I like watching IMSA and Endurance Racing and Formula E and Rally Racing and Formula 1. The technical excellence on display at the top classes of these sports is really incredible to watch even if it's mostly being used to sell energy drinks and ferrari jackets and e-cigarettes. I was really in to stock car racing when I was young and I watched my first NASCAR race in probably a decade recently, I thought it was fascinating and good racing and I have only a few friends who really watch the sport in the same way.
Endurance Racing is incredible because it's just about pulling a team together to keep a complicated machine running while three men drive it around the track trying to time their laps not too quickly or too slowly to maintain a pace to win an overall victory after 8 or 12 or 24 hours of running. They're doing this with 50 or 70 cars on track spread across vastly different performance profiles so almost everyone on track is being passed and passing all the way through to the end of it. The cars' performance are balanced by the sporting regulators to make sure that even after 24 hours, the first and second place car can be within a few seconds of each other at the end despite one having a tiny turbocharged beehive and the other having an American muscle motor in it. At least if the series can all field competitive cars, FIA WEC has been in an unfortunate position for a few years now of having a pair of top-class cars from Toyota driving away from the rest of the field.
Formula E and Formula 1, well, they're some of the most technically advanced cars in the world and Formula E is doing it all electric. People don't like the sport and the Attack Mode boost which gives every driver the opportunity (and requirement!) to slow down to get a 4 minute power boost twice a race and a Fan Boost powered by social media voting, but i donno. it's fine. attack mode leads to some really interesting strategy calls being available, fan boost isn't super impactful to the race itself except in a few overtakes a race. Formula 1 is ... an utter disaster of a sport, but gosh is it neat to watch and Netflix does a great job putting together a reality TV drama about it every year.
Rally fucking slaps and more people should watch it. I'm incredibly excited for electric rally like Extreme E and electric rallycross.
There is a great history of beautiful cars and impressive sporting stories in the history of motorsports and it's fun to learn about them. I listen to a few podcasts like the Marshall Pruett Podcast, he has a weekly Sportscar news show and regularly has great interviews like this one with the first Black man to drive a Formula 1 car, MP 876: Catching Up With Willy T Ribbs - The Marshall Pruett Podcast[fn:1]. The racing community is quite open and has a good relationship with media and journalists and so you get these really great interviews all the time where people can be honest and insightful.
Footnotes
[fn:1] see also Uppity: The Willy T. Ribbs Story