F1’s first-ever united season launch was held at the O2 Arena in London.

The long-awaited Formula 1 combined launch of all 10 teams’ liveries and creating a spectacle of starting the season proved a gamble that paid off.

To much fanfare, Formula 1 emerged triumphant from its first-ever collaborative team launch having successfully pulled off another idea aimed at turning the sport into a more spectacular and fan-accessible year-long event.

Like Drive to Survive, F1 75 proved a hit – but has it got staying power?

Given the huge success of Netflix show Drive to Survive over the last five years, the show which took an already popular sport explode into the mainstream, it’s worth remembering that, initially, the idea of a docu-drama series focusing on F1’s storylines was met with skepticism.

Of course, for hardened fans, Drive to Survive can be seen for what it is – a show largely grounded in reality, albeit with the dramatic elements emphasised and almost caricatured with some willingness to bend the truth in the name of creative licence.

It serves its purpose as a very useful on-ramp for those who maybe don’t actually quite enjoy the on-track spectacle quite so much, and, to put it simply, can be viewed as Liberty Media’s crowning glory so far since taking ownership of F1’s commercial rights almost a decade ago.

F1 75 was an idea met with skepticism. After all, the tried-and-tested method of the teams doing their own thing to launch their new cars allowed them to choose a path that works for them individually.

Whether it be a quick and easy render reveal with a later pitlane reveal, or a full pomp and circumstance showcase event, each team had the ability to command headlines for a launch day – ideal when it comes to giving commercial partners time in the limelight and bringing them along for a jolly.

F1 75 removed that, turning what is usually a team-only event for the 10 outfits and grouping it all under its umbrella for a highly monetisable marketing event.

Commercial attractiveness aside, what could have been a damp squib of a night turned out to be anything but as F1 launched the 2025 season with a sport-wide launch that officially kickstarts the new championship. It was an idea with obvious challenges – after all, no team will want to show up with its actual new car and give opponents a chance to see it before hitting the track for testing. So, without a new car, how do you create a compelling live event?

Thus, the event became a show of new liveries – with the obvious problem that most teams and their respective evolved brand identities mean that there was little by way of change – perhaps the biggest obstacle that F1 had to face to make the show engaging and it’s for this reason that the two-hour extravaganza at the O2 Arena lost energy in the second hour of the show.

A boisterous beginning with Machine Gun Kelly doling out some rock riffs, some very fancy audiovisual effects, and pyrotechnics certainly got the blood pumping, and the excitement was sky-high as Sauber went big on their reveal – green lasers, a drumming marching band, and a visual presentation and voiceover proclaiming all the greatness that lies ahead… only to reveal a car that looked near identical to last years.

Almost immediately, the bar for the spectacle itself had been set so high that it would prove very difficult to sustain for such a long show.

This was borne out over the next 100 minutes or so as, despite working up the grid, the obvious sameness of the liveries to last year’s cars meant the excitement levels did cool off noticeably – after all, it’s difficult to go into raptures of euphoria when a team pulls back the covers only to reveal last year’s car with a slightly tweaked paint job.

There were stronger moments, of course, with Alpine’s dramatic reveal being a particular highlight as F1 theme tune composer Brian Tyler jumped up on stage to pretend DJ some dubstep drum & bass, ramping up the excitement to fever pitch before the new paint job was shown off as the car was rolled forward down the large centre stage.

To Alpine’s credit, their livery was also one of the few to evolve from last year’s to any great extent, providing a mild pay-off for the intensity of the build-up.

But that was one of the precious few to achieve this, with only Racing Bulls’ car being another to appear significantly different from last year as the VCARB02 was revealed with a paint job reminiscent of Red Bull’s Turkey 2021 livery.

The Italian squad also leaned into the fun of their constant team name-changing, with Yuki Tsunoda and Isack Hadjar good-naturedly grinning in the face of some jokes aimed at their lack of stature.

Jack Whitehall proved a perfect choice as host as he engaged the crowd with warmth and jokes that had just the right level of bite as he kicked off proceedings with something of a ‘roast’ of F1’s finest and allowed F1’s more seasoned pros like Laura Winter and Lawrence Barretto to take care of things when a little more knowledge of F1 was required.

In terms of the musical acts, MGK’s opener proved the high point as the energy matched the excitement as the show began, but a milquetoast interlude from American country singer Kane Brown did nothing to keep the momentum up during what proved to be a mercifully short act.

All in all, F1’s first united launch proved a hit with the general public, and was embraced as being a fun event by attending media. The success of the idea was borne out by audience figures as the official YouTube stream topped out at 1.1 million consecutive viewers and over 4.6 million combined throughout the stream, on top of a sold-out O2 Arena. F1’s previous record peak for a live-streamed event was just 289,000, a figure that was blown out of the water by F1 75.

From speaking with teams on the ground at the O2, the event itself was seen as something with obvious pros and cons compared to a traditional launch. Smaller teams acknowledged that, unlike a normal launch day, their usual day in the sun was condensed to about 10 minutes which meant all the usual pre-season hype and fuss around them was lost in the noise.

What F1 75 proved was that it’s an idea that has legs. But, rather than trying to make it an annual thing, perhaps saving it for anniversary years, or writing it into the sport’s rules that teams must show up with their car designs for the relevant year, would make more sense.

