Is F1’s Miami GP the New US Open?
Read the original article on Medium.
Sean Gregory at the Time Magazine wrote an article yesterday, with part of the title reading “Formula 1 Makes Its American Arrival”.
This statement is highly accurate and not at the same time. I got a text from an acquaintance of mine, a senior executive with the Los Angeles Lakers, expressing how he was disappointed at missing out, ‘the event’ of the season in US professional sports. It got me wondering if that was true.
Miami is hosting its first-ever F1 weekend from May 6–8 in the Miami Gardens area. The track location is quite brilliant when you see how the managing body, which shares its management duties with the NFL Miami Dolphins, has converted the parking lot of the Hard Rock Stadium to a high-speed street circuit, 3.3 miles with 19 corners. A street circuit may be a loose term, because it is a purpose-built circuit that will stay on all year like Circuit of the Americas, which was constructed specially to host the US Grand Prix for F1 and has done it every year since 2012. The sport wanted a beachside track, but the city denied permission for the same.
Rumor has it — the city of Miami has wanted this event eagerly for years. And let’s face it — they know how to throw huge sporting spectacles. The town regularly hosts games for the Miami Dolphins and the NBA team Miami Heat. In addition, the city has seen its foray into MLS with Inter Miami CF. The Hard Rock Stadium also hosts the Miami Open, and has hosted the famous 2020 Super Bowl championship. JLo and Shakira’s Halftime Show performance is forever seared into my brain.
Miami made the perfect location for F1 to expand because they know crowd and event logistics better than most cities in the US.; good food, good music, tropical weather — everything to give your summer vacation an early head start.
However, we saw something different with F1 in the country for the first time: mainstream media coverage, $3000 dinner pop-ups, and hotel suites ranging over $100,000 a night. The event is expecting the likes of Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Venus and Serena Williams. The opening ceremony saw DJ Kygo, Anitta and Joe Jonas perform. Model and entrepreneur, Karlie Kloss hosted an exclusive opening party with WMag and Dior. Talk show hosts like James Corden, influencers like Daniel Mac (the guy who asks luxury car owners, “What do you do for a living?”), and Francis Bourgeois (the famous English trainspotter) have been spotted in the McLaren garage. The Miami Dolphins players did crossovers on social media accounts with multiple F1 teams, and NFL brothers JJ Watt and TJ Watt did pit stops with the Haas F1 Team, the only American-owned team on the F1 grid. Post Malone and Maluma are performing inside the track during the race. Even Michelle Obama was seen with her brother Craig Robinson in the Mercedes AMG F1 garage concentrating on lap times and driver positions during the Qualifying on Saturday.
But why such a kerfuffle?
To understand this better, let’s go down memory lane. While both regions saw the sport’s birth around the same time in the late 1800s-early 1900s, as a way for the privileged to pass the time, post-depression and post-war gave birth to different sets of racing cultures in the US vs. Europe. The US primarily went the way of stock car racing (i.e., NASCAR today), which has roots in the Prohibition era. Drivers ran illicit whiskey and eventually moonshine in the south and needed to modify cars to evade the police. To date, car racing in the US still has exclusively seen fans who most probably buy three junkers, tinker under the hood, and take them to their local dirt track or municipal airport runway course over the weekend. My first violin teacher was an 18-year-old mechanic who raced Autocross in cars he modified over the weekends. While I lived in Indiana, where racing is a household sport — I saw multiple friends modify their vehicles, including a Mazda Miata that was aftermarket turbocharged and a winner at the local races. Drag Racing, dirt track tracing — you name it — racing was not meant to be enjoyed from a $5000 suite in America till now; it was meant to be participated in.
F1 and single-seater car racing in Europe has a very different history. One of the oldest races to date, the Monaco Grand Prix, has been presided over by the Monagesque royal family for most of the 20th century. It also started as a way to experiment with cars; however, it gave birth to a development curve for most of the luxury car manufacturers. Ferrari has remained synonymous with F1 throughout its life. The championship has seen luxury car makers like Maserati, Bugatti, and most recently the likes of Mercedes AMG as a part of it for decades. The post-war era saw a significant no. of ex-aeronautical engineers out of jobs and a ton of military airstrips in need of renewal. F1 became their new home, with bases in Motorsports Valley in central England and the Motor Valley in the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy. In the 70s, as innovation and speed took over, the sport became synonymous with danger, rock and roll, and somewhat desirable in a way celebrity was. They raced in exotic locations and saw vast amounts of money thrown for development purposes. It generated a unique business model — high-speed lab experiments that served as a billboard for anyone who’d be willing to spend unspeakable amounts of money. These experiments eventually served a massive purpose in commercial car development in Europe.
The sport retained its je ne sais quoi and eventually became a meeting ground for the elite, like Tennis. Being seen at an F1 race in Europe is a status thing, and it allows casual fans to spend thousands of dollars to party. Tournaments like the US Open or any of the other grand slams present a similar experience. Not to say every F1 race has the same environment, but the most popular ones do. So you see how and why F1 never worked before in the US; the whole audience has been different.
Liberty Media, an American corporation that owns the Atlanta Braves and Sirius XM, took over as the rights holder in 2017 and opened the doors to a closed sport via a Netflix show ‘Drive to Survive’. In addition, social media channels and an OTT service provided an ample amount of educational coverage for a new era of the fanbase. The hook was easy; it sold the American dream. The storytelling style sold optimism combined with an aspirational lifestyle with some natural (and manufactured) drama. As a result, ESPN saw almost a million viewers on average per race in 2021, nearly a 30% rise over 2019. And all that aspiration is what Miami is selling. The European way of the elite racing fan has finally arrived to the US.
Austin GP and COTA leadership, who I’ve been told are attending the Miami GP, will probably have performance anxiety after this weekend. As an Austin resident, who’s been to the race for the past few years, I can safely say that the city doesn’t do a great job getting involved. Locals still do not know what F1 is, after a decade of racing, but replicating the Miami recipe will also be a bad idea. Austin knows to throw events like SXSW and ACL pretty well and infuse its unique hipster and Texan charm. Austin needs to understand its value proposition and its ideal consumer; the traditional racing fan who works on their car on the weekends, wants to bring their beer from home in a cooler, and would like to spend non-race nights at a fan fest in Zilker park and does not want to pay with an arm and a leg in the process. F1 should remember to capture all kinds of fans effectively, and Austin presents the perfect opportunity. We also absolutely want Michelle Obama here — but trying to do what Miami did will be a fast way for the sport to alienate the typical fan that engages with the sport all year virtually. With the addition of a night race in Las Vegas in 2023, which will probably see a Miami-esque experience on the West Coast, Austin and the United States Grand Prix have an arduous task ahead — how not to get overshadowed by its newer siblings and put on a spectacular show as the world watches while remembering who they are.
Sean says F1’s gilded age is finally here. I have to say I agree.