Chase Carey doesn’t want to say much about his plans for Formula One. His comments thus far have been widely reported and they have not really changed since Liberty Media took control of Formula 1 in January. So we know what he wants the world to know. When it comes to other things, he is jovial but firm.

“I think this sport has, in the past, had a penchant for talking first and then trying to do things,” he says. “I have always said that in business you try to get something done and once you have done it, you explain why you did it. So we want to act first and talk second, and not talk first and act second.”

It is a fair point and the way business is done in many spheres but in F1 gossip is a form or promotion, it keeps the sport in the news between races. The Vettel-Hamilton business in Baku is a case in point, right now. People are talking about F1… so non-race coverage is a thing of value, or at least it can be. Liberty Media, however, wants to distance itself from the ways of the past when Bernie Ecclestone would say anything, simply to stir up media attention. He’s still trying to do that, but is getting less coverage and Eddie Jordan’s attempts to break news, which have often been attributed to Ecclestone in the past, today seem rather feeble. One gets the impression that the old regime are finding that they do not have the sources of information they used to have…

Still, you do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if Liberty Media wants to go to “a destination city” in the United States, and Carey has named four of them: New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami, the primary target is always going to be The Big Apple. To paraphrase Frank Sinatra, if F1 can make it there, it can make it anywhere… The logic is clear. The New York metropolitan area boasts 20 million people, Los Angeles comes next with 13 million, followed by Chicago with 10. Miami is only the eighth largest metropolitan area with six million people and Las Vegas only makes it into the top 30 with 2.1 million.

Carey says that the US is a priority and that Formula One wants to be more engaged in the promotion of events, but he also believes it will take at least five years for the sport to become popular with the American audience.

“The US obviously has benefits,” he says. “It is a great platform for the sport. Destination cities capture the world’s imagination, so you have to be in places that have an appeal to all our partners. There are many opportunities and adding to Austin is a way of building the sport’s potential. It is a priority for us, so we are focussed on it, but we want to be thoughtful about it. I am not going to get into discussion on any specific venues. We are engaged with multiple cities. We actually have some places with more than one option. I’m not going to put time frames on it. We want to do the right deal. We want to move forward, but it is more important to do it right, with the right partners, in the right way. Making sure everything is a success is more important that getting it done by x date.

“In the past the sport has jumped in and out a little bit and didn’t commit the resources and people to build it in the right way,” he adds. “The US is not going to be something you develop in two or three years. To get it to where it can be reaching its full potential is a five-plus year process. So we need to have the commitment to build it. Some things will work and some things will not work. Not everything works exactly as you would like and we have to try to figure out how you built on the things that do work and fix the things that don’t.”

The obvious question is whether Liberty Media and its many subsidiaries might promote events itself, because finding race promoters in the US is not easy.

“We have to be more engaged,” Carey admits. “I do think that in the past, because it was a more of a one-man show, the business model was to sign an agreement and let them get on with it. But these events are the face of your sport and so you need to be more of a partner and be actively engaged. We need to make sure we can provide help and insight. We should be learning from each one. Each place should be different, each should have its own characteristics. We can still learn things from one to another. We think that engagement will vary by location but I think the US is a place where probably we would be more engaged, partially because its is part of a broader development of the US. It requires more of a real plan.”

Which tells us very little in real terms. What we do know is that the Long Beach city council is looking at the choice between F1 and IndyCar, with the help of consulting firm KPMG. Long Beach is an easy place to get in the Los Angeles area and F1 could draw big crowds. Are there other choices in California? Probably. There has long been talk of a race in Anaheim and a number of projects have been talked about in the Bay Area, in and around San Francisco. But none of them seem very serious at the moment.

Las Vegas was one place that Carey mentioned but there has always been a great deal of hot air about F1 in Vegas – and there’s nothing that sounds even vaguely serious at the moment.

Miami is a nice idea but there are no rumours at all, beyond the suggestion some time ago that there might be a track around (and perhaps even inside) one of the stadiums. Formula E tried a race on a track including Biscayne Boulevard but even the electric series encountered opposition from environmentalists and Formula E didn’t seem to make any money and decided not to return, even though the city was keen. Noisy F1 cars would get an even harder time from the gender-neutral tree-hugging frarority.

Up in New York City there have been a string of attempts to get a race off the ground for more years than I can remember. In 1982 Bernie Ecclestone announced that a race would take place in New York with projects at Flushing Meadow, at Roosevelt Field and at the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Flushing Meadow was chosen but legal action stopped the plan dead. In 1984 CART raced in the car parks of Meadowlands but it was never a great success. Then in 1992 came another announcement from a group involving Chip Ganassi for the Marlboro Grand Prix of New York on a 1.14-mile street track, at the base of the World Trade Center. The mayor David Dinkins was behind the event – but it never happened. NASCAR spent years trying to build a speedway on Staten Island and eventually gave up, so a permanent facility is pretty unlikely, while Formula E has found itself a venue in the Brooklyn dock district. It has a great view but Fifth Avenue, it ain’t!

F1 had a plan to go to Port Imperial, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. It was a great concept apart from the funding. But there was always the question of litigation. As Ecclestone found out in 1982, Americans are litigious and so street circuits are really hard to achieve because it takes only one unhappy person and everything can be stopped. One might try to explain to the people of Port Imperial that a successful race would hike the value of their houses because New Jersey remains deeply uncool for the folks in Manhattan, with a daft difference between house prices on either side of the river, but would that stop everyone?

Are there other options in New York City? Perhaps, but a semi-permanent parkland venue, like Montreal’s Ile de Notre Dame or Melbourne’s Albert Park ought to be possible. One can look at Liberty State Park, for example, and see possibilities. There is a marina, a science centre and an area of parkland which means no disruption. There are roads and views and public transport. But there is bound to be an earthworm protection society ready to leap in and call a lawyer…