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I occasionally write long posts but you should assume I'm talking out of my ass until proved otherwise. I do like writing shit sometimes.  

 

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TL;DR: lol


So F1 has had eternal issues gaining popularity in the US. I think part of it is because we all learn growing up that NASCAR is a bunch of hillbillies that used to build fast cars to run booze around back when it was illegal for a while, and we just generally associate it with lower class entertainment. We have plenty of other forms of racing in the US, but to the average person, the image sticks pretty firmly. Thus, the formula one image of "glamor and spectacle", i.e. rich people, never quite caught on until combined with another popular overseas product, reality TV.

There were races in the 60s and 70s but frankly I'd be looking those up as much as you would be so I'm not going to talk about them much. All you need to know is by the 80s it was decided that Watkins Glen, the best track in the US used by F1 cars in the last 60 years, wasn't paying enough money and the only other race here was, and this will be a running theme, a temporary street circuit in Long Beach. Back then even most street circuits could produce an exciting race (albeit without a ton of passing) on the right day, and Long Beach seemed alright enough, though I'm not sure about the "basically monte carlo but in the US" thing they were going for. Summed up by Clive James in the 1982 Official Season Review:

There wasn't much room for overtaking, the circuit being a bit reminiscent of Monaco. Minus the palace, the casino, the architecture, the yachts, and the close proximity of France.

In 1982 were three races held in the US. Officially called the United States Grand Prix a.k.a. Long Beach, plus the new Detroit Grand Prix, and returning Caesars Palace Grand Prix.

Detroit was a temporary street circuit, which I'm pretty sure to this day remains the only F1 track to involve driving over train tracks, ignoring the tram tracks at Singapore Nope, those don't exist. It was also known during it's time as being exceptionally bumpy, as anyone that's lived in or driven through Detroit can attest. In 1982 the track wasn't ready in time for an early Thursday practice nor at the beginning of Friday (hmm) , and ended up being one of those lovely aggregate races where there was a red flag and the second part of the race involved taking the time gaps from the first part of the race and adding them onto the results of the second to determine the winner. Also John Watson won from qualifying 17th, and that was without pit stop strategy. 1984 was the race that Tyrrel got busted for their take on the whole "Water cooled brakes" trick, by which the underweight non turbo cars had big water tanks for cooling the brakes that were emptied on the warm up lap and subsequently refilled before weighing the car after the race. Tyrrel had gone one further by deciding to include lead shot in those tanks. This cost Martin Brundle what would have been his first podium, which was very nearly a race win. In 1985 the track surface started breaking up during the race (write that down) but they fixed that before everyone came back in 1986 F1 continued to race at Detroit until 1989, when that round was replaced with Phoenix.

Circling back around, we have the Caesars Palace Grand Prix. I hope you already know about it. It was a temporary street circuit, although calling it a street circuit is being generous because it was quite literally set up in the car park of the casino. Don't believe me?

Screenshot of the TV footage of the race, showing the cars racing between concrete barriers in what is very obviously a parking lot
wikipedia image of the circuit layout, looking something like a folded up piece of paper

Not doing much to help the whole "glamour" image of F1. I'd say "despite the location" but I think everyone knows Vegas is a sleezetown by now. Despite being a tiny car park the design did manage to be notably hard on the drivers, as it had lots of high(er) speed left hand corners, and since most circuits are clockwise instead of counter clockwise, the drivers' necks didn't cope as well. This was well before F1 drivers were super athletes, so they regularly took a pounding from races. Both the '81 and '82 races came at the end of those years and both determined the championship, each with a driver finishing off the podium to clinch it. F1 did not return for 1983, but somehow the idea stuck around for CART to come in and race there instead?

Here is where I would also like to stop and point out that the last races of the season those two years took place on October 17th and September 25th. I'd now like to point out that it's the middle of fucking November and F1 (plus MotoGP) both have multiple race weekends left. For national sports having a long season is one thing, but for international motorsports you're flying across the world and usually not being home for months on end. Basically I'm saying it's fucking stupid to have 20+ race weekends a year.

You know what else is fucking stupid? Deciding you want to hold a race in Texas, and doing it in July. That sounds like an awful idea, right? Well let me introduce you to the Dallas Grand Prix. An idea formed, I guess because someone saw the show Dallas and wondered if they could hold a race there, because there's really no other explanation. It was a temporary street circuit, and is probably most remembered for the track surface falling apart all weekend from the F1 cars racing around. Race day it was around 100F and the circuit had been hastily repaired overnight, still spent all race falling apart, and somehow they managed to squeeze some semblance of a race out and get the hell out of town to never come back. This was also the race where the story of Ayrton Senna saying "I crashed because the wall moved" and the team subsequently going out to see that the (temporary concrete barrier) wall had moved by a fraction of an inch. If you believe that was why he crashed or not is up to you.

