Chase Carey says Formula 1 remains committed in bringing in a second Grand Prix in the United States of America, with talks continuing about a race around the streets of Miami, although an event in Las Vegas remains a possibility.
News about a race around Miami have gone quiet in recent months after problems convincing local authorities to host a race around the waterfront and harbour area, but a switch of location, to an area surrounding the Hard Rock football stadium, has seen a new optimism that a race can be held in the Florida city.
RSE Ventures, which is promoting the Miami Grand Prix, owns the land around the stadium, which means there is likely to be far less objections to the event should it go ahead in either 2021 or 2022.
Carey, the CEO of Formula 1, says there is a lot of ambition to add a race in the United States alongside the one at the Circuit of the Americas, especially in the light of the improved television and digital viewers in the country.
“We’ve been quite public about our goals to pursue the opportunity in the US,” said Carey in a call with Wall Street analysts. “Actually our television audience has grown well this year.
“When you look at digital, it has actually been a positive surprise, because we weren’t doing anything in digital until we started to measure the engagement we had in the US digitally.
“There are a lot more fans here than people believe there are, so I think we’re excited about those opportunities. We’ve talked about adding races in what we call destination cities like Las Vegas or Miami.
“We’ve been engaged for the last year there, I think we’ve made good headway. We continue to [do so], I have meetings next week with parties there, I had meetings a month ago there. We feel it’s important, we feel we’re making steps.
“We recognise that there are multiple elements in continuing to grow and build the sport, engage the fan base here. We’re making good headway on it. Probably the first step would be adding that race in a city like Miami or Las Vegas.”
