Can Formula One succeed in America?

Mike Harris

Thursday, Sept. 21, 2000 | 11:03 a.m.

INDIANAPOLIS - Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher have brought their fight for the Formula One championship to America.

And with only two points separating them, the U.S. Grand Prix - the first U.S.-based F1 event in nine years - could go a long way toward deciding which driver will win.

Led by NASCAR, auto racing in America has been booming for the last decade. But there has been little interest in F1, the world's most popular form of motorsports.

The technically sophisticated, open-wheel series competes in 16 countries on five continents, playing to huge crowds. It will again Sunday at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

F1 counts its TV spectators in the billions, and even the poorest of its teams has a budget of $100 million or more as big companies - and even governments - wait in line to get involved.

But many U.S. fans have been ho-hum about F1. Part of the reason is that there have been almost no big-name racers from the United States in the sport since Mario Andretti left after the 1982 season to return to CART.

Although other Americans have raced in F1 over the years, Andretti and Phil Hill were the only ones to make any serious impact on the sport. Hill won the championship in 1961; Andretti in 1978.

Now there are no Americans in F1. The only real connection in a sport driven by nationalism - Italians are diehard Ferrari fans, for example - is that the Jaguar team was bought last year by Ford. But the team is still based in England.

Although open-wheel racing in Europe dates back before World War I, the modern F1 circuit began in 1950 and first came to America in 1959 with a race in Sebring, Fla.

There were 42 subsequent F1 races in the States - including three in 1982 - before the circuit quit in 1991 after the last of three USGPs drew fewer than 20,000 fans in downtown Phoenix.

Bernie Ecclestone, the Englishman who runs Formula One, was astonished at the time.

"Obviously, we're not needed here," Ecclestone was heard to mutter.

But the rich, fertile landscape of America - with its major corporations and millions of sports fans with money to spend - still beckoned Ecclestone and the rest of the F1 hierarchy.

"They are looking for a home," said Andretti, the 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner who will help inaugurate the new infield road circuit at the speedway by taking part in Porsche Cup support races on Saturday and Sunday. "The relationship with Indianapolis should help give Formula One an American identity."

The Phoenix races were on a temporary downtown street course, hardly a traditional setting in F1, which aside from Monte Carlo races exclusively on permanent road courses. That might have been part of the problem in the past.

"At one time, Watkins Glen was a home," Andretti said of the twisting course in the Finger Lakes of New York. "But after they left Watkins Glen, the feeling was never the same."

Andretti, now 60, tried his best to help F1 gain a foothold in the States, winning the pole at Watkins Glen in 1968 in his first Grand Prix. Nine years later, in Long Beach, Calif., he became the only American to win an F1 race in this country.

But as American motorsports, including NASCAR and CART, proliferated and became more popular, the U.S. fan base for F1 has grown little.

The Indy speedway has spent an estimated $40 million to renovate its facilities and build a track for F1, using only about half of its historic, 2 1/2 -mile oval.

The race is a sellout, with an estimated 250,000 fans expected.

But the big questions are:

- Is the crowd coming because it's an F1 race or just for a chance to see the old Brickyard?

- Can the F1 teams put on the kind of show that will capture the imagination of the American public and keep the sellouts coming?

Craig Pollock, managing director of the BAR team in Formula One, has no illusions.

"We'd better not make a mess of it," the Scotsman said. "This is F1's last best chance in America."

---

On the net:

U.S. Grand Prix: http://www.usgpindy.com