The Mexican Grand Prix has a rather strange podium celebration. It’s not located in the pitlane like all of the other tracks and it always appears to be somewhat disorganized. However, this year’s podium celebration in Mexico has proven to be perhaps the worst podium ceremony of the past decade, if not longer.
For those of you who didn’t see the celebration – mainly those of you watching the race on NBC and being force fed NASCAR during the ceremony – it was an odd one. Confetti littered the podium and champagne was being sprayed by the drivers on the podium, but there was the absence of the Los Toreadors song that is usually played on the podium.
That’s when the podium began to rotate slowly, and the rather confused looking drivers stepped off of the rotating platform. The platform revealed DJ Hardwell, who had been booked to play some of his music. However, neither the drivers or many of the fans seemed to be impressed by the celebration.
As much as I like to see the sport try things different to improve the show and get some new fans, I think it could be safe to label the Mexican Grand Prix podium the worst F1 podium celebration ever. And it’s just one of the failed things that have been tried recently to improve the theatrics of the sport.
First there were the driver introductions in the United States performed by iconic ring announcer Michael Buffer, which received mixed reviews from fans. It was cool at first, but was drawn out a little too long and it was painful to watch at times. It too was also a little disorganized, appearing to confuse interviewer Will Buxton. And it was pretty much a copy of what happens at the start of the Indianapolis 500.
And then, that same race, there was that pointless CGI bald eagle that was spotted during the race broadcast. That was something that served no real purpose to the broadcast and was called out by some fans, complaining that the race broadcasts should not contain fake objects like that.
Coming back to the Mexican Grand Prix podium, the theatrics ruined the celebration. The podium celebration was unenergetic, with not a whole lot of champagne spraying going on. There are certain things in Formula One that aren’t broken and don’t need to be fixed. Nothing is really wrong theatrically with Formula One, so the management needs to forget about gimmicks like this and instead fix the core problems that are impacting the sport.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
