Just this past weekend, the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas held one of its biggest events on its annual calendar: the NASCAR Cup Series.
Featuring a handful of special guest drivers including F1 champions Jenson Button and Kimi Raikkonen and multiple IMSA champion and Daytona 24 Hours winner Jordan Taylor, it was one of several major international motorsport events being held at the now ten-year-old circuit in 2023 – including the United States Grand Prix, which will take place in October.
After a decade of the US Grand Prix at COTA – interrupted only by Covid – Formula 1 appears to have finally found a solid footing in America. Rather than fizzle out like so many other attempts to establish a US race over the decades, attendance at COTA has grown over recent years to the point where it now boasts the largest crowd of the season in terms of total attendance over the race weekend.
F1’s arrival at COTA in 2012 ended its five-year absence from the USA. Now it is one of three American rounds on the 2023 F1 calendar. The introduction of the Miami Grand Prix last year and the much-hyped addition of the Las Vegas Grand Prix near the end of this season means there is effectively a race in the east, west and centre of world’s wealthiest nation.
But COTA chairman Bobby Epstein is confident the popularity of the Texan race will not be diminished by the recent emergence of two rivals in the same country, as F1’s popularity enjoys a boom period in America.
Courting the casuals
Epstein admits that when he first got involved with the sport over 10 years ago: “I can’t say I was an avid, diehard F1 fan.”
“Because it was very hard to follow the sport in the US until more recently,” he told the Black Book Motorsport Forum. “Austin was a fast-growing city and I had this piece of property – my only real estate investment actually – and the idea came up about the possibility of bringing Formula 1 to Austin.
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“I really thought this was a great opportunity to do something for the communities where we live, as well as something that we could make a profit on and we’d have some fun with, and would make a big difference.”
It took “several years” for the event to become profitable, but Epstein was convinced Formula 1 was the perfect event around which to construct a major new racing facility.
“The more we talked about and thought about it, we really looked at…
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