For F1 2026, the expanded testing schedule of three separate three-day tests to prepare the cars for the new regulation cycle means that a repeat of the launch event is unlikely at this point – but is an idea that could be revisited in the future.

Red Bull and FIA are fighting against an image problem

With the predominantly British crowd loudly voicing their support for almost every team, as Williams, McLaren, Mercedes, and Ferrari lapped up the adulation of the audience, what became evident very quickly was that Red Bull simply does not command the same level of support at this point in time.

The scene was set early on as Max Verstappen was displayed on the big screens to a very mixed reaction as loud boos interspersed with cheering, but there was nothing mixed about the reaction of the crowd to Christian Horner’s appearance on stage.

Climbing up onto the stage to the refrain of the Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up, the team’s in-garage victory song, as a tribute to the team’s late founder Dietrich Mateschitz, Horner brazened through the jeers as he acknowledged the reception with “Well, it’s fantastic to be here in the O2 anyway!”

Seeming to appear initially caught out by the reception he got, Horner started leaning into his role as the pantomime villain of the evening and proceeded to point out how Red Bull had played Start Me Up in their garage on nine occasions in F1 2024 following victories en route to his fourth championship… seeming to deliberately gently needle the crowd, and enjoying himself in doing so.

The car reveal itself proved nondescript, as the livery was as revolutionary as one might expect, but there was a notable absence of comments made by Verstappen and new teammate Liam Lawson – the team confirming as having decided very early on in the planning process to utilise their seven-minute slot with Horner’s speech and the promotional video rather than inane and forgettable comments from the drivers after a day of already intense media engagement.

What came as a surprise to Red Bull was the extent of the booing. While some was expected, given the majority Lewis Hamilton/Lando Norris home fans were never going to euphorically greet the man who has kept them from title glory in recent years, the unequivocal crowd response perhaps underlined the situation that Red Bull has discovered at Silverstone in recent years – the most successful British team boss of the last two decades simply does not command his home crowd’s adulation.

Will that bother Red Bull? Unlikely. While it can’t be said the atmosphere was ugly, and Horner didn’t appear particularly fazed by the reception, it’s indicative of how Red Bull’s dominance of recent years – combined with Verstappen going up against British drivers in the title fights – has led to the team’s own home crowd not according them the same support as teams seen as more traditionally ‘British’, despite Horner having the home advantage over the likes of, say, Zak Brown or Toto Wolff.

Despite the Austrian-owned Red Bull team being no less British than the Bahraini-owned McLaren or the American-owned Williams teams, all of whom have their factories in the UK’s motorsport valley, it was amusing to see the home crowd in the O2 Arena embrace ‘Oh yes it is!’ shenanigans one might expect at a Christmas panto by booing RBR – but probably less so for Red Bull, who have to be wondering how on earth they can turn around this image problem in the UK. Short of giving up on winning and becoming true underdogs again, there’s no obvious way forward.

But whatever about the reception Red Bull received, it paled into insignificance compared to what the FIA endured on a night in which FOM/Liberty Media were very much the kingpins.

With the new swearing regulations imposed by President Mohammed Ben Sulayem a constant talking point through the day’s media sessions, including a golden moment from the infamously potty-mouthed Yuki Tsunoda trying his best not to “fudge up”, the live show also threw a few jabs in regarding the language – or lack thereof – F1 folk are now expected to use.

A moment from Lando Norris, in which he jokingly pushed away a Netflix microphone and muttered “w*nkers”, would likely have triggered all sorts of problems for him over a Grand Prix weekend, but it was Gordon Ramsay – another egregious user of so-called expletives – who managed to really poke a finger in the eye of the governing body.

Given the highly rehearsed and planned nature of the show, interviewing Ramsay about the swearing situation led to the seemingly inevitable as his “s**t happens” comment was met with rapturous applause – a moment that could be interpreted as a very clear message sent from Liberty Media that, perhaps, a mountain has been made out of what should have been a molehill. Short of Ramsay going rogue, it was a moment that undermined the FIA’s recent regulatory changes – rightly or wrongly.

Perhaps the most alarming moment of the evening came when the FIA logo was shown on screen as host Laura Winter paid tribute to their governance over the last 75 years, only for a cacophony of jeers and booing to erupt. Underlining the moment was the quick switch to the Pirelli logo, with the crowd immediately cheering.

The FIA has lost the goodwill of the public and the fans and, on a night where Liberty Media’s ownership of F1 was celebrated, the governing body must be alert to this sentiment – even if presenting an unbothered front.

Certainly, sources in the governing body have suggested that the booing of the governing body is merely a byproduct of its unenviable position of being the regulator and enforcer, and that its greater concern is on the booing focused at competitors within the sport.

With the FIA making a big push to tackle the issue of online abuse through its United Against Online Abuse initiative, the effects of soccer-like tribalism within F1 – as evidenced on the night in London – is something that makes those efforts to stamp out the issue all the more difficult.

But what the FIA must be most alert to is that, without having the public onside, if Liberty Media ever does decide it can run the show by itself, the fans are starting to show whose side they might choose.