“Our dream? To turn F1 into an American phenomenon.”
Stefano Domenicali said it at an Apple TV press event in Los Angeles earlier this year. Behind the line is a broader ambition: not just to grow Formula 1 in the United States, but to fully embed it in American sporting culture.
For decades, that felt unlikely.
Formula 1 in the US was, for much of its modern history, something slightly external—occasionally embraced, often admired from a distance, but rarely absorbed into the sporting mainstream. A European championship that never quite found a permanent home on the other side of the Atlantic.
That picture has changed. With three races on the calendar and two American teams on the grid, F1 now has a clear foothold in the United States. But the real shift is not numerical. It is structural.
It is cultural presence.
Think of Brad Pitt taking over Times Square for the premiere of F1: The Movie. Ten years ago, a Hollywood production built around Formula 1 as a mainstream US release would have seemed unlikely. At best, it would have been treated as a curiosity.
Today it feels inevitable.
The combination of cinema, streaming and digital media has reshaped the sport’s visibility. Drive to Survive turned F1 into serialized entertainment. Social platforms turned it into daily content. And in doing so, Formula 1 entered what is now widely described as the “Liberty Era”.
Liberty Media completed its takeover of the championship in 2017. In less than a decade, it has reshaped Formula 1’s global identity—less in sporting terms than in how the sport is packaged, distributed and consumed.
Nowhere is that transformation clearer than in the United States, long considered the most difficult market of all.
To understand why, it is worth going back.
In 1982, Formula 1 staged three Grands Prix in the US. Long Beach was meant to be Monte Carlo with sunshine. It wasn’t. Detroit was a punishing street circuit, rough on both cars and drivers. Las Vegas took place in a Caesars Palace car park in extreme desert heat. None of them provided the conditions needed to build something lasting.
At the time, the approach felt improvised—an attempt to try different locations and hope something would stick.
It didn’t.
Watkins Glen faded. Dallas was remembered more for heat and broken asphalt than racing. Phoenix struggled to connect with a wider audience. Indianapolis arrived later, but brought its own complications. The pattern was inconsistency: brief experiments, no continuity, no cultural anchor.
For years, Formula 1 in America felt like a market visited, not built.
That has changed.
Austin marked the turning point. The Circuit of the Americas was the first purpose-built modern Formula 1 circuit in the United States. It remains one of the most respected tracks on the calendar and regularly draws close to 400,000 fans across the race weekend.
Then came Miami and Las Vegas.
If Austin represents sporting legitimacy, Miami and Las Vegas