Category: Too Much Racing

Races Watched 2025

At the beginning of 2024 I started to log all the races I watched. Now with two years of data I wanted to see what the numbers look like. Spotify Wrapped has a lot to answer for.

I wish I’d started doing this years ago. I’d love to know how the numbers compare to 2008 through to the early 2010s. I started this blog in ’08 and I watched a heck of a lot of races in those years. I used to post weekly reviews of what I was watching at the time, but never collated it.

There are people I follow online who watch more than me, and who should take the title of ‘I Watch Too Much Racing’. Shout out to Matt White, who inspired me to start tracking, as he posts all his races to socials – and got over 750 in ’25!

In a few days I will share the best races I saw in those two years. 2024 & 2025.

[Editors note: Calendars are bubbling away in the background, I’ll focus on those fully after I’ve done these.]

Races

In 2024 (blue) I had a big push in the spring but then felt burned out. It almost felt a chore to keep up and I kept things to a bare minimum, just F1 and IndyCar, with a couple of IMSA races to round out December.

2025 (orange) was the opposite. I never got started until February, then in the spring we had bad news in the family, obviously I placed my attention there rather than watch anything. When I decided to start up again I caught up all the F1 and IndyCar and also picked up my project to watch the 2024 BTCC.

That meant I caught up fast, so by August it became the game to try to beat 2024’s total by December. I made it by just two: 134 to 132

I actually felt better about it as well, not so burned out. I was still sick of F1 by the end of November, even with a brilliant title fight to enjoy.

Hours

Note: I count this by approximating the green flag to chequered flag time. I don’t include practice, qualifying, pre-race or post-race.

The gap of 20 hours in January was never closed down, and by the end of the year it was a gap of 33 hours. 133.4 hours versus 166.7 hours.

How to explain this? Simply the choice of racing. Last year I included sportscar racing. I just couldn’t find the time this year and that shows in the stats.

A lot of 30-minute BTCC and 20-minute support races on the excellent ITV4 coverage, racks up a lot of races in about 4 hours. A single endurance race doesn’t really move the race counter but it can add 12 or 24 hours.

Series

With apologies for those using screen readers, I can’t see an easy way to paste an Excel table here so I’ve used an image, and it’s difficult to express that in alt text.

Races:

F1 dominated with 30 races per year.

One big change in recent times is F1 growing to be all-consuming. We’re now expected to watch 30 races per year including the Sprints. A far cry from the days of 16 Grands Prix when I first started.

This creates a time sink. It sucks away a lot of time, energy and oxygen from other series. It is the reason I can’t keep up with MotoGP, Formula E, WEC or IMSA. I think it is deliberate.

I’ve long been an advocate for quality over quantity. I would prefer 17 or 18 quality Grands Prix, and no sprints, in order to allow other series to breathe. However, the body slam of constant F1 has pushed it to new heights, and that in turn appears to be helping other motorsport rather than hinder. I wonder if I’m a minority here.

BTCC is second. Most of the rest of the list are support races for BTCC. I’d like to thank ITV4 once again for bringing these to us. Amazing coverage. I record the 7-hour show and watch all of them. Many only appear at certain venues in the year, so the next track on the BTCC schedule might include a different slate of supports.

You MUST watch every variant of Minis and MINIs. Find them on YouTube. The best.

IndyCar is my other big series. I’ll always watch IndyCar.

Hours:

This is where you really see the effect of endurance races. I only saw three IMSA races in 2024 (part of Daytona 2024 live and a couple of 2019 races) and this was worth nearly 19 hours. I also managed a 4-race Asian Le Mans season and some of Le Mans.

In 2025 I only watched a short IMSA race, being the 2019 Lime Rock 2hr 40min GT-only race, and one ELMS & LMC weekend.

Backlog & 2026

Long-term followers on Twitter & Bluesky will know about my behemoth of a backlog spreadsheet.

My ambition for 2026 is to get caught up with the BTCC’s 2025 season early, and do my best to stay in touch with this season’s rounds much closer to when they actually happened. I want to get trackside again while having some clue what is going on. I highly recommend going to BTCC, I guarantee you’ll not be bored.

