I can't speak for the OP/ED since I always skip those, but I really enjoy this anime a lot. Super fun!

I didn't write "like this" as a "like this post or else..." but more as a "it looks like this".

Gonna be fun to watch the rest, 2008 was one of those that really ended with a bang. Oh yeah, there should be some sort of law in every country that forces F1 to always have the final race in Brazil, that's just how it's supposed to be.

In general it's still really fun to watch (I do love F1 after all) but on a race-by-race level it's more fun in 2025 than 2008. I would mostly like smaller, lighter cars since they look more like proper race cars (biased since I started watching in 1997).

But something I really like with current F1 is that we do get a somewhat proper optimised run in Q3, that is very exciting. I don't know what the other effects would be but I would like to see even less parc fermé rules today to further magnify this aspect. Might help with rain too.

There was also a rule back then that meant that parc fermé included fuel. So everyone qualified with the amount of fuel they wanted to start with. It kind of meant that you could basically decide to do a glory run for a good start position at the cost of strategy.

The engine noise is something that I've come to not care about too much. The V8 engines do sound cool, but it just becomes background noise after 10 minutes anyway. I personally liked the fact that I could go to a race in 2022 and watch it without ear protection so I don't mind the current noise.

The driver's championship was also kept close due to the points system back then (10, 8, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1) so even if you got a 5th place you lost half points to the winner compared to 40% today. A win was worth much less, which was the primary reason for the current scoring system, iirc.

Kubica was such a great driver, I will be forever sad about the rally incident. Ferrari looked to have the strongest car by far but when they didn't win they basically didn't score so it kept it kind of tight in the driver's championship.

As for the actual racing, 2008 was really scrappy in the first half. Retirements, crashes, penalties, weird start positions and whatnot for the title combatants (Raikkönen, Hamilton, Massa). Only Kubica seemed to have some consistency and is probably why he was leading after Canada.

On the topic of cars breaking down. Modern F1 has conditioned me to feel bad every time they bring out a vehicle to remove a broken down car with only double yellows. It's nice for the race to not be disrupted, but I would rather have Bianchi alive so that's a change for the better.

There's a lot more breakdowns, especially at the start of the season. I'm halfway through the season right now and it seems much better at that point. Seeing an engine fail is such a rare occurrence in modern F1 and most of the time we have 19-20 cars finishing. First GP in 2008 had 6 cars finish.

It's fun to see cars attack kerbs since they actually had some resemblance of suspension back then compared to the 2025 cars. Tracks were also generally a bit less forgiving with where you could drive so most of the time they don't cross any white lines.

The lighter cars with groove tyres and no traction control (which was removed that season) makes the cars look a bit more unstable through the corners. There's often a locked up tyre here and there, a slight oversteer and whatnot compared to today's perfect lines.

Tyres that last long past their stint length seems to make it easier to push at all times. Even though it's hard to pass very rarely do cars space out 2-3 seconds from each other waiting for the next pit stop like we see today. Keeping pressure up on the car in front looks more important.