24 replies to this topic

[RedFever]

I have been always curious about this.

Clearly you guys here are a minority within the car racing US audience. Other series like CART, NASCAR, IRL, etc are well advertised, race locally, have a lot of local heros (plus CART and IRL get foreign talent as well), are broadcast at convenient times, etc.

F1 is clearly in the backburner, gets no publicity at all, it is hard to find on a TV screen, there is no info on TV about races, drivers, teams, etc.

Yet, you guys are as passionate about F1 as Europeans and South Americans and Australians. Considering all of the above, how did you find out about F1 and why/how did you get into it?

[Keith Steele]

I have Mario Andretti and ABC's coverage of Monaco in the early 70's to thank for grabbing my attention.

[MichiganF1]

I only pretend to be interested in F1. This BB's a convenient place to make fun of inferior, talk-like-a-pussy foreigners.

Actually, I jes' like racin' and, while I love my country, never subscribed to the belief that something was worthwhile only if comes from the USA. If I believed otherwise Elizabeth Hurley would/could do nothing for me.

[Lantern]

Truthfully.....

I have always been one to study up on stuff that interested me. So, one day a family member gave me a really cool looking toy car(F1) when I was around 4-5. Naturally I HAD to know everything about this new car. What it was called, where it raced, where I could see it race. I aggravated the **** out of everybody about this until they plopped me down in front of the TV for my first F1 race. And ever since they have regretted it, stating that they wish that I had never been exposed to F1(being a fanatic I tend to get on people's nerves). And ever since I don't believe that I have missed a GP.

Funny though....since I'm from the Southeast U.S. and my family has been racing stockcars since before I was born. I even took up racing for a while but even though I was successful I just couldn't get any satisfaction from racing ovals. And it wasn't nearly as easy to get into karting(road tracks) around here as ovals. In the end I decided that I found being a fanatical F1 fan was more exciting than going around in circles "racing" the stockcar circuit.

There ya have it.

[bigblue]

same as Keith I think, Wide World of Sports on ABC showing Monaco. Really got interested in 1982 or 3 and have been following ever since. Senna vs. Prost is what I remember got me really interested in F1. Started by going to a IMSA race at Lime Rock,1982 Porsche 935 and Chevy March GTP. When I saw my first 956 the next year I was in love. From then on I was hooked and eventually found F1 on ESPN. Hard to believe I have been following for nearly 20 years.

[NYR2119935]

Originally posted by RedFever:
I have been always curious about this.

Clearly you guys here are a minority within the car racing US audience. Other series like CART, NASCAR, IRL, etc are well advertised, race locally, have a lot of local heros (plus CART and IRL get foreign talent as well), are broadcast at convenient times, etc.

F1 is clearly in the backburner, gets no publicity at all, it is hard to find on a TV screen, there is no info on TV about races, drivers, teams, etc.

Yet, you guys are as passionate about F1 as Europeans and South Americans and Australians. Considering all of the above, how did you find out about F1 and why/how did you get into it?

What foreign talent does the IRL have on a regular basis? NONE!
ABC used to broadcat the Monaco GP every year up untill the early 1990's. Bernie eventually stopped that. Americans are saturated with sports. Racing: we have nascar, CART, NHRA, and LINRS. We also have NHL, NFL, NBA, MLS, MLB, etc.......no time to watch foreign drivers in foreign cars on foreign tracks. And the USGP will be on fox, but locally, not nationally. we'll see if that changes. I personally think it will do will in Indy, but not the rest of the country. It will always sell out in Indy, but the rest of the country mor than likely will not be watching.



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[Joe Fan]

Yes, I think some Americans are just as passionate about F1 as any European. Percentage-wise we are not. This is due to differences in tastes and the cultivation of our own motorsports series. The masses here generally prefer oval racing but that is not to say that Americans don't still appreciate and enjoy road racing too.

I think having a U.S. Grand Prix will definately help but overall I think most Americans will prefer the closer competition of NASCAR, CART and the IRL in the end. This could change if a truly American team entered F1 or if a star American driver entered the series. However, this probably won't happen because of great opportunities on the homefront and due to the political nature of FIA.

One thing that I have picked up on is that it seems that F1 teams do not generally accept driver input and cater to their drivers tastes in setups as readily as American CART, IRL and NASCAR teams do.

