COTA Finds its Niche

[lkjohnson1950]

I don't think F1 will ever be big in the USA. The races are geared to Europe time wise. The drivers are not well known and none are American. Even when Mario was winning, the impact in the US was minimal. Honestly I think F1 lost it's best shot when they lost Long Beach for the same reason they lost Indy; F1 was too expensive. Now people see to be losing interest in all forms of motorsport so F1's chances of growing here do not look good.

[Jericoke]

I don't think F1 will ever be big in the USA. The races are geared to Europe time wise. The drivers are not well known and none are American. Even when Mario was winning, the impact in the US was minimal. Honestly I think F1 lost it's best shot when they lost Long Beach for the same reason they lost Indy; F1 was too expensive. Now people see to be losing interest in all forms of motorsport so F1's chances of growing here do not look good.

It depends on your idea of 'big'.  It's unlikely to ever be NFL big, but certainly baseball or golf big is very attainable.

Golf is international, while the PGA is a very American sport, golf fans will watch golf at crazy times.

Baseball is a regional sport, most baseball fans are the people who would love to see it live, but mostly settle for watching it on TV.  Certainly come world series time there are complaints that east coast/west coast games are at the wrong time for half the fans, but I think that people are warming up to the idea of 'time shifting' sports.  I love watching races live in the chat room, but I'm not getting up at 3 am to watch Asian races, and I'm fine watching them when I can.  Racing is regional, most fans live near the tracks, and will watch the other races they can't get to.

So it's possible.

However, I would look closer into the golf/baseball models:  they both have multiple 'leagues' that cooperate.  It's true that the difference between American/National leagues has almost vanished, but they are different leagues that compete separately, yet sometimes cooperate.  The same with various golf associations.

F1 doesn't HAVE to be a single championship.  Let F1 have regional events that count for points, and then 'majors' that count for more points.  IndyCar could be an F1 division that competes in North America.  An Asian based series, plus the traditional England/Italian/Swiss based teams forming the European series.  We all know which races would be the 'majors'.  The cost of running a 'minor' race could drop, fans might be able to watch an Asian and an American race in the same day.  Drivers/teams would be able to choose where they go for any given weekend.

Making the regional series lower cost, while still providing strong teams for the 'majors' would be a challenge.  I think the biggest change would have to be allowing customer cars (this is historically how F1 was run  if it's good enough for Ferrari and Williams to enter the sport as customer teams, it's good enough for me) especially to provide an entry point to lower cost teams to build from (lets say you get three seasons of customer chassis before you make your own... or any team that finishes 6th or less can use customer cars)