SUNDAY, MAY 8 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 D3
BY JESSE DOUGHERTYanaheim, calif. — In many
ways, it felt like the past, like any-
where from 2013 to 2019. No, An-
thony Rendon wasn’t feeling sen-
timental about facing the Wash-
ington Nationals, his former team,
at Angel Stadium on Friday night.
No, he hasn’t stayed in touch with
many players who still play in D.C.
And no, he didn’t have thoughts on
a T-shirt giveaway with the silhou-
ette of his eyebrows and bushy
beard, so did anyone else have a
question in his pregame news con-
ference?
To himself, Rendon probably
wondered why they had to put his
face — or the hairy parts of his face,
rather — on a shirt for thousands
of fans. He has never been one for
self-promotion. He sat down for
this media session, squinted
against the lights, found the few
Washington reporters and mut-
tered: “Who’s here?... Oh, no.”
Then his beard rustled, revealing
that big smile. His aversion to at-
tention has always been part
shtick, part personal code.
But what has changed since he
left the Nationals — since he
signed a seven-year, $245 million
deal with the Los Angeles Angels
less than two months after win-
ning a title — is how Rendon views
himself in the clubhouse. Every
day, he walks past a replica of the
2019 World Series trophy in his
California home. He is 31 and has
four kids now. It all comes with
more responsibility, whether he
likes that or not.
“It’s a constant reminder, and
it’s something spectacular,” Ren-
don said of the trophy. “You want
to hold on to that. You want to
remember. And now, I could bring
that here. Unfortunately, a lot of
those guys in there haven’t won. I
think that’s a part of what I need to
do now these next four to five
years. I need to help teach this
organization, help teach these
guys how to win games. How do we
get there?
“I’ve been fortunate enough to
be on that team when we were in
the playoffs almost every year, or
maybe every other year. We had a
lot of older guys. We were the
oldest team in 2019. I just shut up
and watched them the whole time.
Now if I’m one of those older guys,
which I unfortunately am now,
that’s my job. That’s my duty, to
teach.... ’Cause I’m not going to
be here forever. So when I leave,
hopefully that’s going to stick in
their minds. That’s what’s going to
matter most, not what I do on the
field.”
Here was Rendon at his most
publicly introspective. In a few
hours, he went 0 for 4 with a pair of
strikeouts. In the bigger picture,
his stint with the Angels has not
gone as planned, with injuries lim-
iting his starts and production. Yet
he’s no longer the centerpiece of a
team’s short- and long-term vi-A World Series championwith the Nats, Rendonnow feels a duty to teachsion. Mike Trout and Shohei
Ohtani fill that part in Los Ange-
les. Rendon is the star-sized com-
plement and veteran who has seen
the top.
Once a premier hitter, Rendon
could certainly get back there. He
entered Saturday with three hom-
ers and five doubles. His .212 bat-
ting average, .330 on-base per-
centage and .376 slugging percent-
age were uncharacteristic. He had
15 walks, though, making him an
above-average hitter by some ad-
vanced metrics. He is learning
how to swing, field and throw a bit
differently after having season-
ending hip surgery in July. No
wonder he feels old.“I feel like I’m getting there,”
Rendon said Friday. “Getting used
to that new body, that new hip, the
new legs.”
Does he actually have a new
hip?
“It feels like it,” he answered,
grinning wide again. “A lot of stuff
went on in there. From nothing
showing up in the MRI [exam] to a
lot of stuff being taken out and
added in. It’s kind of a big change.”
Of course, Rendon knows all
about those now. For seven sea-
sons, he played for the Nationals,
the team that drafted him out of
Rice University in 2011. For the last
two, he was as consistent as any
player in the sport, twice leadingthe league with 44 doubles and
knocking in 126 runners in 2019.
He went west because Washington
decided to invest in starting pitch-
ing instead of making him a com-
petitive offer in free agency. Ste-
phen Strasburg, you may remem-
ber, signed for an identical seven
years and $245 million just days
before Rendon landed with the
Angels. Rendon’s contract with
Los Angeles also included zero
payment deferrals. The Nationals
wouldn’t accommodate that ask.
When Rendon returns to D.C.,
he may get nostalgic about the title
run, the roots of his career and
times past. This weekend isn’t the
time for that.ASHLEY LANDIS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon, r ecovering from hip surgery, entered Saturday hitting. 212.Pressed on his favorite memo-
ries of that magical year in Wash-
ington, Rendon joked he couldn’t
share any to a room full of report-
ers. On the field, and perhaps at
the top of mind for fans, there were
clutch homers in Game 5 of the
National League Division Series,
then Games 6 and 7 of the World
Series. There was Rendon deliver-
ing in late inning after late inning,
looking as if he could yawn in the
box while pressure spiked. To Ren-
don, though, what seems to stick
out most is what it took to win.
