[Leica] Formula One Auto Racing

[masonster at gmail.com (David Mason)]

I've got to ring in here. Marc, you couldn't be more wrong. I
challenge you to spend one night in the camping area of the US Grand
Prix and say the same thing you just did. Let me apologize early for
the derrogatory term I am about to use, but I am from the south and I
have never seen so many rednecks in my life. And these rednecks love
F1 as well as NASCAR. You don't go sleep in the Indy campground
surrounded by other loud fans with your "Earnhardt" 3 and USA flags
flying over your pop-up camper if you think the sport is for "effete
method for auto racing" equated with "Espresso and NPR".  You
especially don't do it when you are parked in between an effite
NPR-listening, espresso drinking, leica-weilding dude on the one side
and a gaggle of Germans on the other.

One main disappointment for the guys out in the camp ground is that
there aren't any American drivers on the track. The test driver for
Red Bull, Scott Speed, received great applause when he went around in
practice. Juan Pablo Montoya and Jacques Villeneuve were both quite
popular since they were in CART.

The guys out there want a hero, but without one they aren't going to
turn their backs on the most powerful cars in the world,  no way - we
love cars too much to do that.

There are plenty of fans of F1 here. Do we have as many as other
countries? Well, perhaps so, depends on the country you are talking
about. However, we have a really big country and that affords us many
different options when it comes to sports - if someone would rather
have the whole view of the track in a race they can go to an oval and
get it - if someone would rather see so-called American cars race,
they can do that. They can even see European sports cars race, cars go
in a straight line, and cars ram into each other. We should all be so
lucky.


Dave


On 6/20/05, Marc James Small <msmall@aya.yale.edu> wrote:
> At 10:49 PM 6/20/05 -0400, Kevin Argue wrote:
> >Greg- The debacle occurred in the US GP not the Canadian. The Canadian 
> >was a
> >success. The American was a disaster and will piss off American fans. But
> >the reality is our friends from the south are more interested in NASCAR,
> >Cart and IRL not F1. Until F1 sees another American driver it just won't 
> >sit
> >well with Americans.
> 
> Kevin
> 
> The USian attitude is a bit more complex than a simple matter of 
> nationalism.
> 
> Formula One is perceived as an effete method for auto racing and is equated
> with Espresso, National Public Radio, Opera, croissants, und so weiter.  We
> are so large a nation that we can comfortably support authors unknown to
> that 95% of the populace who never read the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS or the
> WASHINGTON POST but, in the end, we do have a ragged resistance to what we
> perceive to be "cultural";  we would much rather have Raymond Chadler than,
> say, Albert Camus.
> 
> The result is that Formula One ignites the souls of perhaps one percent of
> our populace and might be familiar to ten percent of our citzenry, but that
> is about the cap.  Formula One has tried for twenty years and more to get
> out of the raised-pinky image and to excape from its Lime Rock apparition
> in the US, but with less success than it had imagined would result.
> Formula One in the US has not been consistent, it has not been interesting,
> and it has generated almost no publicity:  my local newspaper, for
> instance, made only the barest mention of the results of the race and did
> not mention anything about the controversy, but, then, the ROANOKE TIMES is
> never to be regarded as a solid example of journalistic thoroughness or
> consistency.
> 
> Formula One is rather a lost concept in the US and has been improperly
> marketed here since the fist US race twenty-five years or so ago.
> 
> I recognize that the Formula One dudes want to involve themselves in
> serious US money but I suspect that they would do best to back off for a
> decade and to try again.  Soccer and Formula One do not fit the current
> USian paradigm:  either can be made to work here, but they need a far more
> patient and developed business plan than either has yet produced.
> 
> I live some 160 miles (250km) from the situs of the final debacle in
> THUNDER ROAD, an early and deservedly famous Robert Mitchum vehicle, and I
> know a bunch of folks who ran the "hooch lines" which were to produce
> NASCAR.  Still, I have no time for NASCAR or its like and regard Formula
> One as far more interesting.  But it just is not for USian tastes at this
> time.
> 
> Marc
> 
> msmall@aya.yale.edu
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
> 
> NEW FAX NUMBER:  +540-343-8505
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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