{"id":843920,"date":"2026-08-05T03:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T03:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843920\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T03:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T03:00:14","slug":"f1-news-2026-donald-trumps-ruined-foray-into-the-sport-flavio-briatore-comments-new-jersey-track-2010-bernie-ecclestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843920\/","title":{"rendered":"F1 News 2026: Donald Trump\u2019s ruined foray into the sport, Flavio Briatore comments, New Jersey track 2010, Bernie Ecclestone"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems like Donald Trump<\/a> has his fingers in every sporting pie at the moment. And Formula 1<\/a> is no different. <\/p>\n

De facto Alpine boss Flavio Briatore opened up about his connection to the US president and how the two of them concocted an unsuccessful bid to revive F1 on American shores. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Donald Trump nearly moved into Formula 1 during the 2010s. \u00a0Mark Thompson<\/p>\n

Speaking on The Race\u2019s In Conversation With\u2026 podcast, Briatore recounted how he and Trump were instigators of the ultimately unsuccessful plan for a Formula 1 grand prix on a New Jersey street track in the 2010s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried as well with Donald Trump to have a race in [New] Jersey,\u201d Briatore said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald had no idea as well about Formula 1, but he\u2019s a great promoter. At the time, he promoted boxing<\/a>, he promoted everything in Vegas et cetera.\u201d<\/p>\n

Briatore admitted that after the demise of the Indianapolis partnership in 2007, he joined forces with Trump to pitch a new US GP to F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI made Donald talk with Bernie. I was in the office of Donald. We put in [a] video with Bernie to find what was the best place in New York to do the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald [told] us New York is very difficult for a million reasons, but Jersey was the place. So Bernie started negotiating Jersey with two or three different people.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time the New Jersey plan began to materialise, the sport had already found a permanent home at Austin\u2019s Circuit of the Americas<\/a>, starting in 2012. <\/p>\n

However, F1 was still eager to add a second stateside race and committed to the Grand Prix of America, with a debut for 2013 on the Port Imperial street track in New Jersey.<\/p>\n

Reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel<\/a> and 13-time grand prix winner David Coulthard tested the track out during promotions, with the Manhattan skyline as their backdrop. <\/p>\n

But the actual race never saw a green light as its calendar debut was repeatedly postponed before quietly fading into obscurity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not succeed because the guy who wanted to build the track went bust – bankruptcy – so it was impossible,\u201d said Briatore. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Austin has become a mainstay piece of the F1 calendar. \u00a0Mark Sutto<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until Liberty Media stepped in and purchased F1 in 2017 that the sport finally cracked the code in an American audience, thanks to Netflix hit Drive to Survive. <\/p>\n

According to Briatore, the media giant took a radically different approach from the Ecclestone era and fundamentally shifted how the sport is marketed. F1 now boasts three massive races in the USA: Austin, Miami, and Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never succeeded because… in America before Liberty [Media] arrived, Formula 1 was not considered something special,\u201d Briatore admitted. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou talk about\u2026NASCAR<\/a>, you talk about Indy[Car]<\/a> – completely different business. When Liberty arrived, everything changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you go to America, you go to Miami, 500,000 people. You go to Austin, full. You go to Vegas, it\u2019s completely full. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou see Formula 1 is changing dramatically. Every race is sold out, raining or not raining.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat has changed is the commercial side. Liberty is much more open. Bernie was very restrictive with the business. Liberty opened the commercial side – open completely. Marketing [is] open completely.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiberty is working with the teams in a very good partnership. This is for the benefit of everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

The races in the United States currently hold some of the longest contracts in the sport, but F1 almost boasted a bizarre calendar connection involving a now-US president and an iconic skyline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It seems like Donald Trump has his fingers in every sporting pie at the moment. And Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-843920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}