It is very likely that Bernie did some more negotiations on TV deals. Joe Saward made some comments about that last week on his blog.
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2011/12/ ... -americas/
The latest talk comes from the German magazine Auto Motor und Sport, which has a reporter who is close to Bernie. The magazine is reporting that there could be three or four races in the United States of America in the future. Bernie says that there are nine races in Europe and that North America is about the same size. This is true if one adds the United States population of 300 million, to Canada’s 34 million and Mexico’s 112 million. This makes around 450 million, while the European Union total is 500 million.
The advantage is that the United States is a fully-developed consumer market, where there is money to spend on racing and there is a big gap in the market because of the troubles that have weakened open-wheeler racing in the last 15 years. Rather than waiting for the Middle East and Asia to develop, Formula 1 might be well-advised to move into the United States on a bigger scale, with at least one race in California (the obvious choice is to find a promoter to take over Long Beach). Much would depend on the success of Austin and the new race in New Jersey. Formula 1 did have three races in the US in 1982 one in Long Beach, one in Detroit and one in Las Vegas, and there were also races in Canada and Brazil, making a total of five in the American timezones. That was more than a quarter of the races, so there is no reason why there could not be a similar proportion in the future. The problem is finding the promoters who can see how to raise the money, particularly at the moment with many of the US states in a sorry financial situation and public money being hard to come by. There is no doubt that the two US races will be joined at some point soon by Mexico, in addition to Brazil and Canada, as usual. Whether it will get beyond that remains to be seen. The cynic in me says that Mr E is probably negotiating a new TV deal in the US, but I don’t see any reason why it would not be a great idea for F1 to expand in the US – if someone can be found to pay the bills. That happened in the unlikely environment of Texas, and has happened too in New Jersey, so why not California or Colorado as well? Using the business model of a Grand Prix increasing property values in an area could lure in some people who own land that they feel is undervalued. And when it comes to big developments – as we have seen in India – the odd $30 million is not such a huge amount.
I also find the idea of large scale property development interesting as a promotional tool for F1. If you combine it with something like the METF of Texas things could become easier. I remain convinced that Indy as an F1 venue did not fail due to the Michelin disaster but due to the reluctance to look at alternative or new sponsorship schemes. Hellmund IMO did a very good job in that regard.
But ultimately F1's future in the Americas hinges on the ability to personalize the interest of the TV public. Ferrari do this by their brand image in Italy. It is sad that the last try by USF1 failed. It is typical for F1's struggle in America that the root cause for the failure was the reluctance to absorb some existing international resources from the top level into the US team.
It may be a better alternative to do some grass root driver building as Ferrari does with Canadian carting star Lance Stroll and Ron Dennis once did with Hamilton.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/m ... le2274857/
That strategy still looks quite promising if you consider the success that Antony Hamilton and McLaren so far have with Nyck De Fries.
http://paddocktalk.com/news/html/story-178849.html
The question is who would invest $2-3m in a driver development program now which will come to fruition only on 6-8 years time. You need a strong international brand like Red Bull but with obvious American identity to pull this off.
This is ultimately the reason why Bernie keeps failing in his desire to tap the US market. You have to do all the marketing work and convince the right people to make the long term investment into drivers and a team as well. And when you see that they make fundamental mistakes you have to give them good advise perhaps coupled with a bit of an incentive instead of shooting them down.
Bernie of all experts should have known that Windsor would not succeed with the level of F1 technical experts he had in his team. That would have been the perfect time to step in, invest some seed money as a silent partner or have someone else do it. I just hope that Austin and New Jersey will succeed and that someone in F1 starts making the right steps for success in America.