The other reason is BTCC is filling up my Sky DVR and I need the space. I also have a lot of MotoGP highlights too. Hence I want to use the rest of this off-season on as much of those as possible, too.
[Sidebar: I’ve had an offer of Sky UHD. My older box doesn’t support UHD although my TV does. I would need a replacement box, but that means losing all those recordings.]

All of this means my other project got mothballed: Catching up 5 years of IMSA & WEC so that I can join in with GTP & Hypercar. There just hasn’t been time.

That’s the thing about endurance racing: the races are really long.

Having seen every IMSA race since the American Le Mans Series era, and every WEC race since before WEC existed (the ILMC) – let’s go back to the old Le Mans Series circa 2009 – both up until mid-2019, I’m not interested in skipping past those years and joining in from today. I have to complete the set. Even though I know there are some dire times in WEC from 2019 to 2023. I am motivated to see the end of LMP1 & DPi and the start of LMH/LMDh. I am not giving in.

Of my personal favourite series, as of 1st January 2026, these are my next races:

F1: Up to date;
IndyCar: Up to date;
BTCC: 2025 Donington Park National;
MotoGP: 2024 Lusail;
Formula E: 2024 Mexico City;
IMSA WSC: 2019 Road America;
WEC: 2019 Silverstone;
ELMS: 2019 Silverstone;

Never Gonna Happen

If I can’t find time for my favourite series, I’m surely not going to manage the ‘nice to haves’. You could call this the “Never Gonna Happen” list.

GP2/F2: I thought GP2 was great. I stopped about 2012 but I always wanted to go back, carry on from where I left off and run into the F2 era. I don’t even think that’s possible in any legal way. Any idea how I can do this?

IMSA: The one that really bugs me is IMSA Challenge, I still have 5 years under the Conti Tire name, let alone the Michelin Pilot era. Yet I absolutely loved that series back then.

GT3: I feel like I should know what’s going on with all this, particularly the SRO series. In 2023 I watched the 2011 Blancpain GT season and enjoyed it enough to want to catch up some more, it never happened. Blancpain became GTWC Europe, they’ve also expanded to America, Asia, Australia. There’s GT4. And that’s without even talking about DTM, British GT, 24H Series. Is it all worth it? Surely there’s a load of fluff in here?

WTCR: I saw the whole WTCC to the end (yes, including TC1), and the TCR International Series, but when they merged I never touched it. Was that wrong, or right in hindsight? Is the World Tour actually worth bothering with? Nobody ever talks about it, so I assume it isn’t.

NASCAR: I get so frustrated with the deliberate take outs and the whole idea of the playoffs, but it’s an important area of the sport and it’s a complete blind spot for me. I kind of want to go back and explore from the 80s to today, as someone never immersed in it.

WRC: I used to follow it when I could find the free-to-air highlights. Then various Seb’s won everything for years and years and I stopped caring. I have no idea what’s happened for the last decade. I miss it.

For what it’s worth, this is where I got to on the nice-to-haves, a position that hasn’t changed in years. Excluding some live events I dipped into (24h NBR, 12h Bathurst).

GP2/F2: 2013 Sepang;
IMSA Challenge: 2014 Laguna Seca;
IMSA Proto / VP: 2018 Daytona;
SRO IGTC: 2018 Suzuka;
SRO GTWC Europe: 2012 Monza (it was still Blancpain GT back then);
British GT: 2014 Oulton Park;
WTCR / World Tour: 2018 Hungaroring;
24H Series: 2012 Barcelona;

A Resumption

This blog started in August 2008. I haven’t posted here regularly since 2019 when life got in the way, and shortly after that Covid got in the way for all of us. Like so many bloggers before me, a lack of time and energy to upkeep a blog got the better of me. No shame in that. We are all busy. I have lost count of the motorsport blogs that have gone away – it’s almost all of them from the community we enjoyed back in the day.

Add to that, the simplicity of dumping your thoughts in 280 characters on social media and that addictive dopamine hit of likes and comments that you found yourself chasing, meant all my output was directed to Twitter.

Twitter became X and X became a racist right wing cesspit, so I’m not there any more.

