More Important To Have Successful American Driver Than Team According To Vasseur
F1Friday, 22 December 2023 at 15:00
The principal of one of the ten teams on the F1 grid, Frederic Vasseur, shared his opinion on adding the 11th team amid Andretti Cadillac's attempts to enter the sport.
Formula One didn't use to be as attractive a sport for team owners as it is nowadays. The teams used to spend hundreds of millions of money in hopes of winning the Championship, and only the financially strongest could stay in the sport.
However, the situation has changed in recent years, and many huge international brands would like to enter the sport.
One of the most recent examples has been Andretti Cadillac, which met all the parameters required by FIA, but Formula One Management doesn't seem too keen on letting the team compete in the Championship.
While Andretti found some supporters like McLaren with Zak Brown, most of the teams want to keep the sport exclusive and don't want to see any new entrants.
Asked whether he thought there's enough room for another team in F1 on the grid, Scuderia Ferrari's team principal Frederic Vasseur told the media:
"On paper you always have room except that you are not able to go to Monaco or to Zandvoort, that’s another story. But for sure there is room for an 11th team if the team is bringing something to F1."
Formula One management wants to keep the sport growing, and one of the main audiences is in the United States. One of the arguments to let Andretti compete in Formula One would, therefore, be that Americans might be more interested if they had their own team which they could support.
"We spoke about the coverage from the country of the team, but for me, it’s not the right approach. The approach is that F1 is a success in the country where the drivers are successful."
On the one hand, Vasseur is right, as Formula One became super popular in the Netherlands because of Max Verstappen. On the other hand, the sport is super popular in Italy, and there is no Italian driver currently on the grid, but there are two Italian teams. Vasseur continued:
"It's more a matter of drivers than the team and the nationality of the team. You have Haas, an American team. If you are speaking about Andretti, they will join with exactly the same system as Haas."
Many Formula One fans might not know it, but Haas is actually an American team, and the United States audience isn't too keen on watching F1 because of Haas.
Vasseur, therefore, tried to explain that if we get one more team similar to Haas, it won't make F1 more popular in America. He added:
"If we want to be very successful in the USA, I think it's more a matter to bring successful American drivers than an American team."
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