Actually everyone I knew who was watching F1 in Germany, stopped so once it went to pay TV.
It's not like football became unpopular when the matches were divided between three or so paid services (Dazn, Sky, and I believe some are even on Amazon) and only a fraction ending up on free TV.
Btw: Some free VPN option like UrbanVPN and the races are free to watch on the Swiss TV's streaming platform and I'm not aware of any spike in F1 popularity when Sky Germany had to stream two races on YouTube.