DOCTORING DETROIT : Formula One Race Helps Downtown Undergo a Face Lift

Long Beach dropped it--too expensive. Las Vegas dropped it after a couple of years--not exciting enough. Dallas, Riverside and Sebring tried it once but gave it up.

So what is Detroit doing with the only Formula One grand prix in the United States?

The answer is simple.

Detroit wants to glamorize its downtown image--and it doesn’t seem to care how much money it takes.

“We’re not in the racing business to make money,” said Robert McCabe, president of the Detroit Renaissance Grand Prix, Inc., and a major shaker and mover of the downtown redevelopment program. “We are a nonprofit organization and we are quite pleased with the results of the past seven years.”

Downtown, along the banks of the Detroit River, the city has had a face lift since the first Detroit Grand Prix in 1982. The seedy X-rated theaters, pawn shops, tacky waterfront bars and pornographic book stalls have been replaced by expensive high-rise hotels, corporate office towers and grassy parks.

Sunday, in Detroit Grand Prix VII, 26 drivers from Europe and South America will race 64 times around the 2.5-mile temporary road course laid out where Woodward Avenue meets Jefferson Avenue in the busiest part of downtown. It will be Round 6 of a worldwide series of 16 races on five continents.

The first four races here were big losers financially, but McCabe said they are now breaking even.

One factor is corporate money. In keeping with the foreign racing atmosphere, McCabe went to Europe to find a sponsor for today’s race. He landed EniChem, an Italian-based petrochemical firm. It is the first major sponsor in the race’s history.

“The Grand Prix has brought people back downtown,” said Jack Long, the North American liaison for Bernie Eccelstone, president of the Formula One Constructors Assn. Eccelstone greatly influences where his F1 troupe will appear.

“I don’t think anything has portrayed Detroit as well internationally as the Grand Prix has done, being televised into 42 countries.”

The Grand Prix also offers local high rollers an excuse to party, party, party. The international glitterati that attaches itself to the Formula One tour from Brazil to Italy to Monte Carlo to Australia is here to mingle with Ford, General Motor and Chrysler executives, their wives and guests.

“The race is only part of the excitement,” one Detroit official said.

If it were just the racing, or if the object were to make money, there would not be much to say about Formula One’s future in the United States.

Contrasted with NASCAR stock cars or Indy open-wheeled cars, Grand Prix races offer little in the way of racing.

In five complete Formula One events this season, there has been one pass for the lead. That occurred last Sunday when Ayrton Senna passed teammate Alain Prost on Lap 19 at Montreal. That is the only time the lead has changed except for an accident or engine failure.

And, out of 334 laps that have been run in Brazil, San Marino (Italy), Monaco, Mexico and Canada, all have been led by one of the red and white McLarens driven by Senna or Prost.

How would you like to be a promoter trying to sell that? Yet, Formula One is popular among Europeans, South Americans and Japanese. Hundreds of thousands line the streets and hillsides to watch the McLarens, Ferraris, Ligiers, Tyrrells, et al.

“It’s a mystique, that’s the only way I can describe it,” Long said.

It won’t be quite that way in Detroit. Optimistic predictions are for 60,000 to 70,000 at Sunday’s race.

Ron Dennis, owner of the British-based McLaren team, acknowledges that selling Formula One in the United States is difficult.

“First, you must look at all the national team sports here--football, baseball and basketball,” Dennis said. “They attract an immense amount of interest all year long.

“America is an extremely large place and its size magnifies the financial problems. It takes a lot of money to move all the teams, the hardware and the support groups, even from here in Detroit to the West Coast.

“It also has its own forms of racing and this makes it difficult for an international sport to penetrate. Look at soccer. It is still struggling. And, let’s face it, there is a certain rivalry, jealousy perhaps, that exists between Formula One and CART (Indy car) racing. If CART decided to race in Europe, I don’t think they would be welcomed with open arms by the Formula One people. The same applies when we come here.”

Chris Pook, whose 1975 Formula 5000 in Long Beach opened the way for street racing in the United States, said that Formula One is not cost effective here.

“If you’re trying to turn a profit with an F1 race, and you want to do as much promoting of your product as you can, you’re too far in the red before you start,” he said.

Pook switched the Long Beach race from Formula One to Indy cars in 1984.

A promoter must guarantee more than $2 million to Formula One Constructors Assn. just to bring the teams, cars and hangers-on to his site.

“That’s only the beginning,” Pook said. “If you ask one of their drivers to help with the promotion, he wants money, a first-class airline ticket, a car and whatever else he can think of. That’s if he’ll do it at all.

“With the Indy car drivers, it’s totally different. They bring their own cars and teams to the race and if you ask for help, they’re ready to give it. They know they’re part of the promotion.”

Long, who promoted last week’s highly successful Montreal race and who also helped with the Las Vegas and Dallas races, predicts that there will be a second U.S. Grand Prix by 1990, perhaps on the West Coast.

Long said they are looking at two sites in the West--Laguna Seca is one--as well as two other sites, one in the Midwest and one in New York.

“The most important thing we want, other than a working financial agreement, is a friendly host,” Long said.

The most pressing argument against other U.S. races is that the 16-race schedule is full, and drivers, owners and teams are adamant that it not be expanded.

“Since the mid-1980s, when we had three races (Long Beach, Las Vegas and Detroit) and almost another one in New York, Formula One has undergone its greatest growth period, worldwide,” Long said. “For every date on the schedule that might become available, there are countries lined up, money in hand.

“Who would have thought, 10 years ago, that two of the most successful races we have would be in Hungary and Japan.”

Curiously, one race that could have been in trouble was Detroit.

“We want, and need, a race in the United States,” Eccelstone has often said. “But we won’t come back here unless we get some new pits, even if it means moving to another site.”

The success of the Detroit Renaissance program, fueled by the Grand Prix, has caused the problem. New buildings, and more are in the planning stage, are encroaching on the area set aside for racing.

A break in the site problem came Friday when the City of Detroit and the race organizers announced that they have agreed in principle to move the race from the downtown streets to Belle Isle, a park-like setting in the middle of the river about three miles from the current course.

The move was announced jointly by Mayor Coleman Young, Charles Fisher III, chairman of the Detroit Renaissance group, which organizes the race, and Eccelstone, who said an agreement was reached that a multi-year contract would be negotiated to assure the continuation of the race.

The proposed circuit on the western end of Belle Isle would be a 2.8-mile track built on existing roadways. It would occupy less than 20% of the land, the rest of which would be available for spectators.

Moving the race site would be welcomed by the drivers, who are close to unanimous in calling Detroit’s the worst course in Formula One.

“It’s too bumpy, too narrow, has too many surface changes, too many manhole covers and too many dangerous corners,” said Prost, a two-time world champion. “It’s just a lousy course.”

Ferrari driver Michele Alboreto, who won here in 1983, called it “unprofessional and stupid to think it could be called a Formula One course.”

In 2.5 miles, there are 20 turns, most of them 90-degree elbows, giving the drivers little opportunity to stretch out their speed. With cars capable of better than 200 m.p.h., the average speed around the circuit is closer to 85.