I’m an American and have been watching F1 since a teen in 1986. I still miss Bob Varsha.
I hate the sprint quality idea and hope they don’t implement it.
I don’t care when they have practice quali or races because the events are always in the middle of the night or too early in the morning to watch in American time zones anyway. That’s just the way it has always been and will always be, so I accepted this long ago. It’s fine once you get used to it. Furthermore, technology has developed this amazing thing called a DVR which makes commercials and event start times and lengths totally irrelevant. I never miss anything, ever.
I think the further they drift from the traditional format of F1 the more they will alienate the fan base since F1 typically takes a number of years before it can be fully appreciated by new watchers of the sport. Like the NFL , MLB, Soccer, or any sports league, it takes a while to learn about the teams, the history, the main protagonists, and the ever-developing sport storyline. If they keep changing the format trying to get every viewer possible, consistency will be unavailable and the entire F1 circus integrity will be compromised and in turn becomes farcical. Farcical storylines and controlled randomness attracts and fosters a WWF-like, fickle fan base that is not wanted by veteran fans, and won’t stay if the sport enters a few years of single team domination. To develop and foster a long-term fan base, they need to improve the drivability and mechanical grip of the cars so the racing improves, not torquing and changing the tv format, or event packaging.
Until the idiots in charge of F1 stop trying to fix something that relatively is not broken, they will continue to attract zombie-like “entertain me dammit!” fans while digging veteran fan’s gravesites.