Why Don't Americans Like F1?

I like F1...I think it's the ultimate in racing mostly due to those magnificent race cars. That's why I bought my F-car even though it's a humble 308.

 

One theory I have over F1's lack of popularity in the US is that most Americans have a hard time connecting to the sport.

As mentioned before, there is only one driver. But more importantly, there are no American manufacturers in the sport. Names like Ferrari, Mercedes, and BMW conjure images of expensive, high class rides that I feel most people don't picture themselves owning. In my opinion if average Joe American is going to plunk down some serious dough for a sports car it won't be the used Ferrari 348, it'll be the new Corvette. Why? Because in their minds the Corvette can spank just about everything in existence from all these expensive FOREIGN manufacturers for a lot less money.

The following may be a stretch: Pickup trucks are the highest selling vehicles in the US of A. Americans know their trucks and they know the three companies that are well known for making them: Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge. Not one of these are in F1. They are in NASCAR however. At your local stoplight you can pull up in your Ford F-150 next to a Dodge 1500. Both are rivals in the showrooms, streets, and most importantly NASCAR. This builds a connection between your purchase and a real American racing team that you can watch on Sundays, with drivers by the name of Rusty, Dale, Dan, and Jimmie. Not crazy, foreign names like Fernando, Kimi, and Takuma.

 

Andrew has hit the nail on the head. Nice post.

 

The answer can not be "Because it is boring"

F1 is just not marketed in the US.

The golf channel is right next to the speed channel in my line up. I have taken many naps by putting that channel on. During the summer Pro, College and high school baseball is every where on TV... another snooze fest. Bowling on TV, Poker on TV, A Bingo show on TV! Now that is boring.

I grew up watching and playing American Football. I watch any game I could catch, high school, college, pro it did not matter. Now that I do not have to work as much I started to go to the Pro games. I finally figured out that American football is boring! I freeze my @ss in the stands to watch 10 to 20 seconds of action. Then they rest for a minute and then another few seconds of action. Then there are the many minutes of players standing around with their hands on their hips waiting for the TV commercials to end, so they can huddle to call a play and have another 10 to 20 seconds of action before resting again, and then there are the injury timeouts ..... Boring!

I will still watch every football game, but only on TV because I can watch replays or flip to other games.

So "because it is boring" can not be the right answer. Can't relate, can't understand, too complicated, can't spell F1....are acceptable

 

Too much strategy and not enough action. My dad was bored to tears by it on sunday, but he loved Le Mans. There are rarely crashes, rarely passes, and rarely suspense. I love it, but others do not.

 

I didn't read all the above posts, but I'm sure some already mentioned this - right off the bat, if you don't have Tivo it's tough to be an F1 fan. Who's going to watch a race at 4:am?? And with no control over the broadcast the announcers sound more like fans watching it for the first time, never knowing what shot will pop up next. It is a shame that Bernie doesn't reach out more to this market.

Regardless I'm a fan (and have Tivo to catch all the action). It's the technology and international aspect that attracts me. But honestly with more races moving out of Europe to me it loses something. Personally I can relate to Europe, Japan and Brazil from travel for work. But Malaysia, Middle East, China, India (upcoming)...not really.

 

The most important thing in F1 is Ferrari, period.

Spaniards are Ferrari fans just like everybody else, the Alonso thing is a given. I think F1 doesn't get enough coverage here in the U.S. and Speed Vision isn't a well known channel to the everyday U.S. t.v. watchers. Who the hell is going to wake up so early to watch the races? Only an already die hard fan.

 

Well, it is, at least for me, and comparing it to Golf is just silly.

Compare any given F1 race to, say, a World Superbike race. I'll rest my case on that alone. One's exciting and suspenseful, the other isn't.

 

+1

Also, as someone else posted, the races are scheduled at stupid times for U.S. viewers, and who wants to TiVo it when the results are all over the 'net? (And FChat...)

I can't get into NASCAR or Indy at all, but if you're a "motorsports fan" over here people think you're into crushing beercans on your forehead while watching a bunch of Jr.'s droning around an oval for a couple of hours.

Anyone who thinks F1 is boring... golf makes baseball look absolutely frantic.

 

Simply not enough wrecks. Hamiton's win in Montreal was big, but what made the TV news was Kubica's accident.
Read again and ask yourself why Nascar is so popular....not a slam, I know there are some hard-core oval fans, but the majority love the carnage more than the race

 

All that I know is that NASCAR sucks balls (how many consecutive left turns?????) except for the crashes, which are pretty cool... Now why would anyone be interested in a sport where the best part is where the players might die. Not me. It's all about the marketing. I think that America has incredible talent -on par with many Europeans (look up Dan Gurney, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey) but they do not have the support that they deserve because the name 'Viagra' is more visible on an oval tack.

 

You are correct that there is no current USA manufacturer in F1...but, Ford engines have won more F1 races that any other brand in the history of F1...and, the USA is the largest market for BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda and Ferrari...I believe the lack of a USA fan base is lack of marketing and a winning driver from the USA...if BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda and Ferrari would use F1 in their USA marketing and recruit a quality driver from the USA like Red Bull did with Scott Speed, a larger fan base would develop over time...

 

I'm a like we don't like F1 or soccer....I'm shocked that we do like basesball and golf...what a snooze fest....

