Formula 1 has already been on this path before.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the world’s most popular form of auto racing looked like the next big thing in the United States.
Mario Andretti won a world championship. Three Grand Prix races were held on American tarmac in one year.
Those were dizzying times, but they didn’t last.
Now F1 and its US-based owner Liberty Media are making another big push to build a red-white-blue stronghold in a country long overshadowed by other ways of driving fast.
From the popularity of the Netflix documentary series “Drive To Survive” to the inclusion of a second US race in Miami next year to the rumble of a new American team and driver for the famous Andretti name, there are many reasons to be optimistic.
“I would like to see the fan base here awaken,” said 81-year-old Andretti on Friday when he was reached at his Pennsylvania office. “It’s the Olympics of our sport.”
His son Michael, who had a brief, unhappy time as a Formula 1 driver in 1993 and now owns a huge racing company with cars around the world, is leading one of the most exciting developments.
Michael is reportedly joining a deal to buy the Alfa Romeo F1 team – and putting American IndyCar star Colton Herta in one of the cars.
There has been no regular American driver in the series since Scott Speed, who was fired in the middle of the 2007 season.
Mario Andretti said it was important to bring local drivers into Formula 1 to really spark the potential American fan base. He firmly believes that 21-year-old Herta has the talent, background and passion to be a great success on the world’s largest racing stage.
“There’s nothing more helpful than having an American driver – not just an American team – but an American driver wearing our colors,” said Andretti. “I would put my reputation on Colton. I see so much in this young guy. Such talents don’t come every day. “
Formula 1 was on the verge of a major breakthrough in the US when Andretti became the second American to win a world championship in 1978, winning six races in his iconic black and gold Lotus.
Although his unprecedented résumé includes victories at the Indianapolis 500 and Daytona 500, this Formula 1 title remains the culmination of Andretti’s career.
“I fell in love with motorsport because of Formula 1,” says Andretti, who was born in Italy and emigrated to the USA as a teenager. “I will always be indebted to the opportunities I have had in this country … but Formula 1 has always been the ultimate ambition.”
Riding the Andretti wave, Formula 1 hastily set out to settle across America.
They sped on the streets of Long Beach. They sped across the dusty parking lot of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. They raced around the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. They raced along the riverside in Detroit.
Then, apparently in the blink of an eye, Formula 1 disappeared from the United States
Andretti returned to IndyCar racing. The races in Long Beach and Detroit also shifted to the American open wheel series. The highly acclaimed Grand Prix of Caesars Palace only lasted two years. The Dallas Grand Prix was over in a single year, largely due to a track that crumbled in the scorching heat of Texas.
Andretti isn’t entirely sure what happened – “If I knew this, I’d bottle it up and sell it to you first,” he joked – but he adds that it was probably “too temporary”. The hastily put together street races – Las Vegas and Dallas in particular – looked like night flights with little stamina.
The final hurray was a boring street race through downtown Phoenix that drew embarrassingly sparse crowds. When it quietly disappeared after a three-year run in 1991, there was no indication that anyone noticed.
As NASCAR’s popularity skyrocketed and few American drivers thought about a career in Formula One, the US didn’t have a single event on the Grand Prix schedule for nine long years.
The US Grand Prix returned in 2000 on the new road circuit through the historic grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But an initial surge in popularity quickly faded, and one of the biggest debacles in the history of the sport – a tire dispute in 2005 that resulted in only six cars making the track – burned essentially all of the bridges in Indy.
Since its resurrection on the Circuit of the Americas outside of Austin in 2012, the US Grand Prix has seen a strong crowd and some nifty races on the state-of-the-art 3.4-mile street circuit.
But Liberty Media wants Formula 1 to be far more prominent in the United States than a weekend getaway on the calendar every fall in the heart of Texas.
Officials were so eager to have a second U.S. race on their calendar that – after being stopped at every corner to hold a street race on the glamorous Miami waterfront – they decided to go for a parking lot race around Hard Rock Stadium , home of the NFL Dolphins and nowhere near the city center.
While this was received with groans by race purists, Andretti said the Miami event, slated for next May, is a far cry from the races at Ceasars Palace and Dallas all those years ago.
“I know there has been a lot of preparation and investment in Miami. It’s huge, ”he said. “Their ambition is to really make it one of the greatest races in the world.”
If done right, nothing will stand in the way of winning two races in the United States.
“It’s such a huge country, just having one race here is not enough to really develop the sporting culture here and to really capture the fans and take them on the journey with us,” said seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who is with Max Verstappen delivers a close fight for this year’s championship.
Incidentally, Liberty is already fishing for a third American race. A return to Las Vegas – done right this time – is apparently at the top of the wish list.
Of course, drivers are concerned that Liberty is adding too many races to the already crowded schedule.
The 2022 season will feature a record 23 events on five continents, and the series owners have set out to grow to up to 25 races per year.
The biggest goal of Formula 1 is clearly to conquer America.
This time it could just happen.
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Paul Newberry is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at pnewberry (at) ap.org or https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963 and check out his work at https://apnews.com/search/paulnewberry
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More AP Formula One: https://apnews.co/hub/FormulaOne and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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