Bluesky is doing a decent job of replacing it. Even if it is a lot quieter, there are really good discussions and interactions there, that remind me of the old days of Twitter some 10-15 years ago. You just have to work hard to find the right people, the right community, it takes an effort. And quite honestly a lot of the right people who used to be on Twitter are there now.

And yes, I am disappointed that what I thought were the right people, have stayed in the swamp rather than move over.

Anyway we were talking on Bluesky and it came up that having your own space away from the socials is kind of handy. If we all have to move again you need somewhere that grounds you. And I miss writing here. Something of a longer format in which to ponder. So it seems a good time to have a bash at this again.

I often have the old imposter syndrome. The thought that, since I’ve no connections, I’m in no paddock, I only watch things on TV therefore I’m no different to any other pleb like me. Why should people read me? I have nothing useful to say or add to the discourse. But that’s probably not quite true.

Certainly if you listen to broadcasters and insiders, a lot of them have no clue what fans think. So I do think it is important for fans to have a voice. And I have been watching for a long time now and that has to count for something, even if I am shouting at cloud, even though my memory is Swiss cheese and I can’t remember races I’ve watched last month never mind years ago. In modern parlance I’m very much going by vibes.

The thing I’ve been pondering is what to put here. Nobody reads race reviews, they never have, but I do enjoy journaling what I’ve been watching. I used to do that here and inspired by Matt White’s race count I brought back a series of mini reviews on socials last year and this.

I also had the idea many, many years ago, to have a weekly or monthly column. Pick a day and make sure to write something for it even if it is short.

So my goal is to do those things. It’ll be a bit shaky as I get into the swing of things. And no promises. It might flake out. Real life has been throwing a lot of things at our family. But it also reminds us to do things we enjoy. And I enjoy this.

Let’s see what happens.

A Temporary Pause

Hello.

This blog is on hold for a couple of weeks.

Overnight on Saturday, into Sunday morning, my step-mum passed away. I won’t go into the details but it was a shock and we are taking time to be with each other.

In a bit of unfortunate timing, my sister is due to be married on Sunday. After taking advice from everyone she and her fiance have bravely decided to continue.

And the funeral will come in a couple of weeks, as the coroner may need to investigate.

After the wedding when a sense of routine returns and I go back to work, whenever that is, I will need my hobby to keep me occupied in the evenings. The blog posts will return when I’m ready. I was able to watch the Paris Formula E race, for example, but I won’t be watching Baku Formula 1 or anything else for a little while.

I will watch a lot less live in the near-to-medium future. We will probably be using weekends for other things. This means a significant reduction in live Twittering. For example, the timing of the funeral and other events means I will not be providing live Twitter coverage of Indy 500 qualifying, as had been planned. It doesn’t feel very important right now.

On the positive side this break may provide an opportunity to rethink how I use social media and this blog.

Take care of yourselves.

Pat.

 

Races Watched (2019 Week 16): WEC COTA 2017

Week 16:  15-21 April 2019

A very quiet weekend in the racing world. The only active series were those I don’t follow closely, but that’s probably my fault for not following British GT as closely I should.

In the UK it was Easter Bank Holiday weekend with Good Friday and Easter Monday off work. The sun was out so I didn’t spend a lot of time indoors watching racing and I opted out of going to Oulton Park’s British GT due to other goings on.

It was a good opportunity to continue my endurance racing catch up which I did on Sunday evening. There’s little point blogging it for an audience because frankly none of you care about a race that happened 18 months ago but I did it anyway because I like the practice of writing weekly.

2017 FIA WEC – R6 – 6 Hours of Circuit of the Americas
Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, USA
Took place 16th September 2017
Watched 21st April 2019

Qualifying:
LMP1:  Porsche, Porsche, Toyota, Toyota;
LMP2:  Signatech, Rebellion, Jackie Chan DC, Rebellion;
GTE Pro:  AF Corse, Ford Ganassi, Aston Martin, AF Corse;
GTE Am:  Aston Martin, Spirit of Race, Clearwater, Dempsey-Proton;

Just four cars in LMP1 for the last few races of the 2017 season and Porsche’s 919 was clearly faster than Toyota’s TS050, just as it was in Mexico. Yet the Toyotas had better low speed boost, the traction off the corner visibly better and they got past the no.2 Porsche in the early laps. Toyota then ran 1-2 by not taking tyres at the first pitstops when the Porsches did. That made a race of it for the next hour! They’d play strategy all race.

