F1 Today – Miami Prixview – 05/05/2022
Hamilton hopes his commission can stop ‘lonely journey’
Lewis Hamilton is hoping that The Hamilton Commission can boost diversity in the sport and help others avoid the “lonely journey” he has been on. The seven-time champion is the sports only black driver, and has set up an organisation to try and increase BAME representation across motorsports.
He has also set up Mission44 with its goal to “support, champion and empower young people from underrepresented groups in the UK to succeed”. Speaking to ABC News ahead of this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, Hamilton said “It’s generally been quite a lonely journey – me and my family have been the only black family.”
“I have been racing for 29 years, professional for 16, and most often been the only person of colour in the room. When I would ask the question, there was no real greet feedback. put together the Hamilton Commission. It starts with education and understanding. We have put together this body of research to try and understand what those barriers are.”
Hamilton said there were systematic issues in the education system because only one percent of the over 40,000 jobs in motorsport were filled by BAME people. His commission aims funded by himself, is to try and create more representation, support and empowerment for these young, under-served groups.
Going into this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix, Hamilton trails Charles Leclerc by sixty-two points, having not scored at Imola. He says the maiden race in Miami is “huge” for F1 and expects interest in the States to swell with Las Vegas being added to the calendar in 2023.
Adding “We have Austin in Texas which has always been amazing, while the first race I had out there was Indianapolis in 2007. (Miami) is going to be a huge event for us. Now we have two Grands Prix in the States and another in Vegas next year – it’s going to be huge.”
McLaren bounce back or stalling recovery?
Following McLaren’s first race win in nine years at Monza last year there were hopes that they could be regularly fighting for points and victories, however, the nightmare start to the year has seen it slip back before returning to the position that it was in during 2020.
In Bahrain the team had a nightmare test and race, they were only eighth fastest with a brake problem hampering mileage dropping them down the order. Since then the team has rediscovered its performance with Lando Norris scoring the team’s first podium of the season in Imola.
There’s measured realism from both drivers and team boss Andreas Seidl about that. Daniel Ricciardo, as ever, is the most upbeat. Seidl said, “The recovery may be exceeded our expectations. There wasn’t too much to be optimistic about in Bahrain, at least in the short term.
“But there’s still so much to learn with these cars [with the new regulations] so the state of evolution and understanding is moving at a pretty fast rate. So that came as a nice little surprise. here’s measured realism from both drivers and team boss Andreas Seidl about that.”
“But there’s still so much to learn with these cars [with the new regulations] so the state of evolution and understanding is moving at a pretty fast rate. So that came as a nice little surprise.”
McLaren has a realism but admitted they way they have exceeded expectations as they weren’t optimistic of a short term recovery. They are still aware that this is only the start as there is still a lot to learn with these regulations, saying they were in a state of evolution at a fast rate.
Lando Norris added, “We have relatively clear direction where we have to work. We need bigger steps, which should be coming over the course of the year. But Red Bull and Ferrari are still almost 1s quicker.”
Part of the problem has been the performance deficit that the Mercedes power unit compared to Red Bull and Ferrari, which has been calculated by GPS data by a tenth and a half. But McLaren’s deficit has been calculated as slightly more, it says it won’t be blaming the power unit instead it’s focusing on the things they can fix.
Seidl says that Imola showed that the solid base of the car was fundamentally working. He added, “We have a clear plan in place for the areas we have to work on the car to bring more performance. But we need to be realistic about the gap. It’s huge.” McLaren had a clear plan for areas it needs to improve, to bring more performance to the car, while remaining realistic about the gap.
Breaking through in America
After decades of questions about whether Formula One could ever make it in the United States, this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix will give confirmation that it has done so. This season the country will host two races for the first time since 1984, as the buzz and interest in the US have never been higher.
The excitement is in stark contrast to years gone by when F1 was left struggling to find venues that worked for both the sport and attracted fan interest. In recent months the sport owned by US company Liberty Media has attracted a raft of US sponsors with several teams signing deals with technology companies and digital platforms.
