This sentiment always fundamentally overlooks that at least two guys have the same cars. Plus “the last few years” is heavily inaccurate. Car domination was a lot bigger in the 80s and 90s, other than the year where Brawn backed into winning everything by giving up on the season before the rule change incredibly early the championships have been pretty heavily decided by who misses out on points because of driving mistakes lately. There’s some partial analogy to locked character selection in fighting games in there anyways. It’s not the same because it’s not like anyone can pick a Ferrari, but at the same time most of the championship contenders had other options.
Anyways F1 is about a thousand times more physically demanding than a lot of things in the olympics. Kind of silly people won’t acknowledge having to stomp on a brake pedal with enormous force but avoiding locking the wheels and steer precisely while being pushed around with over 5 times the weight of your body hundreds of times in 90 minutes is athletic while sliding a rock down some ice or hitting a little ball a couple feet with a stick is.
I guess SF1 with the original buttons might qualify as a sport.
But IIRC even the guys at Red Bull acknowledged that the rule changes have meant that Newey’s contributions aren’t as important this season where the emphasis is on tire preservation, instead of aero.