“I think I played 118 straight
after I came back from the [injured
list early in the 2019 season],” Ren-
don recalled, doing loose math in
his head. “Trea [Turner] played
107 straight after the [broken] fin-
ger. And [Juan] Soto played like 98
straight. We were just asking for
days off. But we were scratching to
try to get into the playoffs, and
they’re like: ‘No, no. You’re good!’
“We just kept going out there.
Maybe I’m feeling the effects of it
now.”NATIONALS ON DECKat Los Angeles AngelsToday4:07MASN2vs. New York MetsTuesday7:05 MASNWednesday7:05 MASN
Thursday1:05 MASNvs. Houston AstrosFriday7:05 MASN
Saturday7:05 MASNMay 15 1:35 MASNRadio: WJFK (106.7 FM)BY LIZ CLARKEkannapolis, n.c. — Behind a
gated office park off Interstate 85
just a few exits south of Dale Earn-
hardt Boulevard sits the head-
quarters of Haas F1.
It’s an unlikely location for a
Formula One team, squarely in the
heart of NASCAR country, where
four generations of Earnhardts
were reared to turn left. But the
presence of Haas, the only Ameri-
can-owned F1 team, is one of many
data points that explain the coun-
try’s growing interest in the
world’s most sophisticated form of
motorsports.
Another data point: Sunday’s
sold-out, inaugural Miami Grand
Prix, the first of two American F1
races this year, to be followed by
the U.S. Grand Prix at Austin’s
Circuit of the Americas in October.
F1 will add a third American race,
in Las Vegas, in 2023.
Tickets to Sunday’s race, which
will be broadcast on ABC and
staged on a purpose-built circuit
in the shadow of the Miami Dol-
phins’ Hard Rock Stadium, sold
out in 40 minutes, according to the
Miami Herald, and are trading on
the secondary market for well over
$1,000.
Several factors are driving what
has become a full-blown courtship
between Formula One and Ameri-
can fans and promoters.
Expanding the sport’s U.S. audi-
ence was among the goals of Colo-
rado-based Liberty Media when it
bought the F1 series for $4.4 bil-
lion in 2017. Under Liberty’s direc-
tion, F1 ramped up its social media
presence to better reach the young
consumers U.S. advertisers covet.
It also sanctioned the Netflix
reality series “Drive to Survive,”
now in its fourth season, which
pulled back the curtain on the
intense personalities, political
squabbles, driver feuds and relent-
less pressure to perform in the top
tier of international racing.
“ ‘Drive to Survive’ was not pos-
sible before Liberty Media came,”
said Guenther Steiner, 57, Haas
F1’s Italian-born principal (the
equivalent of a team president),
who has been involved in F1 for
more than 20 years. “Before, we
tried to almost keep people away.
But [Liberty Media] knows the
landscape here [in the United
States] and opened the sport up.
People now understand the poli-
tics and how much goes on outside
of the racing. They understand
who the drivers are and are saying:
‘Wow! This is not only a car which
races around a circuit; there is a lot
of drama behind it.’ ”
ESPN has also played a major
role in growing F1’s U.S. audience
since signing on as the sport’s
broadcast partner in 2018 — a
contract its executives are negoti-
ating to extend once it expires at
season’s end. ESPN doesn’t pro-
duce the F1 races but carries the
established British Sky Sports
broadcasts that avid fans prefer. It
also airs the races without com-
mercial interruption.
John Suchenski, ESPN’s direc-
tor of programming and acquisi-
tions, believes the lack of commer-
cials and F1’s strict two-hour for-
mat hold particular appeal for
American audiences.
“The product itself is very con-
sumable,” Suchenski said. “It’s
hard to dedicate time to three-
plus-hour games, so the nature of
how condensed F1 is, in that two-
hour window, is another element
we feel has helped us retain view-
ers longer.”
According to ESPN, 2021 was
the most-watched F1 season on
American television on record, av-
eraging 934,000 viewers per race,
which was a 54 percent increase
over 2020. Through four races this
season, ESPN’s F1 ratings are up
another 22 percent, Suchenski
said, with teens and 20-some-
things accounting for a notable
percentage.
He also tips his hat to Netflix for
piquing the interest of American
viewers.
