Racecar Engineering interviewed McLaren's head Martin Whitmarsh on a wide variety of topics relating to the upcoming 2012 Formula 1 season, including the series' November return to the United States at Circuit of the America's, in Austin, Texas, for the US Grand Prix.
The excerpts pertaining to the US Grand Prix are below, with full Q&A available
here.
We’re going to Austin, Texas this year. How important is it for the fans, the sport and the sponsors to be racing in the United States again?
I think all the teams believe it’s very important and we’ve got to make a success of it this time. As we all know, our time in America has been spasmodic and unsuccessful. We have to treat it almost as a new market. But actually, you know, there’s a huge interest in Formula 1 that is untapped in the States. We’ve got to work harder. You know, what we have to accept is, you know, America doesn’t need Formula 1; we need it more than it needs us. So I think the onus has got to be on the teams, the promoter, all of us, to work — and the commercial rights holder — to work very hard to make sure that we educate, we promote, we develop the interest, we reach out in America. So we’ve got to work harder than, perhaps, you know, a new Grand Prix in Europe or Asia or South America, where, you know, there is a ready interest and a ready uptake. We’ve got a real challenge. But it’s important. It’s important to our commercial partners. The States is still a rather big market for really any multinational company. We are — as I mentioned earlier, there are only two world sports, soccer and Formula 1, and, you know, for us to be a great world sport, we’ve got to conquer the States.
Given what you were saying to Dan about needing to make a special effort for in the States, what kind of plans do you have to have tucked up your sleeves to bring McLaren, not Formula 1, to the American fan?
Well, again, I think the teams need to work together. We won’t create interest in McLaren Formula 1 team or Vodafone McLaren Mercedes without there being an inherent interest in our sport, so I hope and believe that — we started a range of fan forums, which were very popular, in the last 18 months, through what was originally a photo initiative. It is our intention to continue those, which are — is reaching out to fans. They take a lot of time and a lot of organisation but a lot of people turn up and the quality of the audience has been fantastic. We did one last year in Canada for instance.
They are things that take a lot of our time but I have never personally — I’ve been to most of them — never come away regretting we did it, because Formula 1 doesn’t reach out enough to the fan base and I think we’ve got to work harder at that and make sure that we’re seen as accessible, as interested in their views.
You know, the teams have worked hard with fan surveys. The DRS, which I think was a significant development, the overtaking capability of the DRS, came as a consequence of feedback from the fans and an effort on the part of the teams to make the sport more attractive and meet their needs. So I think there’s a whole range of things that we’ve got to do, working together as teams and commercial rights holder and promoter to make sure that we are successful in America this time.