Haas - American team in F1

[Hobbs04]

I think the cycling analogy is similar to soccer. Look at the reception around US men's team success in the world cup and now English premiere league is on NBC free to air almost every Sunday. So yeah get a household name like Andretti winning and F1 explodes in the US. Another thing is US sponsors. I doubt a Forbes 500 is going to waste millions on some game where rich men drive in circles.

What are some US companies that need to sponsor F1

Ford? Or any American auto manufacturing? Could Haas borrow Dodge name from fiat Chrysler family? Hellcat Hybrid Turbo!

Any other ideas?

[Jonnycraig]

As it is, Vergne now has a plum seat in Formula E, a rumoured plum seat in Indycar and a well paying reserve role at a top team. I'd argue he's far better off now than if he scrabbled around to fund a middle of the road F1 seat for another year.

Formula E is where F1 careers go to die.

Sorry to say it, but Vergne's probably written off his last F1 chances by taking that drive.

As far as im aware, Vergne is the only driver to go F1 - Formula E so I'm not sure it's where careers go to die, especially with the series 4 races old and attracting manufacturers, unlike F1..

As far as Vergne racing in F1 again, I never said he would. Infact I said that competing for wins in Indycar & Formula E, whilst being paid a nice salary to drive Ferrari F1 cars was far preferable to trying to raise £15-20m for an also-ran F1 drive. Especially considering Jolyon Palmer has just bought a Lotus test drive for a pretty penny.

[r_b_l]

I think the cycling analogy is similar to soccer. Look at the reception around US men's team success in the world cup and now English premiere league is on NBC free to air almost every Sunday. So yeah get a household name like Andretti winning and F1 explodes in the US. Another thing is US sponsors. I doubt a Forbes 500 is going to waste millions on some game where rich men drive in circles.

What are some US companies that need to sponsor F1

Ford? Or any American auto manufacturing? Could Haas borrow Dodge name from fiat Chrysler family? Hellcat Hybrid Turbo!

Any other ideas?

I guess this was a strategy of BAR back in 1999, the main funding of the team came from BAT, they signed a former WDC & who was a house hold name in North America, that could deliver results and generate hype by saying they would win a race in their first year. As we know that season was prety bad. If HASS is going to do a similar tactic, he will need to deliver.

Now im not from North America, but I would like to know if BAR was popular in the Sates? or If BAR made the motorsport headlines often?

I guess BAR's only problem (if BAR did not generate more interest in F1) was perhaps they never signed an American driver.

Also, there have been plenty of american sponsors recently, just not main title ones, the ones you usually see strapped all over a nascar or indy car.

[acosmichippo]

As far as im aware, Vergne is the only driver to go F1 - Formula E so I'm not sure it's where careers go to die, especially with the series 4 races old and attracting manufacturers, unlike F1..

I thought a few former F1 drivers were in FE. Unless you mean directly from F1 to FE.

These are only the ones I recognize, should be more:

Alguersuari
Chandhok
Senna
Buemi
Jarno Trulli
Nick Heidfeld
Charles Pic
Takuma Sato

[Raleigh]

As it is, Vergne now has a plum seat in Formula E, a rumoured plum seat in Indycar and a well paying reserve role at a top team. I'd argue he's far better off now than if he scrabbled around to fund a middle of the road F1 seat for another year.

Formula E is where F1 careers go to die.

Sorry to say it, but Vergne's probably written off his last F1 chances by taking that drive.

As far as im aware, Vergne is the only driver to go F1 - Formula E so I'm not sure it's where careers go to die, especially with the series 4 races old and attracting manufacturers, unlike F1..

Maybe that's not quite the right wording.

What I mean to say is there is no prospect of progression from Formula E to F1. Formula E is full of respectable (but now too old or getting that way) ex-F1 midfielders and outright rejects from midfield/backmarker teams, along with a handful of "young and exciting" F1 hopefuls that just weren't quite exciting enough. It's a series for people who can't go back to junior formulas but who have no chance of getting into/returning to F1.

