The USA hosted world championships rounds every year from the inaugural season in 1950 until it left the streets of Phoenix just over four decades later. The championship is enjoying a surge of popularity in the country now and returns this weekend for its second of three visits this year.
America has had more F1 tracks than any other country, but over half of them are yet to hold more than three rounds. It remains to be seen whether F1’s two newest American races in Miami and Las Vegas will change that.
But which of America’s 13 tracks suited F1 best? And how does its trio of current venues compare to those used in the past? We rank them all below.
13. Phoenix
3 races, (1989-81)
Phoenix deserves its place at the bottom of this list for being one of the most uninspiring venues ever to hold a round of the world championship. In its original, 13-turn guise, only three of its bends were not 90-degree turns, and none of them were what you’d call challenging.
Nonetheless it was capable of producing high drama, such as when Jean Alesi hunted down Ayrton Senna for the lead in the 1990 race, the Tyrrell even briefly displacing the McLaren from the head of the field.
Senna won, though, and would have taken victory in all three races had a technical failure not sidelined him during the 1989 race. Just 18,000 turned up for that event, though local taxi drivers entertained themselves by taking to the track one night, resulting in an inevitable crash.
It didn’t help matters that the inaugural race was scheduled in the height of summer. Phoenix was given the distinction of staging the season-openers in 1990 and 1991, and the latter event took place on a slightly improved track, though some things just can’t be polished. F1’s last visit to Phoenix reputedly drew a smaller crowd than a competing race for ostriches after which F1 was absent from the USA for almost a decade.
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12. Caesar’s Palace, Las Vegas
2 races (1981-82)
F1 did not set a high bar to clear with its first grand prix in Las Vegas. A tight, sinuous, repetitive and flat course was squeezed into a Casino car park, making this one of the least worthy venues to hold a round of the world championship.
The series could scarcely have produced more exciting scenarios for the two title-deciding races. Three drivers went into the inaugural race with a shot at the title, two in 1982.
Yet the local population took little interest in either of the races. Establishing a trend which soon became familiar, the CART IndyCar series replaced F1 after it left in 1982. F1 actually explored the possibility of holding a joint event with the series at one stage, but FISA (now the FIA) did not approve, and even CART’s quicker and more demanding variation of the layout couldn’t make the flawed concept a success.
11. State Fair Park, Dallas
1 race (1984)
Before Liberty Media took over F1, the series made a concerted effort to crack America in the eighties. Bernie Ecclestone, who took responsibility for the series’ promotion by controlling the Formula One Teams’ Association, agreed deals for a series of races on street tracks. What Ecclestone prized above all was a race in New York, but despite optimistically scheduling a race in the city on several occasions, it never happened.
A race in Dallas did go ahead, but just once. The usual requirement for a new F1 track to hold another event on a weekend before the championship arrived was waived, as also happened at other venues around this time. This proved a particularly costly decision in Dallas, as the combination of the July heat and the grunt of F1’s turbo cars tore the track up, leading to a spate of crashes. Keke Rosberg came home the winner after all bar six of his rivals stopped.
This was unfortunate, as the track layout was more varied than several other temporary tracks F1 visited around this time. However the race promoter reportedly absconded with the prize fund, and F1 never went back.
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10. Miami International Autodrome
3 races (2022-24)
Ecclestone’s desperation to get F1 into New York was mirrored by Liberty Media’s eagerness to add Miami to the world championship calendar after it bought the series. It eventually succeeded, but had to compromise its vision of holding a true street race in a downtown venue.
Other series such as CART and Formula E raced there previously, but F1 was unable to overcome local opposition to its original choice of site and instead moved the event to the grounds of the Miami Dolphins’ stadium.
The resulting track offers little to test the drivers and the turn 14-15 chicane ranks as one of the worst pieces of new track design in recent years. “It reminds me of being in a B&Q car park” remarked Lewis Hamilton after his first laps of the track.
9. Detroit
7 races (1982-88)
The F1 calendar grew to three US races last year, but it previously had that many in 1982, when a new race in Detroit joined the calendar. On the face of it, America’s ‘Motor City’ was an obvious place for the world championship to visit, but the Detroit Grand Prix failed to secure a long-term place on the calendar.
