thehemogoblin wrote:Popi, the difference between Spain and the United States for nationalistic Formula One teams is the level of F1 interest in the two countries.
One country has produced a double world champion who, on talent alone, is the best driver currently on the grid.
The other country has not had a world champion since 1960, a win since 1967 (Mario Andretti does not count), and a podium since 1993.
There's your difference.
Still doesn't make a difference. If you have a national economy going into a strong recession, or even worse, the gates of a depression (at least, that was the prospect for mid-2008 to mid-2009) everything would have pointed to a lack of credit from banks, a lack of support from sponsors (aside from national efforts the way Argentina backed Lopez or Malasya on Lotus), or a lack of investing in such a market so sensible to economical crisis.
Nerd semi-offtopic paragraph: At least on paper, luxuries markets, in recessions, tend to suffer more drastically than the rest of the economy. The arguments stands on that the average consumer tends to cut off cost wherever he can, and inmediatly after, companies, doing exactly the same begins to watch investors taking away their capital.
End of Nerd semi-offtopic paragraph.
Therefore, why two countries, which have been suffering seriously an economical crisis, had massive support (at least on paper, later we saw that deinflating as days went by) that included, and investmen capital (Youtube guy, Anderson, Windsor, Campos, Carabante et al) deals with contractors (Dallara, Bridgestone, Cosworth, Xtrac) and sponsoring for whoever that backed Soucek, Alonso (he got major backing these days, and yeah, I know, he's a big fish, but even them should be receiving less backing), Hispania, USF1, Andrés Valle, etc.
And even more, they were approved because there were the best options available. It's like if now, for 2011, a greeek bussinessman would have been granted a license. At every angle, a doubtful moment for doing a bussiness there, on the wrong market.
If the trajectory or the tradition of the country would have counted, then France, Italy, Germany (!) would have had their own investors or drivers having a serious push. Instead, stronger economies like Germany and Japan were withdrawning their investment (BMW, Honda, Toyota, Renault), not that thery were having the best time of their lives, but were farin better. And they left the leftovers of the grid to BRIC countries that could have a chance of getting a couple of companies backing those guys, Chandook and Petrov case.
Look at early 1990, a strong recession at Japan meant a lot of teams failing badly (ok, that was another F1 then).
Winners have lots of friends, losers have good friends.