How Miami Has Helped Change The Face of F1 in the USA
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Image by DepositPhotos
Formula 1 has never been more popular in America. After the 2005 United States Grand Prix, where only six cars took part due to tire issues and the fans rightly revolted, there were serious worries about whether the sport would ever find its place in the USA again. The sport even completely withdrew from the United States in 2007.
In 2012, though, F1 made its first, tentative return. At the custom-built Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, Grand Prix racing finally came back stateside, with around 250,000 drawn to the action. By the 2020s, this had ballooned to over 420,000 flocking to the circuit over all three days.
The sport is enjoying a resurgence, spearheaded by Liberty Media’s $4.4bn takeover of the sport’s commercial rights in 2017. The grandstands are full, the paddock is one of the most exclusive places to be, and fans at home are glued to their TVs. It’s even becoming popular among bettors, with players able to collect a Stake.us bonus drop code for the races.
It’s been a remarkable recovery story, and Miami is at the heart of it.
Liberty turns around F1’s dark days
One of the first things Liberty did after gaining control of Formula 1 was completely change how the sport was marketed. Original commercial rights owner Bernie Ecclestone had previously been against social media, and ignored appealing to everyday fans to prioritize the super-wealthy. Liberty flipped this on its head.
Along with allowing teams and drivers much more freedom with what they posted on social media, it also opened the secretive world of Formula 1 up. The Netflix series Drive to Survive is one of sport’s great marketing success stories, as it brought in countless new fans. It’s a model now copied by almost every major sport in the world, and even some individual teams, and created a new genre of sports documentary.
With F1’s image in the United States rehabilitated, Liberty decided it was time to expand. This is where Miami’s role comes into things.
Miami spearheads a new generation of races
Image by DepositPhotos
Formula 1 has traditionally held one race per country. This works well in the smaller nations across Europe, Asia and the Middle East that make up most of F1’s race dates. The United States, though, is a different beast. One race was no longer going to cut it.
The first race added alongside the United States Grand Prix at COTA was the Miami Grand Prix. Held on a street track around Hard Rock Stadium, and using the grass infield as the teams’ main staging area, the race blended F1’s new popularity with the city’s trademark vibrancy.
The event has been a huge success. Celebrities have flocked, top tech sponsors such as Orcale, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft have all identified it as a key race to attend, and the hospitality areas are some of the most sought after all year. The Miami Grand Prix has created a blueprint for what a new-style F1 race can be. It blends the sport’s raw action with the host city’s exuberance, and the paddock’s exclusivity.
The ‘Miami Model’ is one F1 has run with, and has helped create perhaps the sport’s greatest spectacle. In 2023, a year after Miami’s debut, F1 held its return to Las Vegas. The sport had been there in the past, but this was on a small track held in an off-strip parking lot. This time, the Strip itself would be the key feature of the track as the cars raced directly through Sin City’s landmarks.
Along with the longstanding Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal and Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City, North America now has five Grand Prix. This has been instrumental in helping the continent feel a part of F1, rather than it being just a leg in a European-based series.
Liberty’s revolution of how F1 is seen was one of the key building blocks of this, with Drive to Survive pulling in millions of new American fans, as well as guiding lapsed ones back to the sport.
The blueprint of how to capitalize on this, though, comes directly from Miami, and the success of the Miami Grand Prix.