Posts Tagged ‘LETTER FROM AMERICA’

While some American F1 fans, like me, are already kind of excited about seeing the new USF1 team on the grid next year, there are already plenty who say that it is just not going to happen, budget cap or… not.  

It would seem that going back to the Moon is more likely and straightforward.  

Apart from a launch on Speed TV, not a lot more has been heard of how Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson plan to take on the likes of Brawn, Ferrari, McLaren and company.

The plan, as much as we know of it, seems to be to run the team out of the US and a base in Spain (at least they will rack up the air miles if nothing else) and to have both drivers of American origin. Well, let’s see, that will be Danica Patrick and A.N.Other, because as much as I hate to say it, all the top-line drivers from these shores are on gazillion-dollar-a -year NASCAR contracts and it would be a fair bet that USF1 aren’t looking at paying the drivers too much of the green stuff.

Mind you, Jacques Villeneuve is desperate for something to do and Canada is pretty much the 51st state anyway so why not let him have his mid-life crisis in one of the seats?

Some snooty UK journalist said last week that he’d been to North Carolina to check out how things are going with USF1 and that “there was nothing there”. Nothing unusual there buddy – that’s North Carolina for you.

However, a quick look at the USF1 (or are they called USGPE – who knows?) website is not too encouraging either. Nothing there after all these months and let’s face it, setting up a website is not exactly rocket science – most 3^rd graders could knock you one up for fifty bucks during recess.

I don’t doubt that the guys behind the team know their stuff and are keen to do well and hopefully these rumours about YouTube wanting to sponsor the outfit are true but basing the whole concept around a country that doesn’t even have an F1 race and wouldn’t know Jenson Button if they suspended him from the Statue of Liberty is surely not a great idea.

Michael Schumacher, when after a vacation where he would not be recognised, would usually choose one of two countries. Norway, where they are so uninterested in the outside world that Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama could walk, hand in hand, wearing tutu’s, through the centre of Oslo without so much as a sideways glance from the locals, or America, where the only sportsmen that count are American ones.

This is after all, the only country in the world that has a number of ‘World Series’ or ‘World Championships’ played on solely on American soil.

That, I’m afraid is the way it is. Period.  A ‘European’ sport like F1, that nobody in the US cares about, has close to zero chance of diverting fans (or sponsors) from NASCAR or Indy Racing.  

If USF1 could maybe consider hiring Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin to race in those tutu’s – then people might just watch…

Our somewhat sceptical F1 fan from the other side of the pond is John Gerhardt of Roanoke, West Virginia – thanks to him for this piece.