One of the things I think is really neat about F1, and which doesn't show up in any other sports that I'm aware of aside from other types of motor racing, is th

One of the things I think is really neat about F1, and which doesn't show up in any other sports that I'm aware of aside from other types of motor racing, is that F1 isn't one competition - it's two separate competitions running in parallel. The first competition is the obvious one: The drivers all want to be the fastest driver and get the most points in the driver's championship. The second competition is similarly obvious: The constructors all want to have built the fastest car, and get the most points in the constructor's championship. But crucially, these two competitions can't exist without each other! The drivers can't be fast if they have a good car, and the best cars won't be fast unless there's a driver who really understands how to wring the most performance out of it sitting behind the wheel. So there's this constant (and in my opinion, fascinating) tension where the constructors are trying to build a) fast cars, but also b) cars that their current drivers can effectively use and the drivers are trying to a) drive the car fast but also b) find the constructor who will build a car that can go fast and is suited to their driving style. In other sports there's some amount of equipment preference (e.g. different golfers have different brands of clubs, different tennis players might use different brands of rackets or different shoes), but the equipment manufacturers aren't literally competing with other manufacturers - they're just trying to supply an industry. So if you give everybody the same car, then yes - it becomes a transparent display of driver skill, but that doesn't necessarily make the race better, because now you've lost half of the competition. F1 (and motor racing) history is full of bits where somebody managed to figure out something neat about aerodynamics, stuck a new part on their car, and then _lied to everybody else about what it was_ so that nobody would be able to figure out why their car had gotten so fast; the ground effect lotus '78 comes to mind, as does the discovery of the gurney flap.