USGP what a corker, best of the season?

[John S]

Had the lot, fights throughout field, no safety car & huge crowd.             

We had plenty of cars out of place all on the move forward, one or two small pit dramas that changed a few spots, and even mechanical failure. But most of all the track threw up brilliant racing with enough space for cars to try passes that involved light contact but no tears.  

I can't remember enjoying every single minute of a race, like that one, for a long time, then we all got a big grin from the stetson hats on the podium. Wow, I'm still tingling with the excitement a day later, best of the season for me.   How about you?  

P.S. Well Cos, do you still think F1 will go cap in hand to Indy?  

    

[vintly]

Agreed a very good race, but not the best of the season for me. Really like the track, but the huge run-off areas were starting to annoy me slightly, with drivers using them as part of the track. Nevertheless, a great race.

Valencia and Abu Dhabi stand out for me as great races this year, strangely enough, as well as the obvious Monaco and Monza, where nothing much needs to happen to make me feel like I've witnessed history. Silverstone doesn't really do it for me for some reason - maybe it's the weather.

[Ian]

Totally agree, great race and a great circuit, yeh vintly, only bad thing was the huge run- off areas, I like to see a driver punished for using them(bring back the gravel traps.)  Poor old Seb moaning because Lewis overtook him  .

[Williamsfan]

Call me miserable, but as much as I enjoyed it, I don't think it properly grabbed me as much as I hoped it would, maybe due to the tyres or something but it lacked the all out excitement I was hoping for, perhaps the run offs didn't help.  But there was some excellent, wheel to wheel racing which in general was very clean.  The professionalism of the drivers really stood out in the race for me.

[Monty]

I loved it and ironically I think it was the tyres that probably made it as good as it was. We finally have an answer - make them drive on tyres with almost no grip! Fantastic.

[cosworth151]

P.S. Well Cos, do you still think F1 will go cap in hand to Indy?

If they have any sense, yes. The attendance was 117,429 (http://www.statesman.com/ ) The first year attendance at Indy was over 250,000. the smallest at Indy was slightly over 120,000 in 2007. They claim that Indy was a failure. If so, Austin is a bigger one.

Austin got almost zero media coverage here in the States. Even Fox didn't bother to put it on broadcast TV. They kept it on Speed, with isn't even available in many areas. I've been watching the area papers. The only mention of the race was the listing for Speed in the TV section. I've haven't seen any mention today, either. The same thing with TV news & sports - nothing, not a word. For comparison, the Moto GP at Indy gets at least a little coverage just because it's at Indy. The Laguna Moto GP is ignored by them.

If the purpose of the race is to put F1 in front of the general American public, it failed miserably.

As for the race, I've seen several this season that were better.

[Dare]

to be fair to Fox they didn't air the Indy USGP's either.Speed
had additional coverage for them.

 

[cosworth151]

Fox always carried the Indy F1 on live broadcast, just like they still do with Montreal. I'd always have the timer set to record it while I was there.

[Scott]

I think they need to shorten the DRS zone next year.  I'd like to see a bit of late braking at the end of that straight rather than a pull in, followed by the passing driver having time for a good yawn before he needs to prepare for the corner. 

[Jericoke]

P.S. Well Cos, do you still think F1 will go cap in hand to Indy?

If they have any sense, yes. The attendance was 117,429 (http://www.statesman.com/ ) The first year attendance at Indy was over 250,000. the smallest at Indy was slightly over 120,000 in 2007. They claim that Indy was a failure. If so, Austin is a bigger one.

Austin got almost zero media coverage here in the States. Even Fox didn't bother to put it on broadcast TV. They kept it on Speed, with isn't even available in many areas. I've been watching the area papers. The only mention of the race was the listing for Speed in the TV section. I've haven't seen any mention today, either. The same thing with TV news & sports - nothing, not a word. For comparison, the Moto GP at Indy gets at least a little coverage just because it's at Indy. The Laguna Moto GP is ignored by them.

If the purpose of the race is to put F1 in front of the general American public, it failed miserably.

As for the race, I've seen several this season that were better.

Indy was charging fair prices for tickets, so even though attendance for the USGP was down, I suspect over all ticket sales were up.  I'd call it a wash in terms of success at the gates.

With Fox losing F1 coverage for next year, they have zero incentive to promote F1 coverage.  Worst case scenario for them is people are interested, and then tune in on NBC next year, instead of following Fox's NASCAR coverage.  Seems like a pretty big oversite by Mr. Eccelstone to me, but F1 has long gotten it wrong in the USA while he was in charge, why would that change now?

I agree that for F1's goal of expanding the awareness of F1 in the USA has failed.  Bernie is right that it needs to be in New York if 'enough' people are going to care.  (I think that as long as COTA sells out, they shouldn't worry about Americans in general caring)

As for the race itself, I enjoyed it.  I think the track layout encouraged passing opportunities, DC was quick to point out which passes were made without the benefit of DRS (he was also quick to point out whenever MS did something 'suspect'.)  It wasn't the best race of the year, but better than many races before the DRS/Pirelli era.




Canada's coverage was weird, normally F1 is on TSN, a cable channel, but they were running the CFL playoffs (it's a big deal up here, especially with no hockey).  Normally the race would be put to TSN2, which is available to most people with access to TSN on cable.  However, TSN2 was showing the NASCAR race.  (For some reason, Canadians love NASCAR.  I can understand why Americans do, but considering we get one Nationwide race... why do we care?).  TSN is part of a corporate conglomarate that owns a broadcast network called CTV, which shows the Canadian Grand Prix.  (Think of TSN as being CTVSports... though they'd never change the name, as the TSN brand is better regarded than CTV.)  Of course, CTV was showing NFL football.  So coverage defaulted to a local network of broadcast TV called 'CTV2', which for our American friends, normally shows things that are broadcast on The CW.

[Irisado]

I didn't think that the race was that great.  Of course, there was some good overtaking, but the DRS made it far too easy for most drivers to overtake on the long straight.

Seeing Hamilton overtake Vettel was exciting, and Karthikeyan was very much my man of the race for being in the right place at just the right, from my perspective, time.

It's also worth nothing that with the run off areas being so vast, they could easily have brought the gravel traps much further in, and made for a much more challenging circuit without compromising safety, so while there was some good racing, I was pretty underwhelmed overall.

[David]

Excellent race from start to finish and a corker of a track, made all the better by vulnerabilities with the safe choice of tyres. Well done USA, I look forward to the coming years. 

It's a shame the US media haven't embraced F1, but Bernie will no doubt be on a mission to fix that, only a matter of time.

[F1fanaticBD]

Given the potential of US market for F1 itself as well as for its partners, it should have 2 races at least without clashing it with NASCAR or other series. And one of them should be Indy, because this is a historical place, and homage should be payed where it is due. If you are not giving the media ingredients to promote, they will not embrace it at all. It will always be one or two off races (the history shows US have so many like this, Phoenix, Detroit, Las Vegas) and somehow promoter gets bored or into financial difficulty and it goes off.

Problem is that Mr. Bernie only believes in money, and he will never indulge into these beautiful words or emotions. He will always be the sniffer of money trail, and will follow wherever it goes, even if it is below the ocean.

[Scott]

Hey, that's it.  Maldives F1.  The island is sinking anyhow and they're opening underwater restaurants and spas.  Why not F1?  Keep the noise level down that way too. 

[cosworth151]

If Bernie was serious about getting attention for the race, he wouldn't have scheduled it on the same day as the NASCAR season finale at Homestead.