So by the end of the 1980s, Watkins Glen had stopped holding F1 races there because they didn't want to pay to hold the race there anymore. Long beach swapped out the F1 race by the waterfront for CART, and I assume it was cheaper to do so. Caesars Palace swapped out the F1 race in their car lot for CART, and I assume it was cheaper to do so. Detroit decided they didn't want to spend a bunch more money to hold an F1 race there, and swapped it out for CART instead. You'll note in all of these instances, they just want to hold an open wheel race. F1 isn't really special in these cases, the public doesn't know the driver's names anyway. They might know Mario Andretti, who was racing in CART at the time, but that was about it. Why pay Bernie Ecclestone the big bucks when you can have a bunch of home grown talent racing in cars that look the same to the average viewer for less? F1 still wanted a race in the US after all of this, and the city looking to put forward the money was Phoenix.

Phoenix was a temporary street circuit in Arizona, notable desert region of the US. In 1989 they decided that June would be a great time to hold the race. It was around 100F, the track layout was boring, and by now the cars were getting reliant enough on aerodynamics that it was hard to pass. There were 3 boring races in Phoenix, though they were smart enough to move it to March in '90 and '91, and F1 finally decided the US wasn't worth the effort and fucked off.

Until 2000, when they decided to go to Indy.

Now back in the day, the Indy 500 was actually part of the "World Championship", but this was ages ago and frankly no one cares, even the drivers would often skip that race back then because very few people actually showed up to every race anyway. But, old people love using that whole HiStOrY thing as a marketing point so why not bring F1 cars back to Indy? Well it's an oval and that's not going to fucking work, so they made the Indianapolis Road Course.

Image from wikipedia showing the circuit layout

So, this may look fine to you and perhaps it did to the people who made it too, but there's a lot going on here. First off, the oval track is normally run counterclockwise, and this is run clockwise. So the part of the track they DO drive on the oval, they do backwards. But honestly that's more just, a weird thing, more than anything of issue. Let's take a look at the actual satellite view of the track, with Watkins Glen for scale.

Google images snapshots of both tracks

Watkins Glen is a pretty well flowing track, but reasonably compact as far as racetracks go. You can see here it's a bit bigger than Indy, and even it's tightest turns are a lot wider than most of the Indy road circuit. Basically, the actual road circuit part of Indy is very tight. It doesn't make for great racing or overtaking. Why? Well as you can also see here, someone decided it'd be really cool if the built a fucking golf course inside Indy. There is room for a decent road track inside, but instead someone wanted a golf course instead so this is what we got. By this point F1 was more about pit strategy than on track overtaking most of the time, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing despite what you might be told. However, Indy tended to make for boring races and did so until 2005.

I'm not going to get into 2005 in depth because many people have done a much better job than I'm willing to do here, but basically the cars with Michelin tires, 14 out of 20, were having tire failures on the oval turn in practice before the race. The Bridgestone tires were doing just fine, and having been under performing all year against the Michelins for being too hard (i.e. durable, not as sticky), they weren't willing to give any concessions. All parties involved including organizers and officials didn't come to an agreement, and the race started and ran with 6 cars. Everyone hated that. After two more races there everyone decided maybe having a race at Indy wasn't a great idea after all, and there was no race in the US from 2008 onwards.

Then in 2012 someone built a Tilkedrome in Texas and they started having races there which generally weren't a disaster, but that's too boring to talk about here.

In summary, F1 has a long and storied history of having fucking clownshows here in the US, so I'm glad Vegas is keeping that tradition alive. Still not worth watching though.


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in reply to @plumpan's post:

Minuscule point of contention from a Singaporean: at no point did the Marina Bay Street Circuit ever run over tram tracks.
The last tram/trolley/streetcar service run in the city was in 1927 and the network only intersected the route of the circuit from the Singapore Sling to the hairpin between the Anderson and Esplanade Bridges. Regardless, the earliest google streetview images are from October 2008 and show zero evidence that a tram line ever ran that way, and in current practice it is normal for Singaporean streets to be repaved every ten years or so.
The mention of tram lines is probably a misinterpretation of common street directory maps that also show the right-of-way for our subway system, which also runs under the Singapore Sling corner.

I recall specifically there was something running under the road that caused a retirement, either Mark Webber or Lewis Hamilton in the early '10s. Whatever it was wasn't directly exposed but caused a fault in the car. I'll have to go back and dig for what it was.

So the source of this was from an Autosport article elaborating on some theories that Christian Horner had in 2008. Source to that here. That mentions underground trains, not a tram line, and even then there's other evidence to show that an underground train line would have been much too far away to cause the gearbox failure.

So I almost remembered the quote right, but it is probably bullshit. I probably thought it was a covered up tram line because that would have actually made some semblance of sense, a somehow still powered third rail just under the surface vs a train some meters down.