I tried Apple TV’s F1 coverage, and Aussie fans deserve better than Foxtel

Three years ago, Max Verstappen was dominating Formula One, and Foxtel had announced they were bringing F1TV to Aussie fans. After hearing the Sky Sports team talk about pressing the red button and getting access to driver on-board cameras for some time, this was an “about time” moment for fans. But we were disappointed when it came.

It’s 2026, and Foxtel continues to get a rights renewal with F1 Management spanning years ahead, and Aussie F1 fans aren’t getting much more than we were years ago.

I’m in the USA for an event this week, and knowing that there was an F1 race on, I decided to hack my way around things to get a look at Apple’s F1 coverage, new in 2026 after Apple took on the US rights to the sport starting this year.

Not only do you need to be in the USA to see this, you need a US Apple ID, and a US payment method on that account. Having navigated my way around that, we’re good to go.

From the outset, I could tell this is unlike Apple’s approach to Friday Night Baseball. In that coverage, it’s “all Apple”, where they have their own broadcast team, their own graphics, and so much more – it’s not a shared coverage.

For Formula One, Apple is leveraging the enormous F1 Media content team. The team you might see making content on the F1 YouTube channel or if you switched to the “alternate commentary” on Kayo, that team is commentating.

But that really doesn’t matter.

Think of the Apple TV experience, or in fact, the F1TV experience as 31 live feeds. 31 “channels” if you like.

22 of them are driver on-board cameras. Then there’s F1 Kids, the Sky Sports coverage, a dedicated P1, P2 and P3 channel, a channel for a mixture of on-boards, the Driver Data channel, the Driver Tracker channel and the F1 TV Main Broadcast.

You can watch any one of those feeds.

On my laptop, that was what I did. On my iPad in the Apple TV app, I was able to take it a step further. A split screen view, allowing the choice of any four feeds you like.

Arranged side by side, as a grid, or one big and three small – you choose.

Tap on any of the feeds to hear the audio of that.

I watched the 2026 Monaco GP in a way I had never watched F1. The main Sky Broadcast on my laptop, and four driver cameras on my iPad, with Oscar’s on-board selected for audio. This meant I was hearing his engine and his team radio in real time. Awesome.

I’ve had people say to me that the Pit Lane View on Kayo is great, with data and onboards etc. But the utter and complete flexibility available on Apple TV is just unparallelled.

My gripe here is that we are now paying huge dollars each month for Kayo, and Kayo is a platform that could quite easily simply integrate all 31 of those feeds. Just give me choice.

Of course, limited to two-screen viewing that is restrictive, but as a big fan of F1, I would watch Kayo on my Apple TV device where I can choose split screen multi-view!

Additionally, I get it, with Kayo I get a lot of sport. But all I want is F1, so the cost of Apple TV being so vastly less than Kayo makes it clear the value we should expect from F1 coverage in Australia.

We’re being dudded.

Time for much more for the Aussie fans.