précis, Verstappen audibly groaned. “I don’t watch any F1,” he replied. “I hope I’m sick that week.”

Max’s sicknote wish, as it transpires, isn’t granted. Or if he is ill, he’s been given a double dose of Anadin Extra and told to get his Nomex clad arse down to the O2. Verstappen’s pre-event hesitancy might partly explain the crowd booing every time he appears on screen (the rest, I think, is explained by ‘being Max Verstappen’). But, give the dice-headed speedster his due, it’s a fair question. What is F1 75? What are you talking about?

Photography: Huck Mountain, manufacturer

Call it the event the world never realised it needed. For 74 F1 seasons before 2025, livery reveals weren’t considered a big deal. Teams would unveil their new car a few weeks before the new season, trot out a few quotes about pushing the boundaries for the upcoming season, then dash back to the wind tunnel to figure out how to make their car actually work.

The paintjob itself rarely made headlines, because it generally looked much the same as the old one. By the time you’ve squeezed in all the sponsors’ logos, and kept a strong visual link to last year’s car – because at the Visa Cash App Racing Bulls Formula One team, brand loyalty is all – there’s not much real estate left to work with. Livery surprises have historically been rare to nonexistent.

This is fine. No one wants Man City rocking up at the start of 2025/26 season in black and white stripes, and Liverpool sporting royal blue. Same with F1 cars. Ferraris are red, Mercs are silvery, Saubers are... yeah I’ll get back to you on that one. Unremarkable consistency is what we need. This is why even the rapacious Premier League has never made every team unveil its new season kit at a grand stadium gig in mid July. (Harry Maguire, standing stock still under a silk sheet, patiently waiting to model Man United’s new match day training top.) But for F1’s 75th birthday, a coordinated big stage livery reveal was what F1 decided was required.

So how do you turn ‘removing the sheets from 10 broadly unchanged cars’ into a two hour stadium show? If you’re F1 75, with an enormous amount of light, an enormous amount of noise, and very little reference to the cars themselves. The event features performances from Take That, who, disappointingly, fail to treat the audience to a rendition of ‘It only takes a minute (to complete a lap of the Austrian Grand Prix circuit, give or take five seconds)’, along with Machine Gun Kelly, Kane Brown, Handsy Williams and Brian Tyler, one of whom I may have made up. Jack Whitehall hosts, and does a joke about F1 cars’ bootspace. There are many lasers and several controlled explosions. By the end of the 120 minute sensory assault, my ears throb, and I seem to have lost the ability to see in colour.

Between the Take That-ing and the Machine Gun Kelly-ing, each team is given some seven minutes to introduce its car. In every case, most of this time is taken up by playing in a hyper polished, heavily produced film, most invoking vague notions of GOING FURTHER, FASTER or EMBRACING THE RACE or SHAKING UP THE ESTABLISHMENT. No event has ever felt less like it wishes to shake up the establishment.

Chat with the drivers is kept to an absolute minimum. With respect, this seems prudent. When it comes to holding a crowd, Yuki Tsunoda cannot hope to compete with Gary Barlow in full flow. Around a racetrack, I suspect the tables would be turned. Verstappen isn’t permitted to speak at all, which seems to suit all concerned.

The liveries’ grand reveals receive even less air time than the drivers. This may be because they’re not grand reveals at all: many teams have already conducted private, embargoed unveilings beforehand. A few hours before the big O2 event, I’m on the other side of London, watching Pierre Gasly and Jack Doohan remove a large sheet from their only slightly smaller A525 racer. Gasly confidently announces he’s “getting stronger, month after month”, raising the terrifying possibility that by the end of the 2025 season he’ll be a ball of pure muscle the size of a small skyscraper, devouring the other drivers one by one. Flavio Briatore complains about how pink the car is. Doohan declares himself totally chilled about striding down the catwalk in front of a packed O2. “We’re in the entertainment industry,” he grins. “You can’t control the unknowns.”

