OT: F1 Coming Back to the U.S.
The US will again play host to a Formula 1 event starting in the 2012 season, and running through at least 2021! The venue will be a new, purpose-built venue near Austin, TX. I'm very excited that the US is 'taking it seriously' and building a new track just for the purpose of holding F1 races. Hopefully Austin proves to be well-suited for drawing in an F1 audience. I imagine that NASCAR is especially popular down there, but maybe F1 will draw in those fans that are interested in motorsports in general. Anyway, here's the link:
Good luck with that Texas.
Be careful with the negative comments about Bernie. He'll track you down, and extract every last dollar from you.
Ricky Bobby doesn't drive F1.
Maybe there will be more than six cars in the race this time.
There's no race there anymore. Lets open it back up!
Roger Penske actually tried to get an IRL race to come back to Detroit in the past couple of years, and got close, but the economy basically precluded him from gathering together the funding necessary to put it on.
He succeeded. There were races on Labor Day weekend in both '07 and '08. He only cancelled it after realizing some of the main sponsors (the big 3) were about the declare bankruptcy.
Love F1. It's easily the best racing in the world. Really too bad that NASCAR has kinda hindered its growth over here though.
They are two different fanbases for the most part. I would venture that the only real crossover is with those directly involved in NASCAR after meeting with a few engineers directly involved in the NASCAR.
Would have been nice to get it back to Watkins Glen.
I love F1 also - been going to races since I was a kid. Ought to be fun sitting in the sun in Texas in the middle of June. Makes Montreal even more appealing.
They should have returned to The Glen. Why not use a traditional road course (Barber, Road America, Road Atlanta, Laguna Seca) where there are some serious challenges? No one wants to pony up the $$$$$ to upgrade a facility or put up with Bernie, that's why. I'm afraid the Austin event will turn into the Stardust (Vegas) parking lot race.
I live in Austin, and I can tell you that NASCAR is not big in Austin. Maybe in the rest of Texas, but Austin is not Texas.
If it is in the summer though, it will be hot. And it will be hotter. And it will be hottest. It is so hot. So. Hot.
You aren't safe anywhere in Texas during the Summer.
Heat won't be a consideration for the racing; they already run in Bahrain. The fans, on the other hand, that's a different story.
I miss when it used to be held in downtown Detroit. Detroit incorrectly called F1's bluff on demands for a full time garage. F1 pulled out and went to Indy. Woops.
For me (and why Steve in PA says engineers are the only crossover) it's all about the technology in F-1 Cars that do it.
When you look at Nascar... you're looking at such dated technology. Nascar uses pushrod V8s! That's been dated technology since the mid 70s!!! Toyota almost didnt even get in to Nascar because they had to spend lots of money to completely develop a brand new engine based off of 30 year old technology!
F-1 On the other hand.... ridiculously cutting edge. I remember a few years ago when the paddle shifting transmissions came to F-1, and they were in normal cars within 5 years. That's the kind of innovation that really drives a sport - the cutting edge stuff. I'm still amazed that F-1 cars redline around 18,000 RPM. That's remarkable to me. Most cars redline around 6-7,000... these are 3 times faster! At 18,000 revolutions per minute, that means your piston is going up and down over 150 times PER SECOND! crazy precise!
/end engineer gushing
This of course tangentially touches on the fundamental problem with F1 in America: there aren't that many fans, period.
Bring back Scott Speed! (no, don't. really, don't.)
Its in Detroit, yes draws a crowd like every street circuit in a metropolis, but man, that track was not the most thrilling. I know street courses raraly are, and formula 1 amost always isn't, but the 2 are definitely not a good mix.
Is there a map anywhere of what the circuit will look like? I still am doubtful for this going down as a few weeks ago, the US Grand Prix was going to be near Hoboken, NJ.... so that Ecclestone could have the NYC skyline as a backdrop.
I guess now that Ecclestone is going to have another track that's going to look like all the rest ( Hermann Tilke has designed all the last 4 or 5 circuits in F1) and he can dictate what kind of facilities he wants, he ran to Austin.
The difference between the folks in Austin vs. the new F1 tracks is that the governments of the respective countries are throwing ridiculous money at these places and many of them don't really make money. When the USGP stopped being held and Indy, it was partially due to the fact that the owners of the circuit, the George family couldn't make money because of Bernie's ridiculous fees that he expects paid to him and the fact that they lost their title sponsor, SAP.
I wonder what the group who is planning this event is going to do to combat this problem, because its going to be no different this time around. At least Indy was already there and modifications to add the infield track to existing oval were relatively inexpensive compared to building a new circuit from scratch. Good Luck.
I don't think they will be too terribly concerned with crowd size at the outset. They only had 46,000 at Australia this year, which is actually up from last year. I'm pretty confident that almost any venue in the U.S. could pretty easily exceed that in a debut event, let alone in later years. As for street circuits, it's not going to happen. They'd lose too much revenue on street circuits to non-ticketed attendance.