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F1’s American owners plan US street race
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FORMULA One’s new owners plan to add a street race in the United States in an attempt to improve a sport which they feel stagnated under Bernie Ecclestone’s control.
Chase Carey, who ended Ecclestone’s four-decade reign as F1’s chief executive, said the sport will no longer be run as a “one-man show.”
Driving growth in the United States is seen as a priority for Liberty, which also owns baseball’s Atlanta Braves and has investments in cable TV companies. F1 currently only makes one stop during the season in the United Sates — to Austin, Texas — but adding a street race is high on Liberty’s agenda.
“We would like to add a destination race in the US in a location like New York, LA, Miami, Las Vegas,” Carey said. “We think we can create something that will be a really special event. Obviously the US is all upsides for us. We haven’t invested in the way we need to build the US market.”
The sport has remained stuck in the past, making “events feel a little tired,” while the modern media landscape was not grasped by Ecclestone.
“Bernie really ran a one-man show,” Carey said. “I don’t plan to run a one-man show.
“The last half dozen years I think the business has not reached its potential,” Carey said. “With all the things you need to do to be competitive in an increasingly fragmented online world, you need an organization doing many things at the same time.”
Ecclestone was criticized for overlooking historic popular race venues to move into new, wealthier markets including Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, which held its first race last year. The German Grand Prix was dropped from the 2017 calendar because of Hockenheim’s financial difficulties, while the British race at Silverstone is at risk because of hosting costs.
“Western Europe is important for us and to some degree we have to engage to make those races bigger and better than they are while respecting their heritage,” Carey said, while ruling out cut-price deals to keep historic races.
“We think these races (in places like Britain and Germany) should be bigger and more profitable and we are willing to work with promoters to figure out how to achieve that. That’s our goal,” he said.
Changes such as wider tires, car design, louder engines and more overtaking opportunities are set to make F1 more exciting.
“We can certainly do things to make the race day more engaging, more exciting, make the race itself more exciting,” Carey said. “I have gone around and talked to lot of people and hear many of the same things about predictability, rules too complicated, engineers overtaking drivers, the engines could be faster, louder, cheaper.”
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