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Comment by nicholassmith | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's been an F1 fan for a while (although less so at the moment, but I digress), I've always found it curious that it's never really taken off in America like it could have. Americans love cars, and love racing, it's easy to mock the love of the oval and NASCAR but American teams show up in Le Mans quite a lot, and have a long history of racing on the long, winding and, well, non-American tracks.

Maybe it's just a quirk of culture, something that slipped under the radar and never made it back into vogue. No American drivers, previously no American tracks, no American teams, there's little to get a fan hooked in. F1 suddenly got a lot more coverage in the UK when we had a couple of drivers, and oddly more coverage still when we had drivers doing well, maybe having one really good American driver would change it.

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> No American drivers, no American tracks, no American teams[...]

F1 was run at the Circuit of the Americas two weeks ago, in Austin. I think F1 is to the USA as NFL is to the UK: there's a dedicated, small audience in both (judging from my Twitter feed), and they're both trying to extend their reach - F1 with more races in the US, and NFL with more games in Wembley. I think F1 is planning a New Jersey street race in 2014 as well.

Sorry I should have said 'previously no American tracks', was typing a bit too fast and I'll fix it.

There was also an F1 GP held at Indianapolis between 2000 and 2007.

I still stand by 'previously' as 5 years is an awful long time to keep people interested in a sport that doesn't appear in your country and has none of your countrymen involved, especially with similar series (Indy 500 etc) running anyway. Especially 5 years in F1, where everything gets changed around and fiddled with.

I've been an F1 fan since I watched Ayrton Senna get killed 10 minutes after I turned on my first race in '94. Weird, but I was hooked. The last time F1 was run at Indy in 2005 was a disaster. Michelin brought the wrong tires and 14 cars did one lap and pulled into the pits quitting the race.

Senna was before my time, and I'm not even a F1 fan, but watching him in action is a mind-blowing display of skill.

Here's an on-board view of an on-board lap in Australia:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOkvo5v5-VU

1400hp engine (in a car body weighing half-nothing), manual transmission (Senna would drive with 1 hand on the wheel a good chunk of the time), no electronic driving aids...pure driving. I've watched documentaries where he would make the car 'dance' in the rain and destroy everyone on the track.

One commentator described his cornering technique - Senna would flick the wheel in the direction of the corner before turning into the bend - allowing him to get the tightest possible racing line, so he would brake less than other drivers.

His famous heel-and-toe technique:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8By2AEsGAhU

That latter video is one of my favorites on YouTube: Senna on Suzuka in an NSX wearing loafers! His skill is truly unmatched, but to be fair, heel-and-toeing is a rather common technique in performance driving. Hell, I do so to match revs on every 3->2 downshift before a corner when driving around town, and I wouldn't call myself a skilled driver.

It's the same with Cricket and Rugby.

By some quirk of history, Americans got into Baseball and Gridiron instead.

They're both fine sports so it's all good; but we all have a chuckle when you have a 'world series'.

There's a theory (according to the relevant Wikipedia entry it's a controversial theory) that the World Series is named for the newspaper which sponsored early contests.

> it's easy to mock the love of the oval and NASCAR

Check out Top Gear s18e02 (edit: now I see you're British, so you probably have watched it). Not that I'm convinced or will watch Nascar, but how they pictured it in the show was hell damn exciting.

> F1 suddenly got a lot more coverage in the UK when we had a couple of drivers

Imagine what was going on here when Kubica appeared.

If you've never watched NASCAR, you should definitely do it. I've not watched a race in years, but it used to be shown on Channel 5 around 10/11pm, it's perfect 'crack a beer' TV. Very fast, very aggressive, very loud, very full of crashes. The street brawl to F1's refined Queensbury Rules.

However, it is frankly ridiculous in many ways and it's very easy to pick on the fact it's beloved by red necks and so on.

Uhm, I don't have channel 5 because I'm not in the UK nor I do have a tv ;) but I have watched some fragments and I don't buy it due to the oval thing. The crashes, yeah, they are cool, but it's a bit like watching gymnastics hoping that the chick will fall off and crack her arm. It's too bad tourer races (DTM, WTCC) don't get as much attention as F1.

In the "sports I didn't watch" category I never expected motorcycle racing would be more exciting than F1. I've never shared an interest in bikes and I don't know most of the names except Rossi and Pedroza, but once got into watching a MotoGP race and wow, there is action!

It was when you'd mention Top Gear and 'British' and I put two and two together and got 8. Honestly, you should try at least one race purely to see how aggressive some of the drivers can be. It's similar to the British Touring Car Championships, but even less polite.

Superbikes is one of the reasons why I don't watch the F1 as much, it's far more entertaining, the drivers seem to be a lot more humble, and rules aren't constantly being monkeyed.

Rallycross is very cool too, if we're talking only about contact sports. If not, obviously rallies are the shit, mad skillz.

Yeah, the rules mess is one of the reasons I kind of lost interest in F1 (the major ones were BMW dropping out and later the Kubica hiatus).

Rallycross is fantastic to watch but mostly organised chaos, which is no bad thing. Rally is fantastic but I've not seen it properly for a number of years now, it got passed pillar to post in the UK so the coverage was always terrible, so I try catch it when I can.

I think it's more the time difference problem, A lot of F1 races take place in Europe/The Middle East/Asia

Only Brazil, Canada and Austin are in the "prime time" US timezones.

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