Writing this from a Chicago airport hotel room on 4 July, Independence Day here in the USA is very appropriate, really, because, when it comes to
Formula One matters, the USA really is extremely independent-minded - almost semi-detached - from the mainstream flow of the sport.
And they're not slow in coming forward to tell
Bernie Ecclestone where he can get off as far as his precious World Championship is concerned.
In the run-up to the US Grand Prix, Bernie was in rather fractious mood, telling any press man who would listen that
F1 in the USA was a commercial waste of space, more trouble than it was worth. It was all good media fodder in a week when the sports pages were dominated by England's exit from the World Cup and the first week of Wimbledon, and I don't suppose that Bernie really believed it any more than the rest of us. IMS president Joie Chitwood, for one, dismissed it in a single word: Positioning.
A correspondent in the
Indianapolis Star newspaper went rather further, accusing Ecclestone and the F1 business of effectively plundering the US, leaving a trail of financially ruined races behind them thanks to the absurdly high cost of promoting the events. Think Watkins Glen, Detroit, Dallas and Phoenix. Even Bernie's long-time pal and confidant Chris Pook, who pioneered the brilliantly innovative Long Beach street race in the 1970s, ducked out and switched to Champcars in 1983, as he just
couldn't sustain F1 levels of investment while continuing to make a worthwhile profit.
Of course, the paradox is that F1 has enjoyed a long established tradition in the USA ever since Bruce
McLaren drove his Cooper to victory in the inaugural 1959 event held on the bumpy Sebring airfield circuit in Florida. That race provided the springboard which helped Phil Hill and
Mario Andretti become America's only two F1 world champions to date, in 1961 and '78 respectively, and develop an interest in F1 which spawned races across the continent.