Oh, but you can. F1 75 is all about controlling the unknowns. The O2 event is scripted and stage managed to the final millisecond and micrometre. Nothing is left to chance. This is corporate budget Insta content expanded to a stadium sized spectacle, elite sport with every rough edge sanded off. As an exercise in logistics, it’s jaw dropping. As a medium for conveying the excitement of circuit racing, less so. F1 cars, after all, are made to go fast. Literally the only thing they’re good at doing. An event in which not a single one moves under its own steam is, to put it politely, a different thing.

F1 75 seems to leave car folk broadly unimpressed. The reaction from the Top Gear editorial team, watching the YouTube live stream, spans the gamut from ‘cringe’ to ‘total cringe’. It’s a broadly similar response across the motorsport media. Behind the decibels and the lasers and the extraordinary production values, it’s tough to shake the sensation F1 75 contains no substance of any kind. Colours! Shapes! Soundbites! Luminous, explosive, noisy candyfloss.

Most seem to be hopped up on the mere prospect of being within 75 metres of a tiny Italian teenager dressed in fireproof fabric

However. It’s easy to mock F1 75, which is why I’ve just spent 1,000 words doing just that. But despite tickets ranging from £55 to £110, it sells out the O2. I suspect they could have filled it several times over. Whatever the hell it is, clearly there’s a market for it.

And though the online reaction might be muted, inside the O2, the atmosphere is... rapturous. Quasi religious. The audience is far younger and less male than your traditional F1 crowd, almost exclusively engulfed in F1 branded clothing. (McLaren garb is most popular by a distance, followed by Ferrari and then Mercedes. I spot one teenager dressed head to toe in Stake F1 Team Sauber merch, who with the benefit of hindsight may actually have been Gabriel Bortoleto.)

And they’re not here for the cars. Chatting to O2 attendees, every one, when I ask what they’re looking forward to, mentions a favourite driver. Not a team, not Alpine’s hotly anticipated new corporate tie up with Uruguayan commerce company Mercado Libre, not Take That’s spirited rendition of ‘Everything changes (in the F1 rulebook for the 2026 season)’, but Lando, Carlos, George, Lewis. But mostly Lando. And definitely not Max.

“I can’t believe I’m going to see Charles,” gushes Maddie, who’s got a seat in the highest tier, fully 60 metres from the stage. He’ll be quite small, I point out. “That’s what I love about him,” Maddie breathes. Every utterance of the crowd favourites, however banal (and they are all banal), is greeted by a Beatlemania grade scream. The Drive to Survive effect is real, and it’s reached critical mass in the O2. A few punters clutch a beer or glass of wine, but most seem to be hopped up on the mere prospect of being within 75 metres of a tiny Italian teenager dressed in fireproof fabric.

Lance Armstrong’s autobiography was titled It’s Not About the Bike. He wasn’t lying, because in Armstrong’s case it was about the industrial quantities of drugs. But for the F1 75 audience, it’s really not about the car. For this crowd, the F1 product (for we must call it that) seems all about the driver: the rotating cast of characters and their soap opera relationships. 

I mean, I’d contend that, if you’re into soap operas, there are juicier offerings out there than a bunch of polite, media trained young men who occasionally suffer minor sporting disagreements. But then again, no Neighbours cast member has ever punted another Neighbours cast member into a barrier at 200mph, so maybe I’m on the wrong side of this argument.

And, most of all, what’s the harm of it? Personally I’d rather tear out my own circulatory system than witness another moment of Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso’s 007 pastiche, but if Maddie wants to spend her cash watching a seven stone Gen Zer struggle to use a microphone, more power to her. If this is the tribe you’ve found, the content that makes you happy, knock yourself out. Capitalism has always found new ways of liberating punters of their cash, and at least this one’s not hurting anyone (apart from Christian Horner, who clearly wants to be F1’s hero rather than the villain role he’s been ascribed, and I think we can all live with that). 

Maybe the antipathy towards Strictly Come DRSing is because it feels a distraction from the pure sporting endeavour of F1. But let’s be honest. F1 has never been about pure sporting endeavour. It’s always been a telenovela, an industrial complex generating drama and infights and hissy fits. F1 75 is simply its logical conclusion. At least, let’s pray it’s the conclusion. Otherwise get ready for January 2026’s sellout Big F1 Driver Cockpit Fitting super gig at Wembley stadium...