Vergne is not perhaps without hope, if Haas does enter then with their links to Ferrari he would now make a logical experienced lead driver, but short of completely dominating the series and proving he's better than everyone else there taking that Formula E drive would not help him with any other team.

[SteveRacer]

Now im not from North America, but I would like to know if BAR was popular in the Sates? or If BAR made the motorsport headlines often?

I only started to follow F1 in 2009 so I cannot really say if BAR was popular. But it has become much easier to watch F1 recently. In the early 2000s, where I live you could only watch F1 if you had Speedvision. Not all cable providers even carried Speedvision. It was also shown live which meant trying to watch all hours of the night. My point is F1 was never going to take off in the US with those kinds of challenges. It also didn't help that NASCAR was growing like crazy at that time and dominated the motorsport news.

[Moxie]

Now im not from North America, but I would like to know if BAR was popular in the Sates? or If BAR made the motorsport headlines often?

I only started to follow F1 in 2009 so I cannot really say if BAR was popular. But it has become much easier to watch F1 recently. In the early 2000s, where I live you could only watch F1 if you had Speedvision. Not all cable providers even carried Speedvision. It was also shown live which meant trying to watch all hours of the night. My point is F1 was never going to take off in the US with those kinds of challenges. It also didn't help that NASCAR was growing like crazy at that time and dominated the motorsport news.

A very good point, here that relates to both Haas F1 and F1 in general. The price that service providers must pay is so great that in my area, I must pay an expensive premium, if I want to watch F1. (In 2014, that premium became too expensive for my budget, and consequently I no longer watch F1 races). Advertizers want to spend their money where they know viewers will be watching. Due to the price alone, the F1 viewership in the USA is an exclusive group. This is not ideal for the prospects of sponsorship from American firms wishing to reach American viewers. Even if American drivers with household names are driving cars with a great big Dodge Ram logo on the side of the car, and a Miller Light logo on the rear wing. I doubt many viewers will be willing to pay for a premium package just to receive NBCSN.

[r_b_l]

In terms of exposure, that is a big issue!

I see the problem for viewers & potential fans, paying a premium for a product that you need to wait for in the early hours of the morning/late at night. Also, waiting for a replay of a race during 'normal' hours of a day is not fun or exciting as watching it live.

Makes some sense why NBC for a time, sponsored Marussia.

I guess I should be thankful to watch F1 on live free to air TV.

[strad]

I see the problem for viewers & potential fans, paying a premium for a product that you need to wait for in the early hours of the morning/late at night.

I've had my loyalty to F1 questioned in a different thread and this is why I bristle .. I can't begin to count the years where we got up at ungodly hours to watch F1 and I don't remember once complaining about it because we old farts can remember when we had to wait for the race to be reviewed in print and the only video coverage was once a year part of a race from Monaco on Wide World of Sports.
People just don't know how good they have it.

[acosmichippo]

If there is going to be any premium paid by me in the US, it better come with on-demand HD coverage of BBC or SKY coverage. Nothing else would be good enough to beat torrenting the videos a few hours after the race.

[SectorOne]

Same here, swedish commentators are a joke, i´d rather stack poop in Thailand then watch that.
Another thing that sucks is back in the day it was on free TV, now it´s all subscription-crap.
But i would probably pay for Sky or BBC, it´s just lightyears ahead of my national commentators.

[Manoah2u]

If there is going to be any premium paid by me in the US, it better come with on-demand HD coverage of BBC or SKY coverage. Nothing else would be good enough to beat torrenting the videos a few hours after the race.

+2.

As for BBC:

1) BBC does not cover all races so no interest in BBC
2) BBC is total crap nowadays with presenting. I can't stand Eddie Jordan anymore and that woman is annoying as hell, i actually preferred that guy from the kids show.

