http://www.economist.com/blogs/gametheory/2012/07/formula-one-united-states Nice pic to accompany the article. Image Unavailable, Please Login
We better enjoy the Austin GP while we can. Lol. I do have some mixed emotions about it. It is my favorite sport. I am not excited about Texas loosing money over it. I also feel that there is major conflict within F1 about competing in America. I believe the corporations do genuinely want to be in the USA because of the value the market has to them, but the engineers that run the teams don't genuinely care or want to be here. This conflict, plus the other complexities of finance plus no one markets it properly here lead F1 to fail in the USA.
"Governments in the Middle East, Asia and elsewhere, on the other hand, are happy to pay up richly for the international attention and prestige that hosting F1 brings." This statement from the article above represents the difference between success and failure in hosting a race. Fiscally the US does not appear to want to commit public funds to cover the losses these races provide to the promoters.
agreed. A modern F1 race cannot survive without government/public funds to pay Bernie's yearly ~$25M sanctioning fee. Absent this, the business model is simply unattractive to private investment (and this applies to street races as well as purpose-built facilities). No fault or blame to Bernie ... there appears to be no shortage of venues world-wide, with "friendly" governments willing to pony-up his fee.
Couple of very true statements in the article... 1. Europeans dont understand American taste... which is why NASCAR has overwhelmed all racing ... Indy & Sportscar racing as the only one able to make money.... TV... Free TV, and lots of it.... SPEED Channel.... 2. No permenant home to the track, mostly are purpose built Street tracks or micky mouse like Indy... Watkins Glen is and will always be the home of F-1 in the USA, it would cost far less to completely up grade the track to FIA spec, than build Austin or a street race in NJ.... you could fly all the drivers in and out to NYC in 45 -50 Min. and or build a resort hotel on site.... 3. NASCAR & F-1 need a partnership... I've been saying this for years. Nascar foots the bill for F-1 in the USA, and in return F-1 Sets up a European / world wide NASCAR that follows the F-1 races... then you have a World Shootout at Daytona or Indy... that would increase the money 5-10 fold... you could have F-1 teams actually own the World NASCAR teams...
Sebastian Vettel, the current world champion, went on the Late Show with David Letterman television programme last month to promote the sport. Mutual misunderstanding followed. Mr Letterman suggested the F1 teams each build a one-off car that could race on the oval track at Indianapolis, a form of circuit which is despised by many F1 fans elsewhere. He also brought up a problem for generalist viewers, which is that overtaking is rare in F1. The sport recently introduced a “drag reduction system” in which a driver can open a rear wing, making it a bit easier to accelerate and pass. When the wing opens, Letterman asked snidely, “does the crowd go crazy?” Someday, if he's very lucky, Dave will make the big move up to GP2. Not that I don't admire the IRL's efforts on behalf of unemployed F1 washouts.
Letterman's an arse. Completely self serving and biased. Vettel should have gone on Leno but I can see why he went on Letterman because it's NY. I was in Phoenix and it was actually a really good race but the venue itself was horrible and ugly. What they ignore completely is LONG BEACH which was FANTASTIC and a huge, huge event every year. Long Beach was amazing. Anyone who says F1 was never popular in the US never went to Long Beach. Tony George did more than any other person in America to destroy open wheel racing using Indy as his weapon of mass destruction.
NASCAR will never work in Europe because it bears no relation to cars we drive in Europe. Aussie V8 Supercars bear more in relation to what we drive in Europe and that has never made any real big impact in Europe. WTCC, BTCC (and equivalent national touring car series) and DTM, work because although the cars bear no real relationship to our road cars, we at least recognise them and share some sort of allegiance to them. From what I know of NASCAR, it's main fan base is in the southern states and those people who live in the northern states are not that bothered about it ( I stand to be corrected on this point). So if true and it can't grab the imagination of those living in the northern part of the USA, how is it going to grab the attention of Europeans? And NASCAR following the F1 races? - The last I heard, there were already a lot of complaints from the die-hard fans saying that there were already too many road-course races in NASCAR and that wasn't what NASCAR was about. Then there's your idea of having a World shootout at Daytona or Indy - Aren't they ovals though? Now unless you can get F1 to run on ovals (never going to happen!), the F1-NASCAR drivers would only know about racing on road-courses and so would get their arses whipped by the USA-NASCAR drivers who race on some ovals at least (racing on ovals requires a completely different technique to racing on road-courses). F1 teams owning World NASCAR teams? - Never going to happen! NASCAR is of no relevance to them! Here's the realisation of the situation: NASCAR is a bit like American Football and Baseball - Massive in their own country, but Europeans are just never going to "get them!" Sorry to be so negative about it all but it's just the reality of what you suggest.