“While there’s no way to quanti-
fy how [‘Drive to Survive’] has
helped grow F1, we have been a
direct beneficiary,” Suchenski
said. “Behind-the-scenes access is
what everyone craves in all of
those types of programs — ‘Hard
Knocks’ for football, ‘Drive to Sur-
vive’ for this. What Netflix has
done has caught on, and now
they’re going to be doing that with
the PGA Tour and tennis majors.”
Finally, F1’s competition is the
primary draw — the technical so-
phistication of the cars, the skill of
the drivers, set against the back-
drop of some of the world’s more
glamorous locations.
In the view of Mark Miles, presi-
dent and CEO of Penske Entertain-
ment Corp., which owns the Indy-
Car series and Indianapolis Motor
Speedway, F1’s American expan-
sion is a boon for all forms of
motorsports.
“We view their growth here as
complementary to our growth,”
Miles said. “It’s good for the motor-
sports industry and for open-
wheel racing.”
Steiner believes the U.S. expan-sion will be a boon for all 10 F1
teams as well, including Haas.
Haas became the first U.S. F1
team in 30 years when it launched
in 2016, and it remains the sport’s
smallest team in terms of employ-
ees (roughly 200 full time and
50-70 contractors). It is no small
achievement that it has proved a
viable competitor and business
going head-to-head with power-
houses such as Ferrari, Mercedes
and Red Bull that employ four
times the staff.
Credit the business plan Steiner
developed years ago, after moving
to the United States in 2006 to
launch Red Bull’s NASCAR team.
The idea was to contain costs by
buying as many parts as allowed
by F1 regulation and outsourcing
much of the work via partnerships
with Dallara and Ferrari.
Industrialist Gene Haas, co-
owner of NASCAR’s Stewart-Haas
Racing team, signed on.
“When we got into it, we saw a
lot of struggling small teams in F1,”
Steiner recalled. “They were not
stupid people; it is just a very
difficult sport to enter, especially if
you want to beat people who have
been doing it more than 50 years.
So, we thought, ‘How can we do it
differently and not race until we go
bankrupt or until maybe Gene los-
es interest?’ ”
Haas driver Romain Grosjean
scored points in the Haas team’s
debut race, but not every season
since 2016 has been as successful.
Steiner, who is fluent in German,
Italian and English, is well suited
to weathering the sport’s highs
and lows, with an engineer’s knack
for problem-solving. He splits his
time between the team’s Kannapo-
lis headquarters and its race shops
in Banbury, England, and Ma-
ranello, Italy, where the cars are
designed and constructed.
His personality, which blends
disarming directness and laugh-
ter, was well captured in “Guen-
ther’s Choice,” a third-season in-
stallment of “Drive to Survive”that chronicled the team’s strug-
gles in 2020 and Steiner’s decision
to replace both drivers, Grosjean
and Kevin Magnussen, at season’s
end.
The team faced another chal-
lenge on the eve of the 2022 sea-
son, when Russia invaded
Ukraine. Haas and Steiner, who
were having breakfast together at
a test track when the news broke,
responded swiftly, cutting ties
with their new sponsor, Russian
fertilizer producer Uralkali, which
in turn meant releasing driver Ni-
kita Mazepin, whose father runs
the company.
With one phone call, Steiner
coaxed Magnussen back to fill the
empty seat and pair with the
team’s second-year F1 driver, 23-
year-old Mick Schumacher, son of
seven-time F1 champion Michael
Schumacher.
Steiner is bullish about the road
ahead, convinced the sport’s first
budget cap, introduced in 2021 to
rein in the seemingly limitless
spending of Mercedes, Ferrari and
Red Bull, has F1 pointed in the
right direction.
As the F1 season turns to Miami
International Autodrome’s 19-cor-
ner, 3.36-mile circuit, which winds
around H ard Rock Stadium in Mi-
ami Gardens, Ferrari’s Charles
Leclerc and Red Bull’s Max Ver-
stappen have split the four victo-
ries to date.
For Haas, Magnussen is 10th in
the standings with 15 points and
Schumacher is 19th. And Steiner,
an underdog with an indefatigable
spirit, is in the market for a spon-
sor to replace Uralkali.
“Obviously the next plan is to
replace them, but we are not in a
hurry to replace them tomorrow.
