AI will never replace drivers in Formula 1 for the simple reason that no one would want to watch it. They had traction control and banned it because it was making the racing boring and predictable, and just a stupid competition of who could spend more money. AI drivers would be no different.

Although a lot of people would watch the first race, and a significant number of people would watch multiple races, this would fall off very, very quickly. No one really wants to see a parade of perfect laps by every car. I'm sure there's a few people on here who would watch the AI races every week, but you are in a tiny, tiny, tiny minorit, no where near the 450 million viewers they have now.

People don't even want to see AI competitions in computer games, Twitch is dominated by humans playing video games, even though bots can play them faster and more accurately. We want to see the mistakes, we want emotion, and we want interesting things happen in the race.

When Charles LeClerc won the Italian Grand Prix in a Ferrari this year, thousands of fans (probably over 10,000) filled the main straight for the trophy award. There would be zero reason to ever do this again with AI, no one i going to cheer the programmer. You do not kill that kind of enthusiasm for your own sport.

F1's recent surge in popularity is mainly due to the Netflix series "Drive to Survive" which focuses on the drivers and their relationships with their teams and other drivers. This entire surge would be lost immediately if they replaced the drivers with AI, not to mention the fans would already watched F1 for the same reason before Netflix got involved.

F1 is not a racing organization trying to build and race the fastest cars in the world, it is an entertainment organization that uses building and racing the fastest cars in the world to get more fans at the track, viewers at home, and sponsorship money. They are not going to throw those away to showcase AI for exactly zero benefit to them, since they are not an AI company, it would be financially suicidal.