There is one thing that any Brazilian Formula 1 fanatic knows by heart: Sunday with a GP is a sacred day. But if you compare how people followed a race in the 90s – antenna on the TV, Galvão Bueno shouting in your ear, and no information beyond what appeared on the screen – with what happens today, you will realize we are talking about completely different worlds. The digital revolution changed not only how the teams develop their cars but also how each fan, from Manaus to Porto Alegre, experiences every lap, every pit stop, and every overtake. And in this new scenario, platforms like 1xBet have entered the game to transform the act of watching a race into something much more interactive, exciting, and full of adrenaline.
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The Time When Watching Was Passive (And How That Ended)
Think about it: before broadband internet, before the smartphone became an extension of the hand, the F1 fan was a passive spectator. You saw what the camera showed. Period. If Ferrari had a technical problem in the pit and the broadcast was focused on McLaren, you simply didn’t know. You cheered in the dark.
This began to change timidly in the early 2000s, with websites updating the position scoreboard with some delay. But it was from 2010, with the explosion of smartphones and social networks, that everything turned upside down. The fan stopped being the audience and started being a participant.
The 2026 Formula 1 season starts in the early hours from Saturday to Sunday (8), from 1 a.m. (Brasília time), with the Australian GP. The only representative from Brazil will be Gabriel Bortoleto, in the Audi team.
What Really Changed: The Tools Every Fan Uses Today
Today, following a Formula 1 GP is a multi-screen, multi-content, and multi-sensory experience. Let’s honestly talk about what really transformed the way Brazilians consume F1:
1. The Official F1 App (F1 App)
This one is a game-changer. The official Formula 1 app offers, in the paid version (F1 TV Pro), something that seemed impossible 15 years ago: live telemetry of all cars, speed data, GPS positions on the circuit map, tire temperature, ERS usage – real engineer-level information. The fan becomes a co-creator of the experience.
Features the app offers:
- Real-time positions with second-by-second updated intervals
- Circuit map with the location of each car
- Live team radio (those epic conversations between driver and engineer)
- Telemetry data comparing two drivers side by side
- Replay on exclusive cameras that don’t appear on TV
2. Streaming and the Liberation from Pay TV
For a long time, Brazilians who wanted to watch F1 depended exclusively on pay TV channels – Band, Globo, SporTV. With the arrival of streaming platforms and, mainly, F1 TV, this changed. But the most interesting point is not just where to watch, it’s how.
Today you can:
- Watch the race with the original English audio from Sky Sports
- Choose an exclusive camera of your favorite driver
- Activate multi-screen mode with up to four cameras simultaneously
- Replay maneuvers in slow motion instantly
3. Social Media: The Mandatory Second Screen
Who watches F1 alone nowadays? No one. Even if you are home alone on the couch, you are actually in a big virtual grandstand. Twitter/X has become the second official commentator of every GP. During a race, Brazilian F1 hashtags easily enter the global trending – this country has one of the loudest fanbases on the grid.
TikTok, in turn, popularized F1 among a younger audience in a way that no marketing campaign could. A 30-second video with an impossible Verstappen overtake or a controversial touch gets millions of views even before the race ends.
The Arrival of Sports Betting: A New Level of Engagement
Here we need to be honest: one of the factors that most boosted Brazilian fans’ engagement with F1 in recent years was the popularization of sports betting platforms. And we’re not just talking about “cheering for the result” – the market structure available today is sophisticated.
1xBet betting house is a clear example of this. During a Grand Prix, the platform offers dozens of real-time markets: who will get pole position, what will be the virtual safety car, if it will rain in Belgium, who will overtake whom at the start. These are bets that require the fan to know the circuit, the car’s characteristics, the driver’s history — it becomes a knowledge game.
Placing sports bets on 1xbet during a GP requires you to pay attention to everything: tire strategy, grid position, weather conditions, rivalries between teammates. This level of analysis turns the casual viewer into a technical observer, who understands why Red Bull switched from medium to hard tires in the pit stop when everyone expected the opposite.
