Pretty good. I have a rule when scoring things out of 10 that you can't pick 7 as this is often the safe, don't-really-want-to-express-an-opinion score.
Great to see four teams capable of delivering victories; as a consequence we had plenty of competitive races and I hope a few genuinely memorable ones.
However, no title battle to speak of and from the drivers I didn't detect much development from previous years. I felt that only Max truly stepped up and delivered his best work (and we already knew he would). The season threatened to catch fire around the Austin/Mexico mark but then fizzled remarkably quickly, for reasons we've discussed at length (and I mean at length).
When it came to the midfield we were starved of interesting stories and breakthrough performances from F1's B-list. The best I could think of would be Pierre Gasly grabbing a podium in Brazil and Franco Colapinto's impressive and extremely high-energy sub appearance for Williams.
So that adds up to 6/10. Probably the most fun F1 has been since 2021.
I did the lazy thing of giving it a 7, but I think I too would give a 6 rather than an 8.
The lack of title battle is the obvious thing missing (despite attempts to make there be one). But also, there's just something about the racing these days. Maybe it's partly to do with DRS and also the way drivers decide to battle each other, the circuits, track limits, top-down interference like mandatory tyre compounds, but I've felt for a while that F1 has sort of junior formula vibes these days. It doesn't always feel like I'm watching a "Grand Prix". It's not every race. Around mid-season, I felt like I was watching some Grand Prixs (Grands Prix?) like at Silverstone and Spa. But yeah, racing has a different feel, and I don't think "I'm getting older" really covers it.
