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Originally Posted by Spritle
I have no doubt the Austin venue will be successful in the long run, I just have my doubts F1 will be a part of that long term success. F1 was the foot-in-the-door but Austin would do well to support the other series and events that are signing up to race there and encourage more because F1 will have a tough time conquering the passions of more than a few die hard US fans and F1 will make it hard for Austin to love them back when it's time for a contract renewal. 
F1 & Tavo's gang seem to be banking heavily on fan support from outside of the US. The choice of name and the location of the track are clear indications of that, not to mention the constant reminders of where the extra 100,000 fans will come from. |
The most important driver for drawing fans to the track at Indianapolis was Montoya. There were a TON of Colombians there. That factor no longer exists in F1 obviously (Maldonado is no Juan Montoya). You might be able to get a little bit of a Mexican pride factor going in Sergio Perez as there's a lot of Mexicans living in Texas. I don't know how popular he is though with Mexicans in comparison to some of the CART heroes they had back in the day like Adrian Fernandez, also as he's not contending for wins and in the back half of the field you don't know how long he'll be staying in F1. When Scott Speed was in F1, I didn't get the feeling that anyone cared to the point of increased interest in F1 or for the U.S. Grand Prix. You look at the current F1 grid and none of the top drivers except Hamilton strike me as having any charisma, so none of them appear willing to play promoter to drum up interest in the event.
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But that makes me wonder, does F1 in the USA become a success if hardly anyone in the host country cares?
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Well once you leave Montreal I don't think many Canadians know or care about F1 to be honest (was having an argument on another sports forum on racing and a Canadian that had no idea who anyone in F1 was said "I might know something about it if they had a race in Canada"
). And that Grand Prix is a success I think most would state. So it is possible to have a successful race with most of the country completely unaware of it.