Indeed, the interest of drivers, teams, fans, media, celebrities, sponsors and the local community has left anticipation for the weekend at levels that are not seen in many other places. The American CEO of McLaren Zak Brown says this weekend’s race in Miami will be s a step above everything he has witnessed before.
He told Motorsport.com, “I’ve never seen the level of sponsor engagement, activities, hospitality requests, celebrity requests ever at a Grand Prix. That is not just in my six years of running McLaren, because I’ve been around the sport for 20 years. And it feels to me very much like the Super Bowl, which is like the biggest event of the year.”
“Not only does everyone want to come to the Super Bowl to see the event, but the half-time show, the parties, the events is all a part of it. And it’s off the charts. We’re one of the largest teams with hospitality, and we had double the requests. It’s the largest hospitality programme we’ve ever had.”
In the past F1 has been guilty of racing in locations where the sport makes almost no ripple downtown considering a Grand Prix is taking place a few miles away. When Liberty Media took over the sport in 2017 one of its aims was for ‘destination cities’ to host races, this appears to be the first real success.
Images and reports from those in the city show that bespoke pop-up venues are already appearing across the city, and especially in the South Beach area. McLaren is setting up a ‘Speedshop’ in a multi-storey car park there, taking over a whole floor that will feature car displays and entertainment over the F1 weekend.
But perhaps the biggest city takeover is being planned by crypto exchange and Mercedes sponsor FTX. They have taken over a 165,000 square foot area on Miami South Beach to create an entertainment venue, which will be used for concerts, galleries, gaming and fashion shows.
The emphasis is very much on expanding F1’s influence and reaches beyond just getting people sat down in grandstands at the Miami track. It’s about creating the kind of hype that cities get when the Super Bowl is in town. Could Miami potentially grow into the flagship north America race, in the way Monaco is for Europe and Singapore is for East Asia?
Louis Frangella, VP of Partnerships for FTX US, told Motorsport.com: “There are only a certain amount of people that can get to go to this race, so in order to create that Super Bowl type atmosphere, you have to do things that engage the people that are in and around the area.”
He added “This will be the biggest activation that FTX has ever done, and we’re so excited about it because it blends everything together: art, culture, our partnership with Mercedes, crypto and technology. It’s going to be something definitely not to miss.”
But FTX’s vice president of business development, Avinash Dabir, believes this is only just the beginning with Las Vegas returning in 2023, saying it what the sport needs to draw an even bigger audience in the future. It is why the Miami Grand Prix is not the culmination of F1’s success in the states, but the beginning of something much bigger.
Adding “What’s exciting about this is that the race is being built from the ground up. You have an opportunity to modernize it, and you have an opportunity to attract a new audience to it, by offering different things at the race.
“I think the city of Miami also has the infrastructure to support it. It’s got the hotels, it’s got the nice restaurants, it’s got the beach, and it’s a beautiful place to be. So it is a very unique offering. I think Vegas has a lot of those same qualities to it. It seems very strategic in the way that F1 are picking their locations and I hope and want to see it grow.”
Talking Miami
This weekend’s Miami Grand Prix is a trip into the unknown, a new circuit in a new state following the old school Imola a fortnight ago. Charles Leclerc hit a bump at Ferrari’s home race finishing sixth, following a mistake allowing Verstappen to creep up behind him into second in the standings.
Dutchman Verstappen has one win and two podium places on US soil at the United States Grand Prix in Texas, while Leclerc has never finished higher than fourth competing in the country.
While its not the circuit the sport wanted the location has been transformed from a car park into a city, it’s a Monaco-esq circuit, with an artificial marina, complete with fake water, around a section of the 5.412km circuit that has fans talking.
Going back to Melbourne 2017, Lewis Hamilton was asked where they would like to see F1 go next, he had only one location in mind, “Miami.”
The Miami International Autodrome went through thirty-six different layouts before developers settled on a street-circuit feel with nineteen corners, three straights and scope for three DRS zones. Though it is another car park race, like Las Vegas in the 1980s, it doesn’t feel like a tacky car park a circuit designed in a similar way to Baku or Jeddah.
