Formula One is still confident a Miami Grand Prix will happen in the near future, despite complications in finalising a location for the race.
F1 and the city of Miami originally came to a 10-year agreement to host a street race around the Biscayne Bay and Bayfront Park area, originally slated to start in the 2019 season. However this plan was repeatedly met with opposition from local residents and businesses, forcing the race to be delayed indefinitely.
That location has now been ditched but a new one has formed north of the original location at the Miami Dolphins’ Hard Rock Stadium. The consortium, led by Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, feels the new plan would create less disruption for the local area.
F1’s global director of promoters and business relations, Chloe Targett-Adams, is in charge of every existing and potential race deal in F1 and she is confident an agreeable location can be found, even if it means waiting a while to actually deliver the grand prix.
“We are taking a long-term view on it,” Targett-Adams told ESPN. “Miami’s definitely a city we want to race in. It’s electric, it’s an awesome destination, it’s a hugely vibrant, dynamic, great city to add to the Formula One calendar.
“It’s a complex project getting a street race up and running when you’ve got multiple stakeholders and multiple community interests, you have to go about it in a way that minimises disruption to businesses and residents — quite rightly — but also that adds to that area. It seemed that when you’re looking at something on a long-term basis that’s quite a challenge to resolve.
“We are trying to work out how we can work out a race to Miami in locations that work, whereas there might still be a challenge or complex to work through but ultimately can deliver on a great race and is additive to the wider community and stakeholders.”
The process was complicated by the fact everything was in the public domain, with the City of Miami frequently discussing the bid in various forms.
“When you’re working through with government stakeholders it’s natural that a project will have to become public at a certain point in time,” Targett-Adams said. “We felt it was better to get on the front foot and be open about that, than try and obviously keep things. We don’t negotiate in public but at the same time when you’re dealing with public government stakeholders there’s a degree of transparency.”
F1 already has one race in the U.S., the popular grand prix at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas, which joined the calendar in 2012. F1 teams were recently asked for their opinion on where the second race in America should be — Miami, Las Vegas, or a different location, and they agreed on Miami.
F1 does not see Miami as the race to eventually replace COTA on the calendar, but rather one to add to the U.S. presence on it.
“A clear strategy for us was to find another race in the U.S.. We love Austin, we think it’s a great event, super promoter, and in terms in technology-focused town, vibrant, young, up and coming, it plays quite well with an F1 audience and our brand aspirations and what are brand is at the heart of technology and entertainment in sport. Miami was a dream location for us and remains a very interesting project.”