The promoters did not endear themselves to the paddock when the track wasn’t ready in time for the start of practice for the inaugural race. Once drivers got going they found the course was, like Phoenix, a largely angular affair.
But the removal of an extremely tight hairpin after Woodbridge Street following its first race improve its flow slightly. It also had a touch of character, the cars passing beneath a tunnel and along the harbour front.
F1 lasted longer in Detroit than several other US races around this time, but by 1989 the race had joined the CART IndyCar schedule. It moved to Belle Isle soon afterwards, but the modern IndyCar series brought the race back to downtown last year, albeit on an even more basic layout.
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8. Indianapolis Motor Speedway Grand Prix circuit
8 races (2000-07)
The rising popularity of CART in the eighties and early nineties was a headache for F1 not just because it took over so many of its former US venues, but even lured away a world champion, Nigel Mansell jumping ship at the end of 1992. However Indianapolis Motor Speedway Tony George harpooned the series by forcing a split between it and his venue’s blue riband 500-mile race. American single-seater racing has since reunited but never recovered.
Soon afterward IMS also landed an F1 round by laying out a grand prix circuit on its infield. It was a largely flat and insipid affair however. F1 was always going to look puny holding a race in a fraction of the space taken up by the venue’s main event, but did they really had to plod through consecutive tight hairpins?
Nonetheless its races attracted reasonable crowds, despite F1 producing two shameful spectacles during its short stay. Ferrari’s effort to engineer a dead heat in 2002 was bad enough, but paled in comparison to what came three years later. Just six cars contested the race as F1 failed to find a compromise after discovering most teams’ tyres were incapable of with standing the forces dealt out by the only one of the oval’s four banked corners the cars ran on.
There was little surprise F1 did not extend its contract after that. The modern IndyCar series now races on a revised and considerably improved version of the course as part of the build-up to its main event.
7. Las Vegas Strip Circuit
1 race (2023)
The newest addition to the F1 calendar gets a slightly generous position on this list having only held a single race which was among the more competitive events of the largely one-sided 2023 season.
The Las Vegas Strip Circuit is basic, but fast. The original layout looked more promising, as the planned 180-degree turn seven would have been tackled at impressive speeds, as would the next two bends. Sadly a chicane was deemed necessary at that point on the circuit.
F1 laid the hype on thickly for the inaugural event, but the achievement of being able to arrange a race in such a spectacular and recognisable venue is undeniable. Whether it will serve up more satisfying races in the future remains to be seen.
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6. Sebring
1 race (1959)
Although the Indy 500 was considered a round of the world championship from 1950 to 1960, it was never run to F1 rules. The first United States Grand Prix took place in 1959 at Florida’s punishingly bumpy Sebring track. At 8.39 kilometres, it was longer than anything F1 races at today.
It was held almost three months after the penultimate round, giving Jack Brabham, Stirling Moss and Tony Brooks plenty of time to mull over the permutations of their three-way title fight. An early delay for Brooks, while Moss retired on lap six, meant Brabham clinched the title.
Poor attendance led race promoter Alex Ullmann to move the event the following year, to…
5. Riverside
1 race (1960)
The compact, winding Californian course also proved a one-off venue for F1 in the USA. It suited F1 cars reasonably well but the race was a damp squib. Brabham had already secured the title again and Ferrari didn’t bother to show up, leaving Moss to dominate proceedings.
The track held CART IndyCar races until Bobby Rahal won the series’ final race there in 1983. Dick Simon was fortunate to emerge unscathed from a spectacular aerial crash the year before, caused by tyre failure, which was filmed by a spectator (below). Sadly Rolf Stommelen was not so fortunate the following year, the ex-F1 driver losing his life when a wing failure on his Porsche 935 during an IMSA race caused a huge crash.
Riverside closed in 1989 and developers built over the site, using it for a shopping centre and housing. IndyCar held a non-championship event at the nearby Thermal club circuit earlier this year and the event will be part of its series next season.
4. Long Beach
8 races (1976-83)
In Long Beach, F1 found a street circuit with real character, though it went through several revisions while part of the world championship calendar. Its original incarnation included remarkably steep changes in gradient, but the signature blast around Shoreline Drive remained constant.
With better management, this could have been a precious toehold for F1 in the valuable Californian market. Mario Andretti delivered a home win for the fans in 1977 and won the world championship the year after. The race even became the de facto season-opener in 1981 after a political row stripped the South African Grand Prix of its world championship status.
