Chase Carey explains what F1 is

Formula One's chief executive officer Chase Carey has provided an insight into what he believes are the fundamental aspects of F1 at a motorsport show in Budapest, whilst also accusing the previous ownership of the sport under Bernie Ecclestone as suffering from 'short-term' thinking.

Carey is part of Liberty Media who completed a huge takeover of Formula One from Ecclestone, and the American organisation has received criticism from some quarters for their proposed changes to the sport.

The Irish-American was attending an event called Great Race in Budapest - a motorsport show, and initially spoke of his love for the city before providing his own definition of F1.

“I love Budapest. This is a special city with a beautiful history. The people are welcoming," Carey said.

“It is a sport first of all. Its foundation is a sport. It uses technology, but at the end of the day it’s a sport, a competition with great teams, great history.”

Under the ownership of Ecclestone, F1 failed to embrace the emergence of different media platforms and focused resources and attention largely on television production. Carey believes this held back the sport, and says Liberty are eager to introduce partnerships with different media platforms in order to maximise the coverage of the sport.

“You have to use all the platform available to you," he continued.

"I think the sport needs to have a vision where you want to go. There should be a competition on the track. We need to have a shared vision, a partnership. It was rather a short-term thinking before.”

When quizzed about what changes could be coming up in the F1 calendar, Carey stopped short of providing any details, but repeated his claim that "destination cities" like Budapest, and potentially new grand prix host Miami, are the target.

“Fortunately we actually have some great cities around the world, great countries around the world which are interested in hosting a race. We wanna be in destination cities like Budapest which capture the world’s imagination, but there aren’t that many that are attractive to us.

“We have a pretty close schedule. There aren’t many slots between the weekends. But we will continue to investigate and try to bring the sport to new places or former destinations. We are engaged to great cities,” Carey admitted.