F1: Is Haas Hoping To Make Sport More Popular In The States?

Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

With only a few more months left before Gene Haas and his formula one team make their debut, the California native told ESPN F1 journalist Laurence Edmondson that his big wish would to see his team make front page news in the United States. If his team happens to have success, it should create a lot of publicity in this country, and the recent victory of the women’s world cup soccer team is an example, that according to Haas, the team can meet.

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“An example is the women’s soccer team in the US, I didn’t even know who that was until they won this soccer event and that was front-page news and cheers, cheers, cheers,” Haas said to Edmondson at the recent 2015 FIA Sport Conference. “I’m hoping that we can have the same effect in the United States for Formula One because all of a sudden there is an American Formula One team and it will be the home team and people are going to cheer for us.”

It seems very hopeful that a team that is based in North Carolina along with having a base in Bradbury, England, along with many ties in Italy with Ferrari, can make such a statement. Certainly Haas himself is a businessman with loads of money and with recent success in NASCAR, can import his ideas of his tools company into a global market. But to get an article in this country?

You have to recall that even if there are many formula one racing fans in this country, it is going to be a challenge to get publicity in major sports pages in the U.S. Compared to Great Britain for example, where the nation has soccer as the highest rated spectator sport, formula one is second and many others are farther away. In addition, two thirds of the current F1 teams are based on this island nation, so the idea of F1 is very well established there. Also to include, the current world champion is British.

With the exception of such writers as Brad Spurgeon of the New York Times, the legendary Dan Knutson, who writes for many magazines, Ann Profit, who composes technical articles in F1, and this author, there are very limited formula one writers that represent this nation. All other commentaries on the television, internet and other newspapers and magazines sent to this country via writers and journalists are from Great Britain. No offense to that nation, but there should be more Americans involved.

Another important point about this country, is that there are many spectator sports that can be watched. This nation has many more individuals in it and that means a lot more to choose from. The National Football League tops the list with the biggest spectator draw, and NASCAR is the biggest racing event that has a good fan base. After this, MMA (mixed martial arts), the newest of the spectator sports interest, baseball, NBA Basketball, Ice Hockey, along with golf, tennis and other smaller sports are certainly going to be watched more than F1 in this country.

This country though has in formula one, a grand prix in Texas, many drivers like Scott Speed in the past and hope for Alexander Rossi and Conor Daly, who compete in the feeder series to F1, GP2. And to top it off, an American team coming up next season. So hope can still be done with Haas. What we need to forget is the F1 race in Indianapolis in 2005 and the destruction of the USF1 squad in 2010. This both caused the sport to have trouble in this country.

For now, papers such as the Los Angeles Times and the USA Today have to stop placing short stories on formula one results that have no more than 50 words and have someone write it full time for the country to understand.

So for Haas, get those tools working and let’s see what happens to this.

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