Though this wasn’t the original plan, the actual plan for a race around the marina, organisers have created a fake marina with luxurious yachts in any way possible. Since pictures of the marina were released, social media has been awash with memes poking fun of the moored boats and the walk-on-water wooden platform.
Last time out at Imola, Leclerc’s dominance was hit by a bump when he made a mistake allowing Verstappen to win closing the gap in the championship. Verstappen won in Austin for the first time in October.
While Leclerc has never finished higher than fourth competing in the country. A Silver Arrows revival is all Hamilton can hope for at the inaugural event on Sunday. Hamilton hopes of three wins at his first race in different states, having won at his first race in Indianapolis and Austin look unlikely.
But Mercedes are aiming to bring upgrades to Miami that they hope will begin to solve the car problems that have afflicted them this year.
Breaking America at last
F1 momentum in the United States feels unstoppable, as the sport opens up a country which has hosted races since 1950 but has always struggled to breakthrough. October’s race in Austin has been seen as a defining moment with a record 400,000 people attending.
The race has been seen as a seismic moment in F1’s growing relationship with America. At Imola, Lewis Hamilton said: “Growing up knowing how amazing this sport is and seeing there was still quite a disconnect between the U.S. and the rest of the world in terms of the passion for this sport … it’s really amazing to see we’ve finally cracked it and there’s a growing love in the States.”
Far cry from the late 1990s when Michael Schumacher was able to holiday in the states as he was so rarely recognised at a time when he was the face of Formula One in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Things couldn’t be more different now. Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” series, which premiered in 2019, has been a game-changer, taking a series which was for so long a closed shop. Despite it critics, it has shone a light on the sport’s drivers and on-track rivalries, though with a bit of creative licence.
The awaking of America comes at a time of transition to the 1990s generation, Max Verstappen, Lando Norris, George Russell, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. A generation on platforms like Tic Toc, gaming, and Instagram who can build brands around themselves and create a following.
Formula One is one of the fastest-growing sports in the U.S. F1 estimates it has over 36 million fans in the U.S. right now. This year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was the most viewed F1 race in America on cable since 1995.
With all three time zones set to host races next year, a decade on from being without a race between 2008-11 it feels almost a lifetime ago, Austin last year watching had almost a European feel with an American twist. Now that you see drivers appear on breakfast TV and late night talk shows the sport may now have broken into the US.
Haas plays no attention to unease from rivals
Haas technical director Simone Resta says he pays no attention to unease rivals have about the teams, as he is only interested in making it faster. The US-owned team has had a positive start to the season, proving to regularly be able to fight for Q3 and challenge for points.
Following on from a difficult 2021 campaign, where Haas was pegged to the back of the grid thanks to abandoning any development work on its old car, the team has been buoyed by the progress it has made. However, that has reignited a debate about its customer arrangements and strengthened of its partnership with Ferrari.
But with the FIA being fully satisfied that the Haas-Ferrari partnership is operating within the regulations, Resta himself is adamant that he wastes no time worrying about what the opposition think. Resta told Motorsport.com, “You know, honestly, I just care about my job, the job we’re doing with a car, trying to improve it, and trying to give a better car to the drivers.”
“All those things are on a different level from where I operate at the moment. We know the rules we need to respect, we respect them, and we move forward. There’s not much to say.”
While he accepts there are design similarities between Haas and Ferrari, he says there are other teams who have designed similar cars. Resta also thinks the teams leap into the midfield wasn’t expected, saying “We just push the performance and do a better job, and then the car will be there.”
He is confident as well that the team can build on the strong start to the season, and has potential to unlock more performance from its car. Although Steiner is being cautious about rushing through upgrades.
Asked if he shared Steiner’s views about holding fire on developments for a bit, Resta said: “I can only agree about what Gunther says and I understand his position in the way that yes, the cars are so different from last year, the tyres are different, so there’s a lot to learn.
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