Since Apple took over Formula 1 in the US at the start of the 2026 season, VPNs have struggled to keep up with F1 TV.
ExpressVPN, NordVPN, Surfshark and the rest all hit the same wall: a video error instead of the race, usually TM401.
Most VPNs send thousands of people through the same small pool of servers. F1 TV has learned to recognise and block them.
It gets worse on race weekends, when everyone is trying to watch at once and the blocks hit harder.
The fix is to stop using a VPN for F1 TV and use a service built for streaming instead.
So far it has been reported that StreamLocator reliably unlocks F1 TV. Many Reddit users have reported that StreamLocator was the one service that solved the problem for them, on the F1 TV subreddit and beyond.
It works at the DNS level rather than tunnelling your whole connection, which is far harder for F1 TV to spot. Your connection looks like an ordinary viewer's, so the race plays.
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