People who are not normally interested in F1 are finding the Netflix series Drive to Survive a more accessible version to spectate. It's not just highlights in chronological order, but a distillation of the main themes of the season, e.g., certain inter-team battles, intra-team rivalries, fallouts between teams and suppliers, regulations, etc. The behind-the-scenes glimpses are fascinating.
I remember (pre-family when I could easily give-up a large chunk of my weekend) tuning in to the beginning of TV coverage on Saturdays (qualifying) and Sundays (race day) primarily to watch all the build-up about the developments since the previous race, particularly all the new technical changes; the relentless engineering efforts are immense and we only get a tiny glimpse of it.
These cars could in theory be even faster. They stopped in season testing years ago; there are limits to the amount of high performance computing they can do; many parts are standardised. There's a tension in the way the sport is regulated to constrain the vast budgets of the larger teams so that smaller teams can try and compete, and ideally new teams enter the sport too. In addition, the aerodymics evolved to such a degree that the wake each car leaves behind makes it almost impossible for cars to follow closely and overtake, leading to uninspiring processions on race days. So regulations are constantly being added to try and ensure a spectacle (DRS, degrading tyres, forcing sub-optimal front and rear wings). But they continue to innovate at a staggering pace.
When DRS (Drag Reduction System -- used in set portions of the straights, a car that's within 1 sec of a car can deploy DRS, that causes the rear wing to have less drag and can potentially allow an overtake). But absolutely amazing lateral thinking from the teams saw innovations like the "F-duct" that was eventually banned and then the so-called "Double DRS". They are channeling relatively small amounts of air-flow through little vents and holes to create small but improvements to their aero performance.
And when in-season testing was removed, all teams rolled out state-of-the-art digital car simulators that have become incredible sophisticated; they design new aerodynamic parts, such as a tiny adjustments to their front-wing, then they test the part on the simulator before actually building and taking to the next race.