Fault? There's nothing wrong with not being a fan of a particular sport. The American sports fan has literally hundreds of choices each weekend for entertainment, live or televised. Every motorsports series, excepting NASCAR Nextel Cup, has low viewership here. NASCAR has done well because the drivers are accessible and interesting; fans determine their own heroes and villains. There's literally 50 different stories surrounding every race as teams prepare. A fan can choose to root for a champion, or an underdog, or for both. That kind of identification with the drivers/teams simply doesn't happen in F1. Hell, who couldn't root for Kirk Shelmerdine? He literally had no pit crew when he managed to qualify last for the Daytona 500 this year. Fans from the infield paid for his tires for the race, his race motor was borrowed from another team, and he finished a career-best 20th on the lead lap in the biggest race of the year. That kind of story gets people's attention, and there's always something interesting like that every race.
Where's the racing in F1? With a few exceptions, I saw a parade this year -- and last -- and the year before. And yes, it's easier to become a fan of any sport when the players are interesting and accessible.
You know what Tillman, I think I agree with you. It did strike me when I visited your country, and I wondered: Why do Americans still travel abroad when they have EVERYTHING at home? If I was living in the States, I don't think I would need a passport either...
Could a parallel be drawn betwen F1 and Soccer in terms of U.S. popularity?? I think all of the reasons posted above are viable. There is never 1 answer to any question. Therefore many must apply. I woudn't consider myslef a sports fan at all until I discovered F1 in 2002. I can't watch a football game. But for the technical aspect of F1 I would not be a fan. But, I'm an engineer. So that kinda makes sense. Us guys here on F-Chat are probably not your typical Americans. I'll bet many of us here don't know any typical Americans. A typical American has a job and watches Nascar and stuff. Hell I don't know what a typical American does. But, if you live in a large city you are not a typical Amercan or majority American. Don't you think F1 comes off as kind of an Elietist sport? Probably a step above Tennis or even Soccer. It probably doesn't attract Amercians that don't sit around dreaming of driving really expensive cars. Nascar is Dodge and Ford and Chevy. Most Americans drive one of these. They can relate. I hope I'm not coming off as arrogant. I think my argument is as valid as others posted above which I also agree with.
But the other counties watch the EXACT SAME races, with the same "boring drivers" How can they like it more than Americans?
Are you kidding me? As opposed to the soap opera of who cut who off or who blocked whose qualifying run at the post race interview? I've never seen so much discussion on which driver commented about who and to what publication.
What is the competing domestic motorsport like in other countries? I know there's F1 feeder series and rallying thoughout Europe, and Germany has the DTM touring cars, and Australia the V8 supercars. What else is out there that would be a class 1 motorsport attraction the same way NASCAR is here? (that's not rhetorical, it's a real question) I can't imagine the domestic motorsport level is very high in China, the various middle east tracks, etc.
Again, history could be our friend. In the early days of road racing, Ford competed against Mercedes and Benz cars, and everything else that was around. And that was the whole point. To see who could build a better car. Everyone who wanted to show the world thier car was better, or at least pretty good, raced them. And they raced against everyone else within a list of rules. F1 racing is what anyone 100 years ago would have recognised, as simply putting the best of mans knowledge to its best possible use. Road racing 100 years ago had developed over head valves, overhead cams, hemispherical combustion chambers, four valves per cylinder, blowers, syncromesh transmissions, hypoid gears, four wheel braking, independent suspension, etc, etc. Anyone alive 100 years ago was more interested in what was best, what worked best, rather than who built what. What has been happening in America over the last 80 years, and especially since the great depression, has been car makers building mass transportation rather than motor cars. Overhead valve trains gave way to the flat head. Ford, Chevy, Studabaker, Overland, Buick, Chrysler, Kaiser, Cadilac, Lincoln, they all built crude flat head engines for the next 40 or 50 years. Yet a 1903 Olds as well as most Maxwells had overhead valves. Overhead cams went down into the block. Aluminum became cast iron. Bearings turned into bushings, and oil pumps turned into splash systems. Car makers went into reverse engineering, suddenly finding ways to build cheaper and cheaper cars. And the American public lost any real interest in racing for anything other than carnage. So I dont see F1 as being elietist at all. I see it as some of mans best attempts at pushing engineering and technology to its limits. I see Nascar as doing almost the exact opposite, or dumbing down the masses. And we seem to have an entire nation who feels that this is not only accepted behavior, they try to teach thier children its a good thing as well. How would anyone expect several generations of ignorance to have any interest in anything technical? When is the last time a young boy in America hung out at an airport fence to watch airplanes fly? That ended about the same time Grand Prix motor racing left the US. How many kids today have airplanes hanging from thier cieling? Rockets? F1 cars? A telescope? How many have a NASCAR car on a shelf? Its pretty hard to be interested in something if nobody else is.
