My Motorsport Series Is Better Than Yours! An Exploration of the Weird Notion of a Pinnacle of Motorsport

With the 24 Hours of Le Mans just having taken place, one phrase has been tossed around again and again: the pinnacle of motorsport.

It's a phrase that gets thrown about a lot, casually, and with little thought for what it actually means.

But what does the pinnacle of motorsport actually mean?

In this article, I’ll take a closer look at this oddly judgmental phrase and why it might actually be doing more harm than good.

Let’s Break It Down

Let’s start with the words themselves. According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

Pinnacle: "The most successful or admired part of a system or achievement."

Motorsport: "The sport of driving cars or motorcycles in a race around a track or course (= a route through an area of land).

Formula One is the pinnacle of motorsport."

Looking at the definition of "pinnacle", with it defining it as "most successful or admired", but then not further elaborating on the defining factors of what makes it so, underlines just how wishy-washy of a definition this word has. Is it about the most revenue made by the event? Is it about the attendance? Is it about the viewership of the stream? Is it about the speed reached by the vehicles? Is it about the difficulty of the race track? Is it about the salaries being payed to the drivers? Or is it about the popularity of the drivers taking part, so we would have to look at their following on social media and the amount their names get mentioned on the news? A difficult determining factor.

And crazy, that even in a dictionary entry for motorsport, exactly the topic of the pinnacle of motorsport gets brought up! Further highlighting how ingrained the phrase is in the DNA of racing.

As demonstrated by the definition of motorsport, it’s a collection of wildly different disciplines:

Formula 1, rally, endurance racing, karting, MotoGP, touring cars, drag racing—you name it, it all falls under the umbrella term of motorsport. All of them involve speed, skill, and competition, but they demand very different things from their drivers and teams. With that in mind, the question arises: how does one even compare these to be able to evaluate which of these vastly different disciplines is the pinnacle?

Why So Judgmental?

Calling something the pinnacle implies everything else is beneath it. And that’s where the problem starts.

It creates a hierarchy where one series is glorified and others are diminished, often unfairly. The "pinnacle of motorsport" isn’t just a descriptor. It’s a judgment.

"My motorsport series is better than yours!"

Every discipline requires an elite level of talent. Rally drivers and their co-drivers master ever-changing terrain and blind corners at crazy speeds. Formula E drivers have to manage their cars' energy while simultaneously navigating through narrow city streets at insanely high speeds. F1 drivers execute perfection lap after lap under incredible G-forces. The challenges posed by each racing series is very different. 

So Who Decides What the Pinnacle Even Is?

The FIA? The media? Fans? Sponsors?

Each racing discipline has its own unique culture and challenges. 

A look on a Reddit thread about the question why F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport presents a very interesting reality of people underscoring the weird notion of a pinnacle, with Reddit user oren740 writing:

"F1 keeps saying it is [the pinnacle]. I’ll take Indy or Super GT or IMSA any day."

and farcarcus describing that "words like 'pinnacle' are subjective at the end of the day."

While Shibenaut brings up another fascinating point:

"F1 has fast cars, but it's the same exact tracks (mostly) year after year. The drivers end up memorizing the tracks after 37472828 laps. Rally to me is the ultimate motorsport. Different driving surfaces, every race is different, drivers barely get to know the track before racing."

The idea of a single pinnacle in motorsport could actually be a negative thing.

Instead of asking which is best, maybe we should ask what each series excels at—and celebrate those differences.

So, Do We Need a Pinnacle?

The short answer: no.

The long answer: Motorsport is too diverse to be boiled down to one “pinnacle” series.

That mindset doesn’t help motorsport grow. It doesn’t encourage curiosity or respect. If anything, it only leads to discrimination and hate; something you see far too often on the internet. That kind of judgmental mindset definitely doesn’t represent the passion that motorsport fans - real fans - have for the world of racing.

So next time you hear someone call a series the pinnacle of motorsport, ask them: What exactly do you mean by that? 

Because you might just find their answer says more about them than about motorsport itself.

Do you agree? Share your thoughts in the comments either here or on my other socials: X & Bluesky