How Leaders Lead With David Novak<\/a>. “One, we never really found a permanent location, dating back to the ’70s. You were Long Beach, then you were Watkins Glen, then you were Dallas, then you were a parking lot in Vegas for two years, then you were Phoenix.<\/p>\n“Then you took five, six, seven, eight years off – there was no Formula 1 in North America. Then we came back to Indianapolis. Then we had this ‘Tyregate’ as we called it, so we didn\u2019t put on a good show. Then we disappeared again.<\/p>\n
“You\u2019re not going to have any sport be popular in North America if you\u2019re not there or you have no date or location equity.”<\/p>\n
The McLaren chief also acknowledged the change in perceived exclusivity of Formula 1, applauding Liberty Media for bringing the championship closer to the fans.<\/p>\n
“We also were a sport that was very exclusive or perceived to be very exclusive and not very inclusive,” he added.<\/p>\n
![\"Zak](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/zak-brown-mclaren-ceo.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Zak Brown, McLaren CEO<\/p>\n
Photo by: Erik Junius<\/p>\n
“That\u2019s where, when Liberty came in and acquired the sport, they went, ‘Wow, the sport\u2019s huge, but it doesn\u2019t really engage with its fan base like the NBA\u2019s, the NFL\u2019s, the MLBs, even the Premier Leagues.’<\/p>\n
“I think that was fine for a long time, but now we\u2019re in an era of engagement, not awareness. We weren\u2019t engaging with our fans. We weren\u2019t letting them inside. We were ‘look, don\u2019t touch.’<\/p>\n
“And so, when Liberty bought it and you had Netflix come in, we started kind of letting people see behind the curtains, people went, ‘Wow, this sport\u2019s awesome. I\u2019ve never seen that before. I\u2019ve never been close to it before.'”<\/p>\n
The United States now hosts three different grands prix in Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
“Then over time, we got three races, starting with Austin, which is one of the best grands prix on our calendar. So you went from being not here and exclusive to being here, inclusive, and very focused on engagement. I think what Formula 1 has learned, and is continuing to learn, is that sport is entertainment.<\/p>\n
“You\u2019ll hear sometimes in Formula 1 where we go, ‘No, we\u2019re not entertainment.’ It\u2019s like, well, as far as I\u2019m concerned, if you buy a ticket to sit in a seat to watch a movie, a motor race, a baseball game, a rock concert, a fireworks show, you\u2019re going to be entertained.<\/p>\n
“I think the sport has now embraced that there\u2019s an entertainment aspect to what we do, and the fans are responding accordingly.”<\/p>\n
In this article<\/p>\n
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Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zak Brown believes there were multiple reasons why Formula 1 struggled to become popular in the United States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,27679,576,577,27234,590,4961,82,4962,9836,40721],"class_list":["post-63158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-f1-hungarian-grand-prix-2025","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-hungarian-gp","tag-mclaren","tag-nosyndicate","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-zak-brown","tag-zak-brown-on-why-f1-wasnt-popular-in-the-us-before-drive-to-survive-and-liberty-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}