In an exclusive interview with Sauber Motorsport, Valtteri Bottas was asked what people get wrong about him often. Bottas replied that fans in the US often mispronounce his name.
The Finn said, “In the US, many people call me Valerie – ‘Hey Valerie, how you doing?’. I’m not Valerie.” One potential reason why US fans could be making such a mistake is that most of them are relatively new to F1. Besides, Bottas is one of the lesser-known drivers relative to Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen.
: Valtteri Bottas shares his experience with American fans who are familiar with him from the Netflix’s Drive to Survive.
ℹ️ : PitStop#F1 pic.twitter.com/26rchZyf6R
— F1 Naija (@f1_naija) September 19, 2022
So, the majority of the drivers’ names besides these few popular drivers are fresh household names for most US fans. This influx of new American fans has primarily been due to Netflix’s Drive to Survive (DTS), which first came out in 2019.
Since then, the US-based fanbase of the sport has grown exponentially, with many crediting DTS as their main influencing factor. Now, in the Netflix docu-series as well, not every driver gets a lot of spotlight as even team bosses and other personnel such as team owners and technical directors are put in the chair.
So, it is unlikely for the US-based viewers to get to know all drivers and team principals’ names. On top of that, the US sporting landscape already has so many existing sporting leagues like the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. So, F1 getting popular among the US fans in itself is a big blessing for the sport.
The growth of F1 in the US
The viewership and track attendance numbers for the US Grand Prix have been increasing year on year. In 2022, the three-day track attendance at COTA was 440,000, per Forbes. While the 2023 race weekend saw a slight dip with 432,000 people attending, it still showed that there is a considerable amount of interest for F1 among US fans.
Liberty Media had already anticipated this trend in 2020-21 and planned to introduce two more US races on the calendar. They held the first Miami GP in 2022 and also invested heavily in the return of the sport to Las Vegas.
Despite being held during one of the slowest months of the year, the Las Vegas GP weekend was the highest-grossing weekend for hotel revenue in the company’s history.
It is also likely to drive November to become the all-time record month.
Hard to argue the F1 impact. pic.twitter.com/YoMe38NDEj
— Vincenzo Landino (@vincenzolandino) November 30, 2023
The Las Vegas GP project saw a massive $240 million investment from Formula One Management themselves. And it paid off massively with a projected economic impact of $1.3 billion on the city’s businesses. The Las Vegas race also delivered excellent racing action despite the criticism of its track layout.
Moreover, both the Miami and Las Vegas races have also been receiving criticism for their exorbitant ticket prices. On top of that, the other aspect of criticism that these two races faced is because it has been full of glamor and celebrities attending the races, which overshadows the racing at times.