Technology On and Off the Track: A Comparative Table
Below, an overview of how the fan experience evolved in different aspects between the 2000s and today:
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| Aspect | 2000s | Today (2024/2025) |
| Broadcast | Free/pay TV, single camera | Streaming, multi-screens, exclusive cameras |
| Real-time data | Only basic positions | Complete telemetry, GPS, tire temperature |
| Social interaction | Forums and Orkut | Twitter/X, TikTok, Discord, communities |
| Betting | Almost nonexistent in Brazil | Live markets, dynamic odds, hundreds of options |
| Supplementary content | Magazines and static websites | YouTube, podcasts, documentaries, behind the scenes |
| Immersive experience | None | VR, simulators, games like F1 24 |
The Drive to Survive Phenomenon and the New Generation of Fans
It would be impossible to talk about the digital transformation of F1 without mentioning the Netflix series Drive to Survive. Released in 2019, it literally created a new fan base worldwide – and in Brazil, which already had a historically passionate relationship with the sport because of Senna, Barrichello, and Massa, the impact was even greater.
The series did something that live broadcasting never managed alone: it humanized the drivers. It showed the behind-the-scenes, the tensions, the tears, the conflicts. And then came the digital cascade effect:
- Increase in followers on drivers’ social media profiles
- Boom in the number of Brazilians subscribing to F1 TV
- Growth of communities on Reddit and Discord dedicated to F1
- Increase in searches for F1 race betting
Simulators, Games, and F1 eSports: When Virtual Meets Real
Another front of the digital transformation that few discuss in depth: simulators and F1 eSports. The Formula 1 eSports championship has existed since 2017 and has drivers who became professionals from games. In Brazil, this movement grew a lot during the pandemic – and hasn’t decreased since.
Games like F1 24 (from Codemasters/EA) allow fans to experience exactly the same circuits, with the same cars, using physics very close to reality. Many people who had never paid attention to F1 started to understand the sport through the game – and then began to follow the real GPs.
This creates a virtuous cycle:
- Fan discovers F1 through the game
- Starts watching real races
- Begins using apps and data platforms
- Deepens technical knowledge
- Engages with betting, communities, and specialized content
The Brazilian Fan Has Something Special in All This
It is no exaggeration to say that Brazil has a unique relationship with Formula 1. We are the country of Ayrton Senna – and that carries an emotional weight that no purely rational analysis can explain. The digital transformation amplified this in a genuinely moving way.
Today, a teenager in Recife can watch the same GP as a Mercedes engineer in Brackley, with access to the same telemetry, discussing the same strategies in real time on Twitter. The knowledge hierarchy has been democratized. The fan who studies, follows, researches – today has tools that 20 years ago were exclusive to the teams.
What’s Still to Come
F1 has already announced partnerships with augmented reality and virtual reality companies. The idea is that soon you will be able to “watch” a race as if you were inside the cockpit of your favorite driver – with VR glasses, feeling the car’s vibration in the low-speed corners in Monaco.
Artificial intelligence is already being used to:
- Predict pit stop strategies based on historical data
- Generate personalized analyses for each fan
- Create automatic highlights based on the user’s favorite driver
- Suggest betting markets based on fan behavior
The line between watching and participating is disappearing – and for the Brazilian fan, who has always been one of the most passionate, this future has arrived at the right time.
Conclusion: The Couch Became the Pit Lane
The digital transformation in Formula 1 was not a smooth and gradual evolution. It was a game changer. In less than 15 years, the act of watching a race went from passive to active, from simple to technical, from solitary to collective.
The Brazilian fan has never been one to watch silently. Now he has the tools for it: apps with telemetry, personalized streaming, vibrant communities, realistic games, and betting platforms that make every lap a new chapter of a story you help write.
The GP starts on Sunday. But the experience starts on Thursday, with free practice – and doesn’t end until the last analysis of the early morning podcast.
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