If you head west from the Circuit of the Americas, to the south of Austin, you learn a lot about the history of Texas. It is cow country and after the Civil War the cattle from all over the south of Texas would be gathered there and then driven north (by cowboys), 650 miles on the Chisholm Trail to Abilene in Kansas, by way of the Red River which was then uncharted territory (today Oklahoma) until the trail arrived at the railroad.
Eventually the railroads came into Texas from the north and the east and the economy of state boomed as a result. And that was before they discovered oil down on the Gulf coast. The growth that followed attracted more and more people and south of Austin you see the impact of immigration with town names such as Niederwald, Uhland and Buda, evidence that Germans and Hungarians settled there.
Keeping going west from Buda and San Marcos and one climbs up from the plains into rolling limestone hills. The names can be pretty odd: Purgatory Creek and Dripping Springs being examples. And then there is The Devil’s Backbone, a ridge along which a scenic road winds though the Texas Hill Country. They say this is the most haunted highway in the US, with a variety of ghostly residents including native chiefs, Confederate cavalry and a woman with a baby (in search of her husband). To be honest I saw only roadkill – but there was a lot of it.
There is tavern that dates from the days of Prohibition. Hays County to the east was dry and Comal county (to the west) allowed booze and so a bar was set up close to the county line to feed the needs of the less clean-living folk. A dance hall followed.
These days the Texas Hill Country is nice enough and in October there are not too many tourists. They say that music stars like Paul Simon (83) and Willie Nelson (91) hang out in Wimberly, but I didn’t see either of them, although the Wimberly Café was one of those places where it was a pleasure to eat breakfast because one got the impression that the customers were friends and everyone was having a good time.
They did play some Paul Simon music…
While I sitting there, I found myself returning to a subject of great importance that I have puzzled over many times in my travels around America. Why are muffins called English muffins? Obviously they are not the same as the muffins that Americans make, which are differently-shaped, sweet and fluffy.
I wondered how it was that Americans purloined and misused the name and then branded muffins as “English Muffins” instead. There is no question that the English invented the muffin and there are recipes that go back to the early 19th Century, so that the arriviste claim that they were invented in the US in 1880 should be treated with extreme caution. The song “Do you know the Muffin Man?” was first written down in London in 1820 – because there was a muffin seller on Drury Lane, who went around ringing a bell (a bit like ice cream vans in a later era).
I decided to use some of my free time in Texas to get to the bottom of the muffin mystery and discovered that a Samuel Thomas, born in Plymouth (in Devon, not Massachusetts) in 1855, sailed away to America at the age of 19. He then created a recipe, which he claimed was a secret, for something he called an “English muffin”. This was actually just a muffin. He filed a US patent for the English Muffin in 1894 and the US patent office granted this, presumably on the basis that no-one in the patent office had been to England and did not know that the English muffin was just a muffin.
Samuel Thomas made a lot of bread with his “invention” and created international confusion as a result of his misnomer.
A few years ago, of course, Formula 1 was as confusing for Americans as the muffin. Some were sure it was a hair treatment of some kind, others knew that it was actually an adhesive windshield screen that allowed folks to tint their car windows. This really does exist and is manufactured by Llumar, a subsidiary of Eastman, once part of the Eastman Kodak empire.
Thanks to Drive to Survive, however, the most famous Formula 1 is now becoming big business in the United States, but there is still a long way to go yet. I decided to do an experiment to see if there were any F1 products in the local Walmart and discovered, much to my surprise, that Christmas has begun, even if Halloween products are still on sale.
My search for F1 revealed that Lightning McQueen and NASCAR are still the big sellers along with merchandise relating to the Fast & Furious film franchise, but I was pleased to see a small number of F1 cars. There were nine in total: two Mercedes and seven Red Bulls.
I did not check to see which drivers were left on the shelf. This makes sense given the popularity of Sergio Perez and Lewis Hamilton, but I was surprised not to see any Ferraris or McLarens. Either they had not been ordered or, perhaps, they had sold out…
Of late, of course Perez fans have been getting uncomfortable about the future of their hero. One can be rude about those who deliver the message but in the end the truth will out. Let us wait until the end of the year to see what happens in 2025 but Liam Lawson did a super job for VCARB in Austin and the joy the Red Bull folk seemed to me to be related to the fact that perhaps they feel they have found a solution to their problem. They may also have found a solution to the vacancy that a departing Lawson might create at VCARB, as Franco Colapinto is doing a great job for Williams and he has no drive in 2025, as the team is committed to Alex Albon and Carlos Sainz. The word is that Red Bull is now sniffing around Franco. Sainz and Albon are both due to stay at Williams until at least the end of 2026 and so there is no space at the moment for the Argentine driver, while Red Bull needs a strong youngster…
Sprint races are designed to mix things up (and make more money for F1) so it is best to wait and see if the trends continue in the races ahead.
