After half a decade, it sadly has become clear the U.S. Grand Prix never will rise to what it should be–the biggest automobile race in the world.
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Sunday almost certainly will mark the last Formula One race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
At the first in 2000, hopes soared about the marriage of the world’s most popular form of motor racing to the world’s most hallowed racing venue.
Now the race will be lucky to draw 100,000 to a track that seats 300,000 because of last year’s sorry display in which 14 of 20 cars pulled out of the race in an internal dispute with Formula One. (The pseudo issue was tire safety.)
It’s too bad.
This is not to disparage NASCAR, purely a domestic series, but Formula One is watched from Beijing to Berlin, London to Lagos, Paris to Perth, Monaco to Madagascar.
NASCAR is like the NFL–enormous here but nowhere else.
Formula One is like World Cup soccer–huge everywhere but here.
The brightest hope for Formula One to gain a real foothold here was at Indy.
Tony George, scion of the family that owns the Speedway, has spent about $135 million to bring F1 to the Speedway these seven times–$30 million to tailor the facility to F1’s needs and wants, and about $15 million per year in appearance fees.
Shabbily is too mild an adverb for the way F1’s czar, Bernie Ecclestone, has treated the United States in the quarter-century he has ruled.
With his exorbitant appearance fees for F1 teams, he humiliated and broke the storied track at Watkins Glen, N.Y., the traditional old home of the USGP, then went on to plunder and outrage cities such as Long Beach, Detroit, Dallas and Phoenix before preying on Indianapolis.
On the other hand, America, in its sporting jingoism and isolation, largely has ignored F1 since 1978, when Mario Andretti was the last American to win the championship.
Californian Scott Speed is a rookie laboring through the ranks, but he is far too little, far too late, to save the marriage of F1 and Indy. Mario’s grandson Marco Andretti, 19, could graduate to an F1 career spent entirely abroad.
Having covered F1 extensively in what now seems another life, I was outraged and sympathetic when I read in The Times of London that Ecclestone said last week, “It does not matter to Formula One if there is no grand prix in the U.S. What do we get from America? Aggravation, that’s about all.”
I know Ecclestone well enough to know he was posturing. He enters into negotiations with Indianapolis Motor Speedway next week–negotiations that almost certainly will fail to bring the USGP back to Indy.
So he was trying to make international companies, mainly F1 engine suppliers BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Honda, Toyota, even Ferrari, believe it doesn’t matter. They know better, from their car-sales figures. Virtually all of F1’s corporate sponsors want to be here.
Ecclestone should be contrite and ready to bargain after last year’s debacle. He returns with only his unmitigated arrogance, implying he would charge George another $15 million, at least, for another race.
If America has aggravated Ecclestone, he has infuriated America, for decades.
Oh, he may return to the United States, to some street race in, say, Las Vegas . . . and blow it again . . . and blame the venue again.
If “it does not matter,” then why does Ecclestone keep coming back, to different cities?
No matter where in America he plunders, Ecclestone never will get a better deal than at Indy. Formula One never again will have as good a chance to gain a foothold in the United States.
NASCAR’s drawing power has become as mighty and unquestionable as gravity itself. As NASCAR Chairman Brian France pointed out here Thursday, not only is the Nextel Cup division far and away the No. 1 racing series in America, but the second-level Busch series is the unchallenged No. 2 in popularity.
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Yet it is sad to see the United States become a monolithic motor sports society, with diversity drawing its last breaths.
IndyCar racing has for the last decade been about its own slow suicide.
And now Formula One demands that it be bowed to, its royal rings kissed, just as it is about to be thrown out by the scruff of the neck.
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