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TeaThat setting is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway: home of the world famous Indy 500 race. Modified for one circuit, before the 2005 United States Grand Prix formula 1ITV pundit and former f1 Driver Martin Brundle is on the grid interviewing the sport’s long-term supremo and commander-in-chief Bernie Ecclestone. And you can say that there is nothing unusual in this.
What is more unusual is Brundle’s direct, combative, questioning style. A camera crew and a bunch of reporters are eager to get answers. Because F1’s only race in the country of the free is about to become a farce. Only six of the 20 cars are ready to go to the start line. For the game and its tumultuous 55-year relationship with America, this is a final moment of “madness”, as Brundle characterized it.
“The future of Formula 1 in America?”. Brundle asks. “Not good,” Ecclestone replies.
It’s a far cry from where the game is now. Formula 1 is pushing boundaries and breaking glass ceilings in a way that would be frankly imposing if it weren’t in the United States. Following the hugely successful reincarnation of the US Grand Prix in Austin and a street track in Miami, there are now three races with an exciting street circuit on the Las Vegas Strip launching in 2023.
After 80 races at 12 different American venues, F1 has finally cracked the American code.
“At my kids’ soccer games, you’ll see someone wearing a Red Bull shirt,” says Scott Speed, a California native who raced in F1 for two years in the 2000s. “It’s been a long time but there’s a noticeable difference when you see people walking around in F1 attire. It’s very different to when I was in the sport.”
But sometimes to understand the scale of the current highs, you have to revisit last year’s lows. That ridiculous weekend in Indianapolis 20 years ago was, in his own words, a “huge” weekend for Speed.
He was testing for Red Bull at his home race, a week after his first F1 test in Canada, but his team along with six others will not be racing on Sunday. Fourteen cars were using Michelin tyres, resulting in several tire failures in practice and qualifying on the final corner, including a heavy shunt for Toyota’s Ralf Schumacher, due to the abrasive nature of the high-speed banked turns.
Installing chicanes to reduce speeds was suggested and rejected on the grounds that it would be unfair to the Bridgestone tire runners – including Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari team. Unable to risk a serious accident, all Michelin cars did not start the 73-lap race. Schumacher won the six-car race amid a roar in the grandstands.
“Fine if you go there [turn 13] It was very hot, it was a big shunt,” Speed recalls. “I remember in my meeting with the engineers, they said ‘Your tire was also two laps away from blowing out.’ It was really a surreal feeling and then I felt great relief. It’s scary to know that I could have been in the same situation as Ralph. [Schumacher] I was in.”
F1 raced again in Indiana, completing its contract for two more years. But Lewis HamiltonThe victory in 2007 was F1’s last venture on a track that was completely inadequate for both the fundamentals and performance of the sport. One of F1’s worst moments was the catalyst for a period of non-existence, with the sport going through a four-year period of inactivity across the Atlantic.
Brundle closed that ecclestone affair With one of his most famous lines. Moving on to talk to Ecclestone’s then-wife Slavica, he asks: “Mrs. Ecclestone, don’t you think this requires a woman’s intuition?” He declined to comment.
Brundle quipped, “I think you should say something.” “And give him a hard slap.”
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Since the United States first hosted a race in Formula 1 in 1950, the sport’s inaugural year, there have been many years of ingenuity, discontent and scandal. At the time, the Indy 500 was classified as a championship race. In the decades that followed, Ecclestone and his team of millionaire race-makers toyed with the American market – a crowded field of wildly popular American sports, college competition and their own brand of motorsport with Indy Car and NASCAR.
But the first signs of rebirth after the Indiana farce had emerged a decade earlier. The structure and construction of the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, which hosts this weekend’s US Grand Prix, gave F1 a lifeline in the United States.
“They finally found their niche,” Speed explains. Independent. “Austin is an up-and-coming demographic, it’s like having a Grand Prix in New York. You’re close to a lot of fans and they’ve built a great racetrack. That helps a lot, it’s a really special circuit.”
But it was still only a notch; Hardly the stamp he wanted. A proposed race in New York with the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson River in the background was drawn up and abandoned. COTA’s attendance of 265,000 at the inaugural race in 2012 steadily declined to 224,000 by 2015.
But Ecclestone’s 40-year grip on the game was loosening. New contenders showed their hand and Liberty Media – the world’s largest sports media company – completed an $8 billion acquisition in January 2017.
