Ed Straw

Well, to an extent, it was... I was expecting you to be a lot more emphatic than that.

Right from the start, it was a great event.

Right.

It really was a great event.

Fantastic circuit.

I remember being there at the first free practice session, which was freezing cold, and watching Kimi Räikkönen wheel spinning, trying to get out of the pit exit, which was obviously up a hill, and there was just no grip and everything.

But, you know, great track to watch at, great event, and it got good attendances straight away.

So...

It did give F1 a good proper facility in the US.

But I wouldn't say the existence of that race in itself kind of opened the doors in the US or anything.

It's very easy to say that's the starting point for what we're seeing now.

And I don't think it was actually, because even that event has gone from, you know, decent crowds to just the crowds they get now are way bigger than they were before.

in the 2010s.

So it was a positive and it was a great event and it remains a great event, but I don't think it opened the door really to the US in a clear way.

Everything didn't follow from that point.

It was a nice event to have, good for the calendar, good to go to, but...

The limitations of the way F1 was run in the Bernie Eccleston era meant that just doing that on its own was never going to be enough to really open the door in the US market.

But it was nice to have a little foothold.

That was quite important because you had all the indie nonsense in 2005.

So to have seven years after a new event happening, because 2012 was the first one, wasn't it, I think?