McLaren team principal and Formula One Teams’ Association Chairman Martin Whitmarsh says Formula 1 must have two races in the United States of America.
He says the sport needs to ‘conquer’ the country as it needs America, not the other way around, urging the sport to try harder to create an interest among the 300 million plus population.
“America doesn’t need us, but we need to conquer it,” he said during a fans’ forum at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking.
“In the past we didn’t do enough. I think we need to go there; maybe we need two races per year.
“We need to have a proper marketing programme and create the interest. We can’t just have a race there and come back, we’ve actually got to try harder.”
Whitmarsh acknowledged the great job being done in Texas, which will host its first F1 race at the Circuit of the Americas in 2012, but admitted F1’s natural home was the east or west coast.
“We’ve got Texas and I hope it’s going to be a very successful race, but the natural place for us is east coast/west coast,” he added. “There’s a great opportunity there, and we’ve really got to make sure of it.
“I think there should be two races, it’s a big enough and important enough market that we should be over there. Long Beach, and around New York, those are the places where we can really create an interest in Formula 1.”
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