Americans may be unsophisticated but

[C M Smith <cmsmith@domain.elided>]

They sure are sensitive.

The Formula One circus left the US because US cannot supply enough fans to 
make it pay, except for the very interesting recent development at Indy, 
which was my point I think. Watkins Glen may have been a fine race track in 
the 60's but I doubt it could be brought up to modern F1 standards. Any 
other US location tried for F1 has been a joke.

NASCAR may appeal to some but the idea of more or less identical cars 
circulating an oval track while large crowds wait for something interesting 
to happen (i.e. death or injury) reminds me more of the coliseum of ancient 
Rome than any modern sporting event outside the US (well maybe bull 
fighting). Now I concede that NASCAR builds awfully fast cars that are 
difficult to drive, but really...so what. Like the space shuttle, with 
enough money and enough horsepower, you can do just about anything (how the 
heck did the US space program get into this, it isn't a spectator sport, 
last I heard anyway)

As for the lack of competent US racing drivers well, there aren't any at 
the moment who can compete at the level required in Formula One. Mario 
Andretti (just barely an American BTW) was and is an immensely skilled 
driver who can race anything and do well and let us not forget that truly 
brilliant American Phil Hill, or Dan Gurney for that matter. There are 
quite a few Canadian drivers who succeed in US racing (it's the icy winter 
roads that give us the edge) out of all proportion to our population 
(around 15% of US total) Apart from that the best current "US" drivers are 
furriners. Any F1 driver who comes over automatically does well. The real 
F1 champions just clean up. Plus it was a European car design that 
transformed US open wheel racing.

Sorry, but US football, US baseball, and now US style ice hockey ( how the 
US has ruined that game is criminal, any takers? I'll explain how exciting 
it used to be compared to the boring pap now served up by US dominated 
hockey) has the entire world yawning and wondering just why Americans turn 
out in droves and spend huge sums of money to watch. Baseball is like 
watching paint dry, it even makes cricket look somehow cerebral. US (and 
Canadian) football where players rarely kick the ball, let alone do 
anything interesting with it, is equally dull. US auto racing is dull as 
dishwater (and passing is NOT an indicator of excitement, rather of 
artificially induced equality. A bit like chaining equal weights to the 
legs of  all the Christians before unleashing the lions, so as to give 
everyone a fair chance!)

There is a reason no one else in the entire world is interested in any of 
the US sporting events you know.

So, continue with your illusion that drag racing is somehow an entertaining 
sporting event (mimicked apparently by US vehicle buyers' obsession with 
0-60 times instead of real world performance, may the new 6.0 litre 
Cadillac Escalade puleeze step up to the plate) and try to ignore the 
popularity of monster truck "racing" and (gawd luv 'em) competitive swamp 
buggy "racing" and leave me to my illusion that F1 is the premiere sporting 
event in the world, next to World Cup Soccer, and America's Cup....

Cheers

and happy Memorial Day everyone, let's see as much racing under the yellow 
as we can please so as to preserve the illusion that money doesn't make 
faster cars.
Michael Smith
Calgary, Alberta,Canada
91 Alfa 164L
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