As far as F1 being a team sport above all, there are differing opinions on this. Some people believe that the drivers are just employees of corporations and, as such, F1 could function with any drivers. To make a point, would you rather watch a series with Ferrari, RBR, McLAren, etc. cars driven by Domenicalli, Horner and Whitmarsh or one with Lola chassis and Chevy engines driven by SV, LH, FA and KR?
Well the former would be much funnier, I'm sure you'd agree, but of course if you like to see cars driven on the edge as I do, you'd have to opt for the proper drivers. But Lola chassis and Chevy engines sounds a lot to me like Indycar, which is also a team sport even though, unlike in F1, the teams are not constructors. They're still teams and some equip their drivers to get a result a lot better than others. And they could and presumably sometimes do give out team orders, either openly or clandestinely (I don't know for sure since I don't get ESPN so can't watch Indycar here in the UK).
Up until last year there was a single seater series with spec Williams chassis and no teams, meaning that not only were the cars identical, but the playing field was absolutely level. Engineers and mechanics were provided by the championship, and drivers were assigned a different race engineer at each event, sharing his attention and focus 50:50 with another driver. It was massively cheaper than F1, GP2 and FR3.5 and also quite a bit cheaper than things like British or Euro F3 or GP3, with car performance levels superior to F3 or GP3.
In terms of identifying raw talent and pace in a driver it was the fairest competition of any series on the single seater ladder, made all the fairer by its relative low cost and therefore its accessibility. And in theory, for that reason, those who don't think motorsport is or should be a team sport should have flocked to watch it; it was on TV throughout Europe and globally via the F2 website. But it died on its ass because nobody did watch it, and in the end drivers decided that competing and winning on equal terms, thereby proving they were quicker than their rivals, was not as useful to their careers as going to one of the other single seater series I mentioned and demonstrating their ability to function effectively as part of a team. In other words, teams in GP2 and F1 are looking for team players; people who can build a relationship with a particular race engineer and a group of mechanics to work on a car's setup (and, by implication, car development, although drivers don't tend to get that opportunity outside F1), not just over a weekend but over a season or two. Not necessaily the guy who wins when everybody just turns up and competes on equal terms without having the opportunity to do the team working behind the scenes, because that guy might not be the one who is still doing the winning when you get to F1 and the amount of work that has to be done outside the car, together with the team, to prepare for each session increases.
So, yeah, I'd say motor racing is fundamentally a team sport and always will be as long as you have teams in the top category of every branch of the sport; F1, WEC, WTCC, WRC - if the top categories are all arranged around teams competing with each other then obviously the national or junior categories will have to follow that concept or else die like F2 did, and so that's going to be the nature of the sport. And yet as far as I'm aware F1 fans are the only group that either don't like or refuse to understand this basic structural feature of their sport.