What followed was a radical reform of Formula 1, its leaders and, most importantly, its output. Liberty took full control, revamping the game’s social media output and relaxing old restrictions on teams publishing their own content. The immediate target demographic was young people and expanding the audience beyond its traditional European borders. But they still lacked a crown jewel.
Enter Netflix and production company Box to Box Films. America continues to lead the way in the department of fly-on-the-wall sports documentaries hard Knocks More recently on HBO all or nothing It’s proving popular with sports fans across the state on Amazon Prime. Now, F1 was taking its plunge into the fray drive to survive,
“Fans have a lot of games to watch live, highlights to watch, stories to read – all of it,” says sports media expert Brian Moritz. “But sports fans are generally insatiable in their desire for content, right? There’s never too much.
“Going behind the scenes is exciting for fans. And I think F1 was at the forefront of taking a sport that Americans didn’t know or didn’t care about and wanting them to care about. When you haven’t followed a sport your whole life, it can be hard to jump into a sport as an adult. I think drive to survive “Provided an entry point for American fans into the game.”
The chain’s growth year-on-year has been astonishing. Viewership has increased by more than 350,000 since the show’s first season in 2019. F1’s viewership for live races has exceeded one million per race. The cards also fell favourably: The Covid pandemic meant more people were stuck at home browsing and streaming online, while the 2021 title fight for ages A wide range of people also joined in, including Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
The “Man on Fire” episode in season three – when Romain Grosjean’s car came to a dramatic halt bursts into flames In Bahrain – Most popular episodes ranked according to Imdb,
“F1 has this kind of exotic feel to it,” says Moritz. “It’s predominantly European and with all the money, glitz and glamour… I think it appeals to the American audience. Never underestimate the appeal of fast cars and rich people.”
This would be a form of content that became almost a necessity, when the professional tennis and golf tours took off in a similar manner to their first Netflix shows: break point And full swingF1 has led the way for all sports to gain more involvement from the American market, which clearly lives and breathes the sport – but perhaps absorbs the personalities of the stars and the elaborate storytelling even more.
Never underestimate the appeal of fast cars and rich people.
drive to survive The impact is undeniable. But there’s still work to be done for Formula 1 and Liberty – and two of the sport’s biggest stars have their eye on unrivaled glitz and glamour. When asked in Australia in 2017 what their one wish would be from the sport’s new owners, Red Bull’s Australian drivers Daniel Ricciardo and Hamilton did not hesitate.
“Race in Vegas!” Ricardo smiled. “Miami, race,” said Hamilton. There was an atmosphere of laughter among the media gathered at this. Even the drivers themselves were talking about expectations beyond expectations.
But how has F1 performed? Miami was first proposed in 2018 and after a few years of tweaking and changing location and logistics plans, the game landed on a custom-built street track around the city’s Hard Rock Stadium. It debuted in 2022 and features circuits and racing. best mixedThis gives F1 a notable event on the East Coast. And with Austin at the center of the country now attracting 400,000+ visitors, there was a clear niche left to fill.
So on to Vegas, where there are slots at every turn. F1 first tried and failed in Sin City, toiling away on an unimpressive track in the car park of Caesars Palace Hotel for two years in the 1980s. But a race down the iconic Las Vegas boulevard – the Strip – was the dream concept of former F1 CEO Chase Carey when he took over the reins of the sport from Ecclestone. Indeed, Carey stressed that F1 needs to start reaching out to “destination cities”. But although the pandemic delayed the plans, it didn’t derail them.
F1 spent $500m on a state-of-the-art pit building the length of three NFL fields. A vision of unique ambition was grandly inaugurated and yet first day defeatproduced a exciting first race Two years ago. However, Austin still feels like the spiritual home of F1 in the United States with nearly half a million fans attending each year.
Yet where does F1 go from here in the United States? Like any sport, spectacle can only do so much when the game is not at its most thrilling. Verstappen’s four years of dominance hasn’t helped the product, but periods of dominance are not unusual in Formula 1.
Other factors could further improve F1’s reach in the US. A driver able to challenge at the top will trigger a significant following. Colton Herta is joining Cadillac as a test driver next year; He seems to be the obvious candidate. The entry of the Cadillacs as the game’s 11th team can only be a strength for the good states. Their development next year will be fascinating.
Ultimately, F1’s expansion into the United States can be considered nothing but a resounding success. The most lucrative sporting market on the planet – in terms of fans and finance – has finally arrived Formula 1.
It is now a game and a product that is almost unrecognizable from Indiana’s plight in 2005.
A version of this article was first published on 14 November 2023