BUDAPEST : Formula One has become too focused on commercial interests at the expense of the sport and should place greater emphasis on racing, reigning world champion Lando Norris said ahead of this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix.
The McLaren driver said recent regulatory changes, introduced in part to attract new manufacturers such as Audi, had left drivers with little influence over the direction of the championship.
“It’s a business,” Norris told reporters on Thursday. “Everyone wants to make money, so in order for Audi and other teams to come in we had to change these things. It’s a shame. It should never have been like that. But that’s how businesses work.”
Audi entered Formula One this season after taking over Swiss-based Sauber, encouraged by regulations that increased the electric contribution of the power unit to near parity with the internal combustion engine. The rules have since been revised for 2027 to reduce the electrical element.
“Formula One will always be great,” Norris said. “It can just be better.
“The thing that’s a shame is that Formula One is too heavily led by the fact it’s a business nowadays and not by how can you make the sport the best possible. It’s ‘how can you just make the most money as a business?’.
“And that’s just not what it should be. That’s not how a sport should be run. The fact we have hybrids, 50-50 and all that, that’s just because more teams wanted to come in and because you make more money.”
Norris also said Formula One’s fan base had evolved since the launch of Netflix’s documentary series Drive to Survive, with greater attention now paid to drivers’ personalities than the racing itself.
“I think the fans you have nowadays are a lot more personality-based and not simply Formula One as a whole sport,” he said. “I think there’s less interest in how the actual race goes, and more just whether the driver has done well or not.
“The biggest voice should always be ours as drivers. We have the best idea of how racing should be, how it can be, what’s possible and what’s not.
“We want the best for the fans, the best viewing, the best racing and the most fun to drive. At the minute, we have very, very little say, and a lot more of it is done because if you can have Audi and other teams in it, it’s seen as a bigger win than the drivers being happy.”
