Miami "another turbo charge" for F1 in the US - Zak Brown

United States Grand Prix

Miami "another turbo charge" for F1 in the US - Brown

F1 will race in Miami for the first time next year

Sam Hall

Thursday 28 October 2021 09:30

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McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown has backed next year's Miami Grand Prix to "turbo charge" Formula 1's surge in popularity in the United States.

Last weekend's USGP saw 400,000 spectators decent on the Circuit of the Americas as F1 returned after missing the 2020 running through the Covid pandemic.

During this time, however, the popularity of F1 has surged in the US with COTA boss Bobby Epstein crediting Netflix docu-series Drive to Survive adding "rocket fuel" to the fire underneath the sport, a factor highlighted by the increased three-day attendance from 268,000 to 400,000.

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As far as Brown is concerned, the addition of a second race in the US, with a third in Las Vegas also being rumoured, can only be considered a good thing.

“You’re starting to see things happening. Miami will be another turbo charge for the sport," said Brown.

“You’ve got Mexico, Montreal, so you’ve neighbouring events and a TV contract that I believe is up for renewal in the not-too-distant future.

“We’re anticipating the growth of Formula 1 that will get a better fiscal and promotion of F1.

“Whether we stay where we are or we change that will be up to Stefano. It’s all those pieces coming together that have started the real growth."

Asked if F1 needs to do more outside of race weekend to retain the attention of the US audience through marketing or live events, Brown added: “All the above.

“We’ve seen since Liberty acquired the sport, they’ve done some of these local events. They did one in Hollywood, and Netflix, while it drops for one week in February, the amount of people that talk to all of us about it is amazing.

“Austin is an awesome race, we’ve Miami coming now, but it’s good those are not coming in the same month.

“Now we have platforms like Cisco Webex running global TV campaigns with McLaren, they’re running it during the NBA broadcasts, and there was a big NBA promotion at the weekend.

“So I think we need to do more of what we are doing now which is focusing on an annual marketing campaign."