Photos are courtesy of Nigel Kinrade Photography, James Black of Penske Entertainiment and our own Amy Henderson.

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- Formula One Management (FOM) announced Thursday morning that they will launch the Formula 1 Channel in the next week ahead of the Miami Grand Prix (the release is unclear as to the official start time, but as of this writing, it is not available yet). This will be a 24/7 FAST (free ad-supported streaming) channel that will air race replays and highlights from Formula 1, Formula 2, Formula 3 and F1 Academy. There will also be classic grands prix and documentaries.

The release indicates that the channel will be available on "leading services" at launch. At minimum, the services will include Amazon Freevee, Samsung TV Plus and Pluto TV. It is unclear if more services will be available. If not, they likely will be added over the next few months.

Once the service launches, we will check out the offerings and write about it in a future edition or editions of The Critic's Annex. That might entail a throwback TV critique or discussion about some of the available analysis. 

"With both the loss of pace with the constant fuel saving and the near-inability to develop a third lane and make a move for the lead in the closing stages, it raises the question of the legitimacy of superspeedway racing if the cars aren’t actually racing, but just driving in formation. The cars are visually slow and clearly not at full throttle the whole race, and cars can’t pass when they all actually are at full throttle." - Wyatt Watson on the current state of superspeedway racing with the Next Gen car.