LMP2 teams were single-stinting drivers due to the high heat. Really close racing in the class. Signatech Alpine were the class of the field, though in the middle Alex Brundle’s Jackie Chan DC Racing car pulled a big lead for a while. This class was the one most affected by tyre regulations (just 4 sets for a 6 hour race) on a high degradation track, so the order changed a lot based on who was single-stinting and double-stinting tyres.

GTE Pro again had really good close, clean racing this time between the Aston of Nicki Thiim and the two AF Corse Ferraris in the first hour. Thiim had got the lead through the melee of turn one lap one when all the cars spread out wide. In the 2nd hour the Ferraris got clear. Despite qualifying last, the Porsche GTs had great race pace and caught the Ferraris.

GTE Am’s pole-sitting Aston Martin had Paul Dalla Lana driving first so we found him fall behind the Pro drivers early and the two Ferraris pull away. It turned around later when Mathias Lauda and Pedro Lamy raced through the pack.

A Safety Car just after halfway after the Gulf Porsche spun twice. That allowed the GT Porsche to catch and overtake the Ferraris for the Pro lead. But with 12 minutes to go the leading no. 51 Ferrari had a slow puncture, the pit stop put Ferrari and Porsche side by side for the lead! The Ferrari would just about come out on top.

And within 10 minutes to go the lead Porsche 919s swapped places, team orders, the No. 1 slowing to allow No. 2 to win. That gives the No.2 car its 4th consecutive win including Le Mans and a handy points lead, while No.1 failed to score back at the double-points Le Mans and so is the sacrificial lamb.

As ever in WEC the field spread out in the last couple of hours but there were stories all the way through. I was expecting to be able to F.Fwd through chunks and get the race done in 5 hours or less, I ended up not skipping any of it.

LMP1

  1. No. 2 Porsche 919 – Hartley, Bernhard, Bamber [4th win of the year];
  2. No. 1 Porsche 919 – Lotterer, Tandy, Jani;
  3. No. 8 Toyota TS050 – Buemi, Nakajima, Sarrazin;

LMP2

  1. No. 36 Signatech Alpine – Lapierre, Menezes, Negrao  [1st win of the year];
  2. No. 13 Rebellion – Piquet Jr, Beche, Heinemeier Hansson;
  3. No. 31 Rebellion – Senna, Prost, Canal  [5th podium of the year];

GTE Pro

  1. No. 51 AF Corse Ferrari – Calado, Pier Guidi  [2nd win of the year];
  2. No. 92 Porsche – Christensen, Estre;
  3. No. 71 AF Corse Ferrari – Rigon, Bird;

GTE Am

  1. No. 98 Aston Martin – Dalla Lana, Lamy, Lauda  [2nd win of the year];
  2. No. 61 Clearwater Ferrari – Sun Mok, Sawa, Griffin;
  3. No. 54 Spirit of Race Ferrari – Castellacci, Flohr, Molina;

The next WEC race was the 6 Hours of Fuji, though the ELMS 4 Hours of Spa is next on my list by calendar date.

Next Week

The weekend of 26th to 28th April, a fairly busy one depending on your interests. My pick of the week is Baku because that race is crazy fun.

  • F1 Azerbaijan GP at Baku (with F2 support);
  • Formula E in Paris;
  • VLN 3 at the Nordschleife;
  • GT Open at Paul Ricard;
  • Blancpain America at VIR;
  • WTCR at Hungaroring;
  • BTCC at Donington Park;
  • WRC in Argentina;
  • NASCAR at Talledega;

I will watch F1 and Formula E. If the weather is terrible Saturday I may stay home and watch VLN. I plan to catch up on BTCC and WTCR at the end of the year as, guess what, I’m two years behind!

Oh and it’s the London Marathon on Sunday morning and that’s often a good watch if you like endurance racing of any type.