Miami Deserves Its Spot on the F1 Calendar

I’ve been to two Formula 1 races in my life. The first was Canada 2019; you know, the one where Sebastian Vettel crossed the line first, but was handed a track limits penalty that gave the win to Lewis Hamilton, prompting Seb to switch the position boards at Parc Ferme. Tough to beat, and yet Lando Norris notching his first win on Sunday afternoon in Miami might just take it.

Lando's long-awaited triumph did a lot of heavy lifting, as it should. I don't think anyone left the gates disappointed in the on-track show, even if the result was prompted by a perfectly timed safety car-provoking crash. That's racing sometimes. Nevertheless, if you asked me to choose between Montreal and Miami, I’d take the hike up north every time—which is exactly why F1 needs both.

Let me explain. As a function, the whole event was perfectly competent. Having never gone to this race before, I've heard Miami’s first try in 2022 was more than a little rough for fans on the ground, owing to poorly organized access points and pathways, and generally the sort of logistical hurdles that tend to arise when the F1 circus descends on a city for the first time. None of that was present for the third run, which you'd hope.

But then, that was never really the case against the Miami GP by its most fervent detractors. Their ire was about F1 losing its soul, the balance sliding away from sport toward superficiality and spectacle. The thing is, now having walked among the $200 veggie platters and past the infamous plywood marina, I'm less convinced of that than I ever was before.

I've been a skeptic of F1's rapid American expansion, so that impression surprised me too. I've been reflecting on it. F1 has always been a billionaire boys club. If it's access and grassroots you want, any other discipline of motorsport on the planet is more inclined to give it to you. It’s not purely a cultural thing, either; when I went to MotoGP in Austin in 2022, another championship that has its roots in Europe, I effortlessly passed into spaces I wasn’t allowed to go and half the time I wasn’t even aware I’d done it. (Surely you can bet Liberty Media will be looking to change that, now that it owns MotoGP, too.) But