James Miller’s engagement with F1 includes chatting about race strategy with Nicki Lauda at the 1977 USGP, where Lauda won his second world championship. Now it involves at-home viewing of real-time, in-car camera images on a flat-screen TV. Has Formula One left behind its gritty, dangerous and somewhat esoteric past to become a cross between the World Cup and Disneyland (think Miami)? How much of its new global popularity can be summed up as (perhaps merely) “media spectacle?” Miller is professor emeritus of communications at Hampshire College. He has studied new media as a Fulbright researcher in Paris and a visiting professor at MIT’s Media Lab.