Especially drag racing. Anyway, today’s race is in Austin.
Kenobi65, I can find some kind of fault with each of your metrics. ESPN is focused on athletics, not auto racing. They cover track and field about as much as they cover NASCAR, and I don’t think they’re really equivalent in popularity. The same can be said about the sports page. It is very rare for auto racing to have a biggest race or single championship event. I can name no basketball players at all.* Does that mean basketball is becoming a niche sport?
On the other hand, I’m not going to argue that F1 is not a niche sport. But as niche sports go, it’s pretty popular. both F1 and drag racing beat the crap out of say, curling when it comes to popularity. Both regularly pull in several tens to a hundred thousand spectators at events. Bicycle racing and Golf probably give them a run for their money.
*While re-reading it, I realized I can name Kobe Bryant, but that’s only because he behaved like a self-important loon when he left where ever it was that drafted him.
Fair questions, scabpicker. Admittedly, I made up that list in about 3 minutes, and it could use some fine-tuning. 
If a sports channel isn’t covering auto racing, who (other than Speed) would be?
I give you the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500.
Alright, that’s fair. Let me amend that to, “find 10 sports fans, and see if any of them can name more than one or two active stars in your sport.”
And that proves your point even more, because you’re actually talking about LeBron James. 
What do you think “athletics” means? 
Note: In most of Canada, I would say that curling is more popular than F1 (IMO). But maybe the reverse is true in Quebec.
It’s still better than any metric I came up with. For normal athletics, it’s honestly a pretty good list.
[QUOTE=kenobi 65]
If a sports channel isn’t covering auto racing, who (other than Speed) would be?
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I honestly don’t have a good answer for that, other than one of the many auto industry magazines. Speed channel exists because places like ESPN weren’t providing coverage of auto racing in general, and there was a market.
[QUOTE=kenobi 65]
I give you the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500.
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I did say rare, but they aren’t unheard of. There’s also 24 hours of Le Mans. OTOH, most racing series don’t have a most important event. Inidanapolis used to be a points awarding race in F1, for example.
[QUOTE=kenobi 65]
Alright, that’s fair. Let me amend that to, “find 10 sports fans, and see if any of them can name more than one or two active stars in your sport.”
[/QUOTE]
That would be perfect, if auto racing were a regular athletics sport. I contend that it is not, see below.
[QUOTE=kenobi 65]
And that proves your point even more, because you’re actually talking about LeBron James.
[/QUOTE]
:smack: Ok, I can name two baskeball players, now. Don’t trust any information I provide besides their profession and name, though.
I contend that auto racing is something other than just athletics. Hell, there are atheletes in other sports who contend that auto racing isn’t really a sport, since you’re being carried around by a machine. The persons who come at it as a normal athletic sport are usually its most casual fans. There’s an entire channel devoted to it because there are lots of peope like myself who you couldn’t pay to watch footbal or baseball, but will watch all 20 hours that they broadcast of the 24 hours of Le Mans. Most would be engineers, technical people, or persons that are involved in the auto industry in some way.
While auto racing does have incredible athletic and physical requirements, the man shares the stage with the machine in a way that they do in no other sport. Those machines are parts of peoples lives outside of the sport. Converse to the idea that general sports fans cannot name F1 drivers, I bet you know the name of more than one F1 manufuacturer, even if you don’t know they participate in F1, and none of them are even American car companies at the moment. Bicycling has hints of it, but the importance of the machine in bicycling does not come close to its importance in auto racing. And those machines sometimes draw fans more reliably than any man, and they’re a group of people that often lack interest in any athletic sport.
There’s also the groups of people who watch any auto racing event for the wrecks. It’s not the pit, so I won’t comment on them other than to note they won’t get much of that in other sports.
Remember, I’m not saying that F1 isn’t a niche sport.
Even if it doesn’t have a “most important event” from the standpoint of determining a champion, does F1 have a “signature” event, which has more publicity or prestige that the others? I’m thinking about Monte Carlo, but again, I know just enough about modern F1 to be dangerous.
Would horse racing be an acceptable analog?
Here’s some of the problems I see with F1 popularity in the US.
Timing–other than this new race, Canada, and maybe Brazil, F1 races are way outside anything resembling good US viewing times. Networks either then have to broadcast the races live at 4am or whatever, or on a tape delay–neither of which are all that great for trying to bring in new audiences (and it should be noted that there were several F1 races on tape delay on the main Fox stations this year)
(Lack of) On-Track action. For those who do know what F1 is, chances are it will be known as the car racing league where nobody passes anyone else, and even if they had a car capable of passing, the team owners would tell them not to pass.
The reputation is, perhaps, harsher than it deserves to be, and I think the last couple of years have seen good progress–but even in the Austin race there was a 30+ second gap between 2nd and 3rd, and there have been way too many races I’ve seen where most of the time is spent on the battle for 9th place because everything else it pretty much set barring mishaps.
And you have to admit, the constant claims of F1 drivers being the best in the world probably don’t help the situation, especially when a former Champion in Montoya transfers over to NASCAR, is only mediocre and is best known for hitting a slow-moving jet drier under caution.
Yes, that would be its signature event, I suppose, primarily due to its age. But as is noted before, it’s timing is awful for America. In their own way, both Spa and Silverstone are just as important, but not as insanely wealthy. For example, no race gets more coverage than any of the others. That’s not true for Indianapolis or Daytona.
If they still ran the Green Hell, I think there’d be no other race as important. But that place is just dangerous.
In terms of sport, probably. But auto racing is something different still. Partly because we don’t use horses on a daily basis, partly because horses aren’t created by companies that people feel a strange alliegence to. The more I think about it, it’s not a sport. It’s some other strange game that includes a sport. I’m not sure of anything else that qualifies.
Nitpick: Montoya was never World Champion in F1. He won several races, but then moved to CART where he was champion in his first season - which would tend to support the claim that F1 drivers are the best. The fact that he has struggled in NASCAR is probably a reflection of the fact that each discipline, at the top level, is much more specialised than it used to be. Driving a stock car really has very little in common with a single seater. Because the best drivers in both have trained for years, it is highly unlikely one could transition to the other and compete with the best.
Despite this, several former F1 stars have closed their careers with success in other forms of racing - for example, Johnny Herbert has had a successful sports car racing career both during and after driving F1 cars.
Montoya was nowhere near being a champion and was regarded as journeyman during his F1 time.
Open-wheel is seen as the pinnacle of track motorsport, F1 is the pinnacle of open-wheel. I don’t think there is any doubt that the best drivers end up in F1.
The podium on Sunday was Hamilton, Vettel, Alonso. Without doubt the best three drivers currently operating on the track.
Montoya got within a “Ferrari International Assistance” ruling about some Michelin tires of being World Champion in 2003. He led going into Indianapolis, but then the Williams was nowhere there nor at Suzuka.
It depends where in the US or Canada you are. The Canadian Grand Prix is held in Montreal, and there Formula 1 is hugely popular. That race is one of the biggest local sports events of the year.