F1 Longevity: Decoding the problems F1 Faces
By: Anchored

F1 Longevity: Decoding the problems F1 Faces

_Anchored & Memereee

With a reset on the horizon and questions entering the drivers minds, one thought is entering everyone's heads. Will Formula One continue? It's a scary thought to me, someone that admires and adheres to EMC Formula One as the primary reason I still play EMC, but it is a logical question that does need to be answered.

EMC has long been a server with a high population count, from when there were literal queues to enter the server, to pressing tab and seeing the total number of players fill half your screen. And with a high population count on a server mimicking real-life, comes those who want to recreate sports and create communities of like-minded people. One such sport is Formula One, the art of controlling your boat on ice. Founded four and a half years ago, EMC is twice as old as the sport, and its continued longevity mixed with a dwindling player count could create the catalyst for an inevitable dry period for the sport, or even the end.

The reset is coming. In May of 2026, the server will reset and the map will be set back to default. Players will quickly create their favourite sports stadiums and bring back their EMC sport community, but Formula One won’t be quick. The average Formula One track consists of 151 chunks taken from a study of 10 tracks. This is around 2,400g; a steep amount for a player or nation to spend during the early months of a reset. The continued FIA belief is that races should stay on EMC, this means the sport may take 6 months to fully materialize once again.

Whilst a reset is a firm reason to believe Formula One’s longevity is at risk, something I believe is far greater of a risk is the inability to retain rookie drivers.

Formula One is hard, like really hard. Most people take a boat to ice and can't control the boat for more than 10 seconds. Mainly, this is due to the fact you have to change your boat's direction, whilst changing your camera perspective at the same time, which severely disorientates new drivers. Due to the barrier of entry being difficult and drivers not fully understanding that there is a mod that is allowed to be used that locks your camera, so you only need to control your boat's direction - many new players don't even bat an eye to try Ice Boat Racing.

Even when rookie drivers manage to dominate the Formula Two races and work their way up into F1, they continue to struggle against the rest of the field. Drivers that were in their rookie seasons in 2025 and were poised as potential prospects were 32Talvi, Duck5goQuack and PattySquad. Duck had finished off the F2 season with three wins in a row, destroying the rest of field, Talvi had managed to win a special F1 event that featured many of the best drivers in F1 and PattySquad managed to secure P4 in the last F1 race of the 2024 season, also being the only F1 race he entered that season.

These three drivers were set up to challenge the grid in the upcoming 2025 season. Unfortunately none of them managed to finish past P7 out of a season average of 16 drivers each race. Duck and Talvi did their best, both finishing in the top 10 on four occasions, however Patty only raced three times never being able to break above P14 and then subsequently left the sport. As the 2025 Season finished, Duck and Talvi announced their retirements from the sport only just starting their careers. In my opinion the reset is definitely something that could be harmful to Formula One, but the biggest problem right now is the inability to retain new drivers.

Whilst there is a lack of new talent in Formula One, the community is consistently active, the same faces race every season and a consistent group of ~12 drivers show up to every or most races. But this doesn't fill up a 20 driver grid, and some teams have to resort to gambling on drivers all season long. One such team is MurwehGP, stuck in an endless void of repeated transfers of drivers, being unable to retain hopeful talents. For reference Renault only had 3 drivers race for them throughout the 2025 season, Murweh had 6 drivers. Only 2 of them finished in the points, and only 1 of them finished above P5. This consistent vending machine of drivers isn’t healthy and with the driver market completely obsolete and drivers getting older; more and more teams will have to resort to mass driver turnover like MurwehGP.

But can Formula One be saved? Will there be a mass influx of new driver talent to the sport? It's hard to say really when the sport goes through stages of driver counts, but one thing is for sure. With a dwindling server player count you can only expect fewer and fewer players to want to race at all, and as the reset comes closer and closer, will teams be unable to fill their two main driver spots? Only time will tell.