And F1 does? Let me know when I can buy that open-wheeled 18k RPM Mercedes. On the other hand, you guys have Camrys and Ford/Chevy sedans as far as I know. V8 Supercars does not have near the marketing power/potential/money of NASCAR. IMO, you're overblowing the average fan's concern with "road relevancy." I think when fans go to the track they want to escape the blandness of "reality" and want to watch exotic, unattainable beasts. It's what they pay the big bucks to see. Big noise, big speed. A simple look at comments sections on websites following an article about downsizing F1 engines shows 90% of the comments bemoaning the loss of the V12s and V10s. People want to see big engines. NASCAR is big and load and NASCAR on road courses is an absolute riot. Watch the Nationwide race at Montreal this August on TV and see what I'm talking about. Fans turn out in droves and the racing is crazy. Yeah, you're wrong here. NASCAR has a tremendous following everywhere in the US. There's races that draw huge crowds in Watkins Glen, Chicago, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Michigan, California, Kansas, New Hampshire, etc. It's big everywhere, not just the South. NASCAR has gone and raced in Mexico and drew huge crowds (for its B-league Nationwide series). I think European fans would be intrigued to see big thundering V8s do battle. I remember when the Panoz endurance racing cars were at LeMans with their huge pushrod V8s...the French crowd went crazy when they went by. They loved them. I'm sitting here right now watching a huge crowd watching Rallycross cars race at a set up temporary course at the New Hampshire NASCAR track where a NASCAR race was held earlier today. People are cheering and loving it. There is a road course at Daytona (where they run the Rolex 24 hours) and of course the F1 track at Indy...and the Indy facilities are still world class. I don't think a world shootout makes any sense, but whatever, it could still catch on in Europe. Will it happen? No, but my point is, F1 can be big here in the US if it's marketed correctly.
Now that I have a Ferrari I want to try to get into F1 since they field a team. It's just difficult for me to care about because the cars have no relation to street cars. NASCAR doesn't interest me for the same reason. I've always followed ALMS because you can buy cars that are at least somewhat like the cars that race in it.
1. No one understands America's taste in sport you mean 3. No they don't. America needs an F1 driver or team that can win races and you will see them flock. It's pretty simple. NASCAR doesn't matter globally.
I think one of the problems with F1 in the U.S. since 1980 has been the lack of a proper road-racing circuit that meets all of the FIA requirements. I am emphatically not a fan of street circuits; I even went to Long Beach and Detroit for two years each and didn't care for the lack of visibility. (One year, my seat in the Long Beach grandstand was so low that when the cars came by, all I saw were the drivers' heads and the rear wings!) I think that Monaco is tolerable only because of its heritage. Some decent tracks have been made from roadways in parks that are rather more wide open than city streets (Montreal, Melbourne) but, in general, street circuits stink. As for Indy, that was a rather bastardized course that did little but diminish the speedway's overall heritage. Road courses inside of ovals are generally distasteful; perhaps only Daytona is tolerable, again because of its history. Truthfully, the last really good U.S. GP course was Watkins Glen, and I would have preferred that the race return there, but bringing it up to modern FIA standards would probably have cost as much as Austin is costing to build from scratch. I am not going to Austin this year but plan to in either '13 or '14, if, of course, it is still hosting an F1 race.
I agree visibility was an issue at Long Beach but some of the stands were great. Remember these were the days of no big TV screens like they have today. Add TV's and a lot more of the track suddenly becomes part of the event. But, if you bought a general admission ticket in those days, you didn't see much at all. What was fantastic about Long Beach were the huge enthusiastic crowds and the great weather. I was shocked at how knowledgeable people were about F1 too. It was before the internet and regular TV of F1 and I thought I was the only one. Monaco is a street race and even as a dinosaur, it's a great place to see a race. I went to Melbornne and it's also a great place to see a street race. I've been to Singapore it is interesting because it's a night race. Just because they are not on a track doesn't mean they have to be boring or bad venues.
The group of Europeans that follow NASCAR is by far smaller than the group in the States that watch F1. We simply don't care for silly oval racing (that is what we associate it with, even though I hear there are a few more road courses than before now). If we want to watch tin tops go round a track, we have GT1, DTM, ETCC, endurance championship etc etc. It will never catch on. Never.
Another of the problems, it seems, in the US is how race promoter hold up Monaco as delivering star power as if all F-1 venues deliver a couple dozen A-list celebrities, supermodels and those who follow them. When Monaco is held up as the F-1 standard bearer for the rest to follow, it builds false expectations as how many times have we heard with new races "This race (insert name here) is going to be just like Monaco"? Under these pretenses, tracks jack ticket prices, hotels boost rates with absurd minimum night stays, getting stars in their eyes as if everyone attending is Brad Pitt. If the manufacturer's who want to market themselves in the US are serious, they should pony up and underwrite venues as Mercedes-Benz has done with the Superdome in New Orleans, buy themselves brand name recognition and pay Bernie's fee as this notion of merging with NASCAR is absurd. BHW
If F1 was going to make it here it would have already. The fact that it isn't perceived as a mass market sport over here is part of its cache'. Not a formula for growth.