[Lantern]

MichiganF1,

I wouldn't get to lust after my favorites, Charlize Theron and Catherine Zeta Jones





Oh dear God!!

[Lantern]

OK,OK....I couldn't resist....

[RedFever]

Lantern , great post (the one about the toy car....), you remind me of my son (a Ferrari fan, even if he is American, being born and raised in NYC. Clearly he relized Mika is fast and good and the biggest danger to Ferrari, so he calls him Kakkinen, to denigrate him a little.....he also likes Fisichella, if nothing else because he enjoys pronuncing his name with a cute American accent.

[tanja]

I turned on an F1 race a couple of years ago to find out what my boyfriend kept talking about. Since then, I've been hooked. I think it was important having someone to talk to about the sport. I learned quickly about teams and drivers and the wonderful soap opera that is F1. I also learned about the incredible technical beauties F1 cars are.
Personally, I like the fact that F1 is not popular here in the US. My personality is such that if something gets such mass appeal, it turns me off (i.e. that movie, Titanic). It takes a bit more effort to follow, but that makes it more interesting.

[The Jet]

Pretty simple for me... I admire excellence in just about anything. And to me, F1 is about excellence. Excellence in driving, technology and marketing. I could watch Hakk, Villenueve, Schumacher,Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods or Brett Favre all day long.

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Jet

"90% of the game is half mental" -Yogi Berra

[Mila]

Lantern, indeed great eye appeal with Zeta-Jones, but I would only give her the time of day if she dumped Michael Douglas (and my standards are not that high!)

factors for my love of F1:

1a) half-Finnish

1b) growing up close to Montreal (CBC coverage, Gilles, et al.)

2) ABC coverage of Monaco (Lauda/Hunt era)

3) coverage of other F1 races

[mono-posto]

Uhh....Don't know!

It's just one of those things that you stumble across one day, it slowly pulls you in, you become fanatical and then one day when your 65 you look back and say "Why the **** did I waste so much time with that ****?"

Lucky for me, I still have 40 years of disillusion left and I'm loving every minute!

[Elspeth]

Got into it in high school but can't remember exactly how any more (too long ago!). But it was late 50s early 60s & thre was NO coverage basically. Did get to see people like Dan Gurney, Jim Clark, Graham Hill, Phil Hill racing the sports cars at Riverside.

[miniman]

I never liked running around in circles. Technology and Watkins Glenn did it for me.

[PDA]

NY... - Eliseo Salazar is a regular in IRL and is Chilean. Last year, the star driver was Kenny Brack, a Swede.

There are some who would say that there is no talent, US or other, in IRL, but I think that's cruel.

[westendorf]

TV ABC showed Jimmy Clark et al on wide world of sports, Road & Track magazine, my Dad was a racer in the 1950's and my older brother was cool enough to know about sports cars and european roadracing, we raced karts as kids on a roadracing circuit,[we were cool] and F1 is the top of motor sport so here I am, BTW, I've always liked the idea that the general American public knows little or nothing of F1, because that seems to make it more exotic and trully foreign, the first car I ever owned was an old Alfa Guiletta sprint, when everyone started to buy Jap. cars I wanted an American car to be different, the same mind set, I just like to be different, this was a long sentence on purpose, thank-you ciao, GFW

[404KF2]

If you REALLY want to be different, buy a French car in North America. That would be the surrealistic option.

[Pacific]

No ****, I saw a Renault at the hospital parkade last year when I got sick and it nearly sent me from dizziness from a 103 degree fever into delirium. If I ever saw a Peugeot or Citroen here in the Midwest, hope somebody knows CPR, not breathing that long can cause brain damage.