We want to make the right deci-
sion,” Steiner said. “Now, to own an
F1 team is quite an asset because
there are only 10 and because the
popularity worldwide has risen.”Revving u p courtship of U.S. fansFueled by Netflix and ESPN, Formula One takes n ext step in cultivating an American audienceTHOMAS SIMONETTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
Mercedes driver George Russell meets fans a head of Sunday’s s old-out, inaugural Miami Grand Prix.Formula One Miami Grand Prix
Today, 2 p.m., ABCBY SAM FORTIERLate last week, most of the
Washington Commanders rook-
ies arrived at team headquarters
with a backpack and a carry-on
suitcase, just enough for a three-
day minicamp. But Percy Butler, a
fourth-round defensive back
from Louisiana Lafayette,
brought a backpack and three
large suitcases, more than enough
for six weeks. On Instagram, a few
commenters joked that he was
going to move into the facility.
Later, Butler grinned and
shook his head. His agent and the
team miscommunicated. He
thought he was staying until
June 23; he was actually leaving
Saturday. Butler said he was
thankful that he hadn’t had to pay
to check the bags — and that he
wouldn’t let all that packing go to
waste.
“I’m going to leave one suitcase
in my locker,” he said.
Butler, like first-round wide re-
ceiver Jahan Dotson, isn’t eager to
leave Ashburn. He had a remark-
able few days — got drafted, be-
came a father, participated in his
pro rookie camp — but said he
was focused on doing “anything
that contributes to this team’s
success” in pursuit of a Super
Bowl.
Butler figures to be a Week 1
contributor on special teams,
probably at gunner, and Coach
Ron Rivera said he could also
compete at safety and Buffalo
nickel, the slot defender in the big
nickel sub-package, which is im-
portant to coordinator Jack Del
Rio’s scheme.
“He brings a lot to the table,”
General Manager Martin May-
hew said. “We saw enough flashes
of him playing last year that we
feel he’s a guy who can develop
into a really good player for us.”
Rivera, who after the draft
praised Butler’s speed, physicality
and toughness, said his early im-
pression of Butler was that what
he saw on tape translated to the
field.
“Percy’s speed really shows,”
Rivera said of the safety, who ran a
4.36-second 40-yard dash. “I
mean, you watch him move
around, and you go, ‘Wow. That
dude can flat-out run.’ ”
In the run-up to the draft, ana-
lysts said that while Butler often
improvises and sometimes lacks
body control while tackling, he
has enough speed and instincts to
be attractive as a developmental
defensive back. Washington will
rely on defensive backs coach
Chris Harris and secondary coach
Richard Rodgers to refine Butler’s
promising traits.
One of the quickest ways onto
the field defensively would be
Buffalo nickel. In his initial con-
versations with coaches, Butler
said they’ve told him, “When we
say Buffalo nickel, you’re getting
in.” And he knows strong safety
Kam Curl, a 2020 seventh-round
pick, caught the attention of
coaches there.During the brief minicamp,
Butler had taken “ a lot of reps” at
Buffalo nickel, he said. On one
play, he made a mistake by staying
on a receiver he was supposed to
check off, but after reviewing the
concept, he said he knew how to
adjust. He noted his college de-
fensive coordinator, Patrick
Toney, taught him he would make
mistakes but “it’s just about cor-
recting it and not making the
same mistake over and over and
over.”
“I feel comfortable,” Butler
added on playing Buffalo nickel.
“I’m learning.”
Butler, at 6 feet and 194
pounds, is smaller than Landon
Collins (6 feet, 216) and about the
same size as Curl (6-2, 198). Butler
was asked whether he had any
concerns about being too small to
support the run in the NFL.
“I mean, you just got to watch
the tape,” he said. “I’m in the box;
I’m up high; I’m in the slot. I do it
all.”
Inside the bubble at Washing-
ton’s facility, explaining the finer
points of what he needed to work
on to get a good start to his
professional career, Butler
paused and zoomed out.
Six days earlier, the draft party
at his home in Plaquemine, La., a
suburb of Baton Rouge, was wind-
ing down when his girlfriend,
Quetyria Williams, texted him
that they needed to go to the
hospital. She was having contrac-
tions.
In a way, Butler said, he was
relieved. He had worried
throughout the pre-draft process
that she would have their child
after he’d left to start his profes-
sional career. But overnight, Wil-
liams gave birth to a girl they
named Eire.
By Thursday, he was headed to
Ashburn with all his luggage.
“It was just like a movie for
real,” he said — and he probably
wouldn’t mind if things stayed
that way.Butler’s life changedin a flash. Now he’sready to get to work.CRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Commanders rookie Percy
Butler figures to play in Week 1
as a gunner on special teams.