As for Sky:

Unfortunately, i can't get sky here on tele. I can get Sport1 with absolutely HORRIBLE dutch commenting, absolutely intorelable.
The alternative is get a Sky online subscription. However, that isn't as easy either, and the package needed is imho just way too expensive. I'd only watch to see F1, and In reality, i love F1, but I also enjoy my free time in the weekends. So If i have other 'occupations' during the weekends, i choose to have these in favour of watching F1. Also, i don't feel i can put my family through the misery of saturday + sunday total F1 coverage taking up bandwith / screentime. Pre-qualy report, qualy, and post-qualy report + pre-race report, race and post-race report + kravitz notebook.

the alternative that I enjoy a lot? Torrent the stuff out of it. There are very HQ torrents out there of Sky English broadcast and it's worth it. I can watch it from the comfort of my own time leisures. And it's free.

I'd prefer if Sky actually did the effort of providing downloadable video's of all the shows for 1 week for the actual races, directly after the show end. I assume Bernie's dictatorial commercial rights strangulation grips prevent this from happening, though.

I'd be willing to pay € 5,- for a complete weekend coverage of F1 by Sky. May not sound much, but as for now, I pay zero because i watch the same stuff from torrents. As do THOUSANDS of other people who download these same torrents.

That means Sky is missing thousands of bucks every single weekend by not providing this possibility. And essentially, so is FOM.

So I think the same would be going for F1 fans globally, and I do think the US is having a huge problem here, too.
How are you going to make F1 interesting for the American viewer if it's behind a decoder and you'll have to 'friggin' pay to see a sport most of them don't care for, or don't understand, or don't feel any need for. They can watch Nascar and Champcar/Indy for free.

I believe NBC? is covering some F1 races, too, like Monaco.

And then there's the easy choice of torrenting for those interested.

Bernie turned F1 races in night races and race times so that viewers at home can watch it without having to go up at night. At the same time, he took F1 from millions of potential viewers. F1 could be much bigger if it was more 'accesible' for viewers OUTSIDE the United Kingdom. Through any continent, for free, or for cheap. Atleast make broadcasting interesting for TV stations to buy the rights or 'buy' airtime for F1.

[acosmichippo]

I think NBC Sports (separate cable sports channel, not NBC proper) does air all the races live, but in addition to the announcers being sub-par, you have to deal with commercial breaks during the race. It's just awful.

anyway, looks like Haas has indeed purchased the Marussia factory:

http://www.crash.net/f1/news/213071/1/h ... ctory.html

Although I can't find their primary source...

[Nickel]

If there is going to be any premium paid by me in the US, it better come with on-demand HD coverage of BBC or SKY coverage. Nothing else would be good enough to beat torrenting the videos a few hours after the race.

This. It Goes for all of North America.

Also, that HD coverage better be online. I would pay for a torrent, but I can't so there you go. It grates on me when old people ramble on about print papers and how great it was when live tv came along and how lucky people are now bla bla.

It's the 21st century. TV ratings are dropping because anyone with a brain and a love of sleep has started cherry picking the best coverage and downloading the thing. They're able to go about their day and watch at whatever time of their choosing, in HD if they have the bandwidth. I cannot bring myself to pay premium service prices for an inferior product. It's absurd. I would pay for this, but no one wants to sell it to me. Bernie can't live forever though...

[r_b_l]

People just don't know how good they have it.

I do know how good Ive got it. I'm happy I can watch F1 on free to air, it is live, and recently more additional coverage, such as qualifying and a pre-show before the race.

Obviously I haven't been watching F1 as long as other people around the world, but I can remember when most GP's were delayed and shown later in the night. Hell, i think even the Japanese GP was a delayed telecast by an hour or so and that's a pretty close time zone.

Good memories, waiting all night during school holidays to watch a race.

Its quite sad other countries need to pay to watch, It seems the US are in this category. But back to reality, I know TV rights are all part of the business.