After the Formula 1 weekend, I was surprised to read the article by Pete Stroud “Global attention from F1 threatens local identity.” Stroud claims to be an international relations and global studies sophomore, but, it seems, has trouble understanding what an international-scale event is.

The author claims that Austin doesn’t need additional international recognition because it already hosts ACL. In my experience, people outside the US are not aware of ACL, except for maybe some people with a deep interest in country music. At the same time, F1 is pretty well known around the globe.

Environmental worries sound nice, but one should compare F1 to IH-35 at 6 p.m. The “massive” F1 race is between 24 cars, and each of them runs on a single tank of gas. I would love for the horrible everyday traffic in Austin to be addressed with a normal public transportation solution – a.k.a. electric tram, such as in Strasbourg, France or Freiburg, Germany.

Formula 1 is a fun event and good for the city’s development. Austin deserves to be on the world map!
— Galina Aglyamova, integrative biology graduate student