 

I think Ferrari is now the most winning engine.... Ford actually raced from 1967 to 1983... after that is was the Cosworth engine... I dont have the actual totals but I think over all Ferrari has nudged past... considering since 1950 to 2007 they have been racing all along...

As for the popularity of F-1 in the usa... from my perspective it's always been as popular in other countrys, but The population of the USA is so huge, it gets lost ... back in the 60's and 70's it was a specialist sport, and today it's still a specialist sport... I think what has happend is all the other sports have appealed to larger audiences... and F-1 has concentrated on being a business... its just in the last 10 years that the other series have become more business oriented. meanwhile F-1 has been making Billions and is now expected by its participants to throw off huge amounts of cash.... thats why they are there. I dont think many teams in F-1 Dont make money... or else they would not be there. That is also the reason for F-1 to go to emerging markets ... India, China, far east... its easier to mine the $$$$, when you have no competition.

 

Doesn't Cosworth just modify what is basically a Ford engine... http://www.allf1.info/engines/ford.php ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosworth ... And, I believe Jaguar and Jordan used a Ford based Jaguar engine too until it left the series a few years back... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_Racing ...although I do believe Ferrari engines now hold the distinction of "winning" the most F1 races ...

 

Well, I watch because of my Ferraris, but I run for parts in a Toyota truck, so I guess I have multiple teams to support! LOL!

 

So golf is exciting to watch and that is why it is popular enough to be on TV in primetime? The point being made (maybe badly) is that the excitment of the sport is not just action but other things like strategy, etc...
So if golf is popular in the US F1 has a chance.

I agree, I catch every 250, MotoGP, World Superbike race I can but I still find F1 exciting

 

This whole thread (plus my disappointment in the quality and coverage of the US GP) got me thinking and I hunted up some old sports car magazines from the era of 1965/1966 Grand Prix. This was, of course, the time when John Frankenheimer created the famous movie (an American movie, BTW) and really perhaps the very height of F1 popularity in the US. For sure, that movie got a lot of hot rodders and drag racers to have a look at Grand Prix.

One big difference was that the average enthusiast (I mean sports car enthusiast here) could actually relate to the sport more readily. Road & Track, Sports Car Graphic, and others actually gave competent race reports, including exciting inside details - and great journalisting enthusiasm...

"Fabulous was the word for Clark, sliding, correcting, sliding, correcting as he was running away from the field. The terrible thing was that he actually looked as if he were enjoying it! Sadist!" - SCG, Belgian (rain) GP of 1965.

You don't see even a tiny print report on each GP in many places these days.

There were in-depth articles on how Brabham build the Brabham-Repco V8 off the little aluminum GM block, Dan Gurney's masterpiece V12, etc. etc.

I think that while you could make the point that the olden days were more exciting in racing terms, you can also well make the point that our American auto journalism was far more creative back then in feeding the popularity of the sport. This is what created the "glamorous jet-set image" in the first place for GP.

After all, even the SuperBowl is just another football game without the power of the media. I think American motorsports journalism estate has fallen into the Nascar quicksand and are not serving the potential audience that could be enjoying Formula One.

 

No, Golf is a snore fest. My point was that if one is going to compare F1 to something, it ought to be another form of motorsport.

 

Golf and Formula 1 are similar in that they can be boring to watch because you'd rather be golfing or driving the car yourself.

 

I don't need 50 lead changes/race to keep me entertained, but I'm not sure F1 has had an on track lead change in the last 50 races. Maybe there have been some lead changes on the first turn, but I can't recall one. Perhaps some F1 fanatic here can tell me when there was a lead change in the last 10 laps of a race that didn't involve the lead car breaking?

Dave

 

I think you need to ask the broader question as to why road racing is not popular in the US. Historically, Americans raced on ovals and the Europeans did road racing. People here got used to seeing the entire track and can't understand how we can go to a race and only see a small part of the action on the track. Add several classes of cars and it got even more confusing for all but the hard core fans. We road racing fans, as a group, have gotten older and the younger people have gravitated to the ovals. Just look at the age of a lot of the SCCA workers and you can see the age difference.

 

Based on what I saw at Indy this past weekend, there are tons of American F1 fans, some crazed rabid fans like you see in Italy and Brazil. It was fantastic! Anyone who says F1 is not popular in the US is WRONG. Come to think of it, I think I heard this was the largest crowd at the USGP ever?

I am a die hard American F1 fan.

 

It is getting more popular and TIVO makes it livable. Getting up at 3AM to watch a race is crazy. Now with DVR you can tape it and watch it later at your convenience.

 

It looks like most of the answers here have hit the mark. I also think that NASCAR is so big and getting bigger in the US as welll as some other parts of the world is because the drivers are "available" and have access to the fans. In the US people still relate to the cars even though only the skins look like Detroit iron. It was race it on Sunday and drive it on Monday. A lot of folks see F1 as an elete snobby sport that takes mega bucks to participate. You don't get into the pits and talk to the drivers and crews . And I agree that usually the pole sitter is the winner unless he blows up . NASCAR has a lot of action and for a blood thirsty country we like the crashes the most. That's why on TV we see the same crash at least 5-10 times on replay. I think that NASCAR is getting to watered down and with the focus more on safety as opposed to speed. They need to take off the restrictor plates and give the driver more speed and let them sort it out. OK so I'm back to watching golf where the average Joe can relate to a good or bad shot.