Former Haas Engineer Blames Sky Sports and X Instead of Max Verstappen’s Dominance for Falling ‘Out of Love’ With Formula 1

Sabyasachi Biswas | 11/11/2023
Former Haas Engineer Blames Sky Sports and X Instead of Max Verstappen’s Dominance for Falling ‘Out of Love’ With Formula 1

Mike Caulfield was not a happy man regarding how Sky Sports and X played their part in making the 2023 F1 season boring. Caulfield, a former Haas engineer made this stunning claim recently on his personal X handle. He blamed the renowned media house and X for making the current season tedious. Interestingly, he kept Max Verstappen out, who took 17 wins and did not blame him for making 2023 monotonous.

Caulfield, wrote about this on X, “Having got more time to spend watching things like Sky and reading Twitter through a weekend, I’m really disappointed on how stories are ignored or just plainly told incorrectly. When Sky came in they promised a deeper dive into the technical aspect.”

Caulfield, the British engineer has a decade of F1 experience. He worked with Mercedes and Haas on their race strategy. With his vast experience, he also observed that the media houses now look for stories in a ‘Drive to Survive format’ instead of going into the technical side.

Admittedly, he also focused on how the stories on the paddock are “told incorrectly“. Therefore, his point for the “boring” 2023 F1 season is not Verstappen, for sure. Notably, he also has some statistics that actually support that F1 has lost its viewers off late.

Was Max Verstappen the reason F1 lost viewership in USA?

According to multiple reports, F1 has lost a huge amount of viewership in the US over the last few weeks. The sport saw an increase in viewership since Netflix’s Drive to Survive released back in 2019. However, the popularity took a hit with Verstappen and Red Bull dominating back-to-back seasons. That is why they are often blamed for this slump.

F1 has lost as many as 650,000 fans from last year and this was something even renowned sports expert Joe Pompliano also focused on. Admittedly, the upcoming Las Vegas GP, which is set to be a glamorous affair had to reduce their ticket prices in order to fill the stands.

Notably, even Max Verstappen felt a bit of boredom this season, as revealed by his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. Nevertheless, F1 is trying its bit to make the sport interesting.

Post Edited By: Somin Bhattacharjee
Max Verstappen Mike Caulfield

About the author

Avatar photo

Sabyasachi Biswas

Sabyasachi Biswas is an F1 journalist at The SportsRush. With over one and a half decades of love for the sport and five years of experience in the field, he dreams to be a regular at the paddock when the lights go out. A Red Bull fan and F1 fan in general over the years, he enjoyed watching Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel, and Max Verstappen dominate the track. Apart from F1, he's also a big-time Madridista and Federer fanatic. He was a sub-junior level footballer, won inter-district quizzes and debate competitions back in school. A travel freak throughout, he tries different cuisines and learns new cultures whenever he's away from the keyboard.

Don’t miss these