I agree with everything you say here. The addendum is: aren't MOST F1 venues out in the 'middle of nowhere' ? The other thing is, a lot of these furrin countries are the size of 1-2-3 of our states, so to say Italy is 100% behind F1 and Ferrari is to say the state of Texas is 100% behind the University of Texas Longhorns, or the Dallas Mavericks, or the Cowboys......
I would say most American see cars like nothing other than an appliance. A moving couch that is going to take them from point A to point B. They do not care if it has 4 valves per cylinder or 2. They just want to be able to tell their dumb friends that their engine is bigger than the next guy. Need evidence, just drive down the interstate. Those around you are NOT drivers; they are zombies cruising along doing everything other than actually driving. Now ask these idiots to enjoy a racing series that requires skills like F-1, impossible! Actually NASCAR is more familiar to what they do in the freeway, NASACR is a traffic jam moving at 180 MPH in a circle and the crashes resemble wrecks in the freeway.
There is nothing in Europe comparable to the States as domestic motorsport. Germany could be the exception with DTM, but I'm not even sure that it has a huge following. Our saloon series are pathetic compared to NASCAR. The BTCC is not very good (how can you have races with front wheel drive cars?). The Euro GT series doesn't attract much spectators. F3 national series are bigger than the Euro F3 series. The Le Mans series is not bad, but only 5 or 6 races. There are too many series in Europe, I think. Although I hear plenty of Americans complaining about the Champcar/IRL split, at least you have 2 good series IMHO. It's just a pity that the fields are so uniform (same chassis, same engine) in each series, but the racing is good.
I think we've established that as interest in racing grows all forms of racing grow. It creates fans who look past a race car with a carburetor. The growth in ALMS is unreal. Autoweek last week: "Rahal's entry into ALMS raises an interesting question: Why is the ALMS suddenly getting nice and tidy with Champ Car and the IRL?The series will have multiple races with both open-wheel tours next year, perhaps a sign that an informal alliance has been formed." The strong money forces in ALMS, Champ Car and the IRL are all the same people. The odd duck is Tony George and they must stroke his ego. As these 3 groups grow, NASCAR starts next year with JPM and Toyotas. The France marketing machine has appeared to be flawless over the years with growth to stand behind it, but there are definite signs that Billy Bob does not care for JPM or Toyota. Will NASCAR stumble as more sophisticated forms of racing in the US grows? If so, it will only result in more fans of real race cars, and more fans of F1. JMHO.
What's with that goofy shrug/grimace that ALL European drivers do during ALL interviews at ALL races? It makes them look silly.
How was F1 in states when Phil Hill was racing with Ferrari? I think today the only way F1 will catch on in the states is if there is an American driver who is winning the championship. Its kind like soccer in the US, America really did not take interest until the U.S. was in the finals of the world cup.
F1 isn't popular here because there are too many other things to do. When is the last time a kid hung out at the airport, wishing he could fly, or have airplanes hanging in his room, or build rockets ? I dunno, probably about the time MOST kids WALKED home from school ?????????? I have a high school one mile from me, the MOST kids I've ever seen walk home my way is 'maybe' 15 total. Now, you would think 90% of them have cars, and that's why they don't walk home, but then you'd think if 90% of them have cars, so a fair chunk would like racing, but few do. Too many other things to do. And I have a middle school 6 blocks from me, and a grade school 4 blocks from me, I've NEVER seen more than 10 kids combined WALK home from those schools, but there sure is an endless trail of minivans and SUV's that stretch for blocks around 3:30 on weekdays....... That has nothing to do with racing oter than to say, times change. You think the outlook for F1 is bad here now, just wait 5 years.
Don't know enough about ALMS to comment, but here in Europe, we always had some following of endurance/sportscar/GT racing. Most of the people who follow this type of races like the variety of cars, the different classes, and the cars are closer to showroom cars: Aston, Ferrari, Porsche, Panoz, BMW, Corvette, Saleen, etc... The world sportscar series was killed by FIA 10 years ago. The new Le Mans series format (1000-km or 6-hour races) is more interesting to watch than Touring cars sprint that last 50 minutes at most. Le Mans 24-hour is still the jewel in the crown.
Here something I find really strange, too. If you take a young boy and show him a racing car close up, or even a live race, it will be the coolest thing in the world to him. A couple years later, and an afternoon at the go-kart track would be a day in heaven. But somewhere shortly after those early years, racing not only fails to capture the interest of people, it loses potential fans by the scores. There's no shortage of guys out there who, on paper, should be huge racing fans. But somehow they slip away.