I got into F1 because I got into CART some in 1994. When it came time to buy the Indy Racing computer game, my computer was too slow, so I decided to get World Circuit instead. Immediately after racing the first night I looked up when the next race was and it was late summer of 1994 when I really started to follow F1. Although my generally following of auto racing allowed me to know some about F1, never got up early to watch it, but that changed immediately. F1 is part of my life now, just like NASCAR has been since 1985. My interest in CART is way above the average American, but it's actually behind the IRL right now because of my intense interest in the career of Sarah Fisher. My NASCAR interest with Adam Petty's death....although, I've come to grips with it more after having a good sob, which let it all out pretty much, and started thinking, what should Petty Enterprises do from here. And I concluded that somebody like Rick Wilson, Greg Sacks, Ken Bouchard, etc, should be hired to finish the NBS season for the 45 car and that Steve Grissom should race the 45 car next season in Winston Cup as it was originally going to. And with Steve subbing for Kyle at Charlotte, this could become a reality. Then with the trucks, you could stick with whoever you used to finish out the 45 car's NBS season, Wilson, Sacks, Bouchard...Wilson has former PE ties, Sacks is an experienced driver, Bouchard has raced a bit of everything stock car recently. Although, seeing Canadian Randy McDonald get a top flight ride in a Petty truck would be cool I think. I took a liking to Randy before I found out he was Canadian, but, hey, I root for underdogs and as a Canadian in a NASCAR series. Not as bad as when Tony Spano kept trying to make Cup races in 87 and such. He's from Australia if you aren't familiar with him. His nickname was Boomerang. I would imagine the NBS effort would be discontinued.

Sorry to go into the NASCAR rant, just kind of followed into that though. I love all forms of racing. I went out to the local track, Hawkeye Downs, to see the Formula Indy cars race. Talked to them after the race and they only cost $10,000 for a really competitive car. They use like 600 cc and 700 cc snowmobile engines with a few modifications of course. They generate 170 hp, have to weight 700 pounds with the driver in them, and at the 1/2 here in CR they reached top speeds of 135 mph. They were almost as fast as the sprints that were here last week!!! A neat series, and I tell you...it's just tempting to try and go racing like that. If I had the money I probably would do it. For now, it's hockey and an education in sports journalism, because I have talents at hockey on and off the ice. The Formula Indy cars run a lot of short tracks, but also some road courses. Just really neat to me I guess. I love automobile racing.

Speaking of the IRL, I wouldn't say Airton Dare is a talentless foreigner in the IRL. Brack wasn't either. There's some talent in the IRL. If you do your research on the drivers, a lot of them have raced Formula Atlantic, etc, or were top sprint car drivers and such, which takes a lot of car control. Most of them aren't just guys off the street. Dr. Jack Miller is really the only one even close to that, except Hideshi Matsuda but Matsuda, a former racing journalist only, proved himself making Indy when all the CART teams were there in full force along with the teams like Team Menard that would try to make Indy every year. There are some professional organizations in the IRL, like Kelley Racing for instance, among others, with some good drivers. Take Kelley's two drivers, Scott Sharp and Mark Dismore. They have good resumes.

[Jonathan]

In the 70ies Road & Track Magazine would publish Rob Walker's Grand Prix reports.

While Rob was not all that up on all the technical details, he was fairly close to many of the drivers and some of the teams.

After a year or two of reading his articles, I felt like I actually knew the F1 "family" fairly well.

[mojo jojo]

Logically, how could we like anything BUT F1?? The first race I ever saw in person was a Nascar race. From there I went to sportscar races (glory days of the IMSA GTP), followed Indycar, rally, bikes, and F1. The logical end result. Though F1 now is just a shadow of what it once was, it still is at the top.

[AyePirate]

Like many of you, ABC's "Wide World of Sports" in the 70's was my first
exposure to F1. Jackie Stewart provided color commentary. I was a
wee lad, I remember the more excited JYS got the thicker his Scottish accent would become. Needless to say he could get pretty incomprehensable!

The funny thing back then there was a lot more cross-pollination going on. F1 guys at Indy, Indy guys in F1, F1 guys in Can-Am, Mario in everything. "Wide World"covered all of these racing disciplines, so there were a lot of different ways to led to F1.

[Uncle Davy]

I've told this story about three or four times already...short version: Dad was a WW2 vet, re-stationed in Germany in the early 1950's; saw sports car races, and brought an MG TF back.

FFWD to 1961, Jack Brabham in the Cooper at Indy; six years old, and hooked.

Then Dad started feeding me Road & Track, with Henry N. Manney.

Jim Clark and Dan Gurney became my heroes.

I"m still here.

[Psychoman]

I had entered a Fantasy F1 contest before the '98 season started, and as a result had to follow the races. I was hooked from there!

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