Hands off our Motorsport

[Paul Holroyd]

Football (Soccer) Stars and Clubs hands off our Motorsport.

After having received full FIA approval in December 2005, the new Superleague Formula Championship will first run on the top European circuits from August to November 2008. The series will gradually extend worldwide to a maximum of 17 races. Using a development of Elan Motorsport Technolgies' Panoz single-seater chassis, the series will be supported by leading Football (Soccer) teams. The intentention is for a minimum of 10 football teams to run two cars each. AC Milan, PSV Eindoven, FC Porto and olympiacos are on board and others are reportedly close to signing. The series will highlight young talent, and points and US $1.35 million prize money will be awared across first to last place in each round.

I think that the big clubs in Europe have ruined football at least for the smaller clubs and football players and rich board owners are...well the just get my back up. And now they want a bit of motorsport..before long you will have to pay double the amount to watch a race and not just that do we realy whant football supports at the races!

We can have fun here about footballers and teams regarding motorsport.

"I would like to see Wayne Rooney fit into a single seater plus the helmet would be huge.

[Daniel]

Eh?

[LotusElise]

This daft idea has been kicking around for the last 6/7 years, at least. It was originally going to be called Premier1 Grand Prix and start in 2003 or something.
It isn't going to happen - I wouldn't worry.

[Iain]

Wasn't there supposed to be a Leeds United team?

[Rudy Tamasz]

If big money could ruin motorsports it has already done so. Look at modern day F1.

[LotusElise]

Wasn't there supposed to be a Leeds United team?

There certainly was; they had the car and everything.
I think the Premier1 cars might have been recycled as development models for the A1 GP ones, but I might be wrong.

[Mark in Oshawa]

I think this is the goofiest idea to come down the pike in a long time. That said, racing is already overpriced for supporters if you go to f1, so what would Soccer do to it? It might even bring new people to the sport.

This cross pollination of different sports owners getting into racing isn't new. NASCAR has already shown this. Jack Roush, the first owner of a "superteam" in Nextel Cup needed some investment, and sold half the team ownership to the owners of the Boston Red Sox of MLB. The team is now "Roush-Fenway Motorsports" (Fenway for you overseas is the famous ballpark that the Red Sox play in). George Gillet, who owns a piece of one of the Premier League teams and owns the Montreal Canadiens outright has also bought into Evernham Racing in NASCAR as well. This interest of owners from Football in other sports isn't new..... but I doubt this particular scheme will work. I think most football owners have enough on their plate trying to sign the next David Beckham, never mind trying to find the next Michael Schumacher

[Malbec]

There certainly was; they had the car and everything.
I think the Premier1 cars might have been recycled as development models for the A1 GP ones, but I might be wrong.

They were recycled into GPM cars I believe.

Football and motorsports are two entirely different markets with fanbases that are generally from different segments of society. I can't see large numbers of football fans crossing over into motorsports just because their team (and I think only 2-3 teams per country will have a car anyway) runs a car or two.

The Premier1 thing failed because of a lack of interest, I can't believe they're still trying to flog this dead horse.

That said, it reflects well on the strength of openwheel racing in Europe at mo that football teams are looking to expand into it.

[kalasend]

Some interesting thought: I find the rule of offset in soccer similar in nature to pit-passing (ie. goal = scoring must be done on the field by the players' own merits). Maybe Premier1 should ban this? Or require the driver to give back positions gained by pitting?

[Erki]

I think most football owners have enough on their plate trying to sign the next David Beckham, never mind trying to find the next Michael Schumacher

Excuse me my total ignorance of what concerns football/soccer but... has David Beckham ever won anything? What has made him so famous? His wife? His hairstyles? Keep in mind that this is a genuine question.