Haug has always been very vocal about having two or more United States GPs as well as enticing American manufacturer-backed teams from the likes of Ford and General Motors. Mercedes’ motorsports boss said these things to me last year in Montreal and repeated his wishes to me again individually as well as in last Friday’s press conference. “I wish we could have at least two races in America and I would love to have an American team,” Haug commented. “We should encourage a guy like Roger Penske.”
Added Haug: “[The USA] is our second biggest market for Mercedes Benz and is obviously very important for our hosts Chrysler. We are producing a lot of cars there and we want to support America. I think we need to explore America further in
Formula One in the future. My wish in the long term would be to develop an American team with American drivers, even American engine manufacturers.”
These, I’m afraid to say, are merely gratuitous statements, a pipe dream in fact, and every time I hear Haug say these things I have to ask, what world is he living in? Has he not read the newspapers recently? Neither GM nor Ford are in a position to spend the megabucks required to field an
F1 team. Nor do they have the technical or engineering expertise to successfully operate a serious racing team as their racing efforts over the past thirty or forty years have amply demonstrated.
More than anything, Haug’s comments shed some light on Formula One’s incredible misunderstanding of America as a whole and of the country’s unique sporting culture, as discussed in this space last week. Indeed, in the same Friday press conference, BMW’s motorsports chief Mario Thiessen further underlined the depths of the Europeans’ misapprehension of America. “The US is basically the only big country in which Formula One does not play the dominant role in motorsport,” Thiessen said, “and I think we shouldn’t give up on achieving this.”