Truth is an odd thing and I stumbled across an interesting sign about the subject while kicking around the Hill Country (left).
Americans love signs and they seem to like telling people how they will vote in elections. This is anathema to most Europeans who do not see it as being anyone’s business how they cast their votes. If you drive around Texas for a while you see an endless number of home owners declaring their political intentions for all to see (alongside the skeletons, pumpkins and gravestones that they favour at this time of year). Still, I suppose it is a useful device of one wants to know which neighbours you might like, and which you would rather avoid.
Based on the roadside signage it would be hard to call the result in the Austin area but across wider swathes of Texas, one gets the impression that this is a red state. Given that Texas has not voted for a Democrat since 1976 this is not a great surprise.
It is always good to avoid real world politics in Formula 1, but there are times as a reporter that one needs to understand why things happen in different countries. I was bemused the other day to see Pascal Arimont, a German-speaking Belgian who comes from the Spa area, saying that Liberty Media has too much power in motorsport and that the European Union should look into the business. This is not something that will go down well in the hallowed halls of Liberty Media headquarters in Colorado. In fact, it’s a bit like going to a vegetarian convention and trying to sell sticks of pepperoni to the delegates.
I thought that this must be some kind of indication that the Belgian politician have fallen out with Liberty Media in the negotiations for a new race contract for the Grand Prix. It seems, however, that Monsieur Arimont is not involved in any of the negotiations and so his views are rather irrelevant and that F1 is still having very positive discussions with the folk in power. Of course, the question of who is in power is quite complex as Belgium has yet to form a workable government, despite the fact that it is now four and a half months since the last general election. In some respects one might argue that Belgium is a very advanced nation as it has learned to live without governments and just gets on with running itself without these fickle people being involved. Still, there is a long way to go to beat the Belgian record which was set in 2010-2011 when the country survived 589 days without an elected government.
The word is that the Belgians want to continue to hold a race every year and that they do not want to go into a system of alternation with the Dutch, who can only afford to have one race every two years. So the Dutch are now talking to the Catalans in Barcelona to see if they can share a race from 2026 onwards, as the Spanish GP is moving to Madrid that year – if they get round to completing the planned race track in the time available.
This means that the second Italian race – known as the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – is going to struggle to survive as they too have been hoping for someone to alternate with. In the game of F1 race musical chairs, Imola may be left standing alone when the music stops.
F1 is keen to streamline some of the European races in order to expand in Asia and Africa.
The recent sponsorship deals F1 has done with Hot Wheels and Lego indicate that the commercial rights holder is addressing the untapped market for children. Although they have no money, kids often dictate a family’s leisure spending because the parents want their little darlings to be happy. Thus it was interesting to see F1 engaging with the educational children’s show called Blippi in Austin. As I am not a regular viewer of kid’s programmes I have no idea whether this is a big deal, but it seems like a couple of episodes of Go Go Blippi will focus on F1, which will excite an awful lot of kids in the two to six demographic – and they will become F1 in about 20 years from now…
F1’s new fans are a great source of revenue, but some of them obviously need to be educated in the ways of the sport. At the end of the United States Grand Prix about 200 fans embarked on a sort of assault course, going under and over obstacles to get from the grandstand to the main straight where they emerged before the cars had all finished running. This was not good because having F1 cars with spectators around them is a very bad idea. The thing is that people do not realise the dangers involved and so I thought the decision of the stewards to fine the circuit €500,000, but suspend €350,000 of it until the end of 2026 was a sensible idea. Even better was the recommendation that the money should go straight to the FIA Safety Department and be used for “additional motorsport safety” rather than being paid into the main FIA accounts and being used to buy red carpets and canapés for delegates at expensive events in glamorous Rwanda or wherever else the meetings will go next as the current leadership tries to show how inclusive it is. If the Antarctic has any motor clubs I am sure there would be soon be a gathering there to make the locals feels loved.
Hell, it is election time after all…
Elsewhere there is a little note in the corner of the notebook which says: “Shwartzmann”. The Israeli-born driver, who always raced as a Russian until the current war began, is expected to give up his role as the Ferrari reserve driver and head off to the United States to race for Prema. The Americans always seem very keen on Israelis and so this is a good move for Robert, who is rather unfortunate given that the two nations with which he has links keep getting into trouble with the international community. He’s a talented fellow and I hope he does well, despite the many problems he has faced.
As I often say, I don’t care what nationality a driver is if he is quick, as that is the only thing that really matters in F1…
Anyway, on to Mexico…