But Ecclestone failed to heed race promoter Chris Pook’s warning that he would replace F1 with IndyCar unless the championship cut its hosting fee. Pook claimed that prior to F1’s final visit in 1983 Ecclestone even offered to reduce his price from $2.1 million per year to $1.5m. But it was too late.
F1’s last race at Long Beach was one for the ages: John Watson climbed from 22nd on the grid to win, setting a record which still stands. But at the next Long Beach Grand Prix CART machines filled the grid, Andretti on pole position for the 1984 season-opener. He won again, and 40 years later the race still belongs to IndyCar.
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3. Indianapolis Motor Speedway
11 races (1950-60)
The Indianapolis 500 is the greatest spectacle in racing. F1 has lately tried to adopt that phrase for some of its own events, but there was a time when the race was part of the world championship. As it never ran to the same rules as the rest of the series it was always something of an oddity within this context, but the race and track presents a daunting challenging.
That was more true during F1’s spell there throughout the fifties when the death rate at Indianapolis was high. During its time within the world championship Bill Vukovich won in consecutive years and was heading for a third straight triumph when he was involved in a four-car crash and killed. It was the second fatality that weekend after Manny Ayulo crashed in practice.
Few F1 drivers attempted to qualify for the Indy 500 during this time, though Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari were notable, high-profile exceptions. After 1960, when F1 cut engine capacities to one-and-a-half litres, the series no longer visited the speedway, but by then it had found a new American home.
2. Circuit of the Americas
11 races (2012-19, 2021-23)
Still the newest permanent racing facility on the Formula 1 calendar today, the Circuit of the Americas deserves to be regarded as a modern classic.
Originally conceived by Tavo Hellmund and motorcycling champion Kevin Schwantz, parts of the track were styled after sequences on other circuits, such as Silverstone’s Maggotts-Beckets corners and Istanbul Park’s famed turn eight. Separated by a couple of decent straights to provide overtaking opportunities, the results is a layout with much to applaud it.
It’s not without drawbacks. The turn 12 to 15 sequence is rather pedestrian, and track limits have been a problem in recent years, though that has been addressed for this weekend’s race. The track surface has been a persistent concern as well, particularly after heavy rain in 2015 damaged the drainage around the track, but the organisers have promised the biggest resurfacing yet ahead of F1’s latest return.
The track has welcomed huge crowds in recent years and is likely to see another this weekend even without a home driver on the grid. The success of this grand prix at a traditional, permanent racing circuit on the outskirts of a major US city challenges F1’s long-held assumption that street races were the best way to present the series to American fans.
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1. Watkins Glen
20 races (1961-1980)
F1’s most enduring venue in America was also its best, and that’s no coincidence. For two decades, an autumn race in leafy, picturesque New York State was a fixture on the calendar.
The original, eight-turn 3.7-kilometre Watkins Glen was extended to 5.4km in 1971, and new pits built. The flowing, cambered layout is among America’s best, alongside other venues the championship has never visited, such as Road America, Road Atlanta and Laguna Seca.
F1 left after the 1980 race as the venue ran into financial trouble and could no longer pay its fee. The son of race promoter Cameron Argetsinger insisted it is “popular fiction” to blame Ecclestone for F1’s departure, instead blaming the debt taken on to finance the 1971 renovations.
NASCAR now owns the track and raced there last month, where ex-F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya made a one-off return. Few drivers on today’s F1 grid have experienced the track, but there is one exception.
Hamilton visited the track for a publicity event when he was still a McLaren driver, in 2011. After lapping it in F1 and NASCAR machinery he told RaceFans the track was “absolutely fantastic” and “a really cool circuit to drive.”
“They don’t make circuits like this nowadays,” Hamilton reflected. “The way they make cambered corners, the different undulations, going uphill, downhill… that makes it so much better to drive.
“Whilst it’s a lot shorter, it reminded me a bit of the Nordschleife in Germany, as it’s a very long circuit. It had very similar characteristics to that I think, which is one of the best circuits – if not the best circuit – in the world.”
There’s no higher praise than that from a racing driver.
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Over to you
What do you consider F1’s best and worst US tracks? Which ones have you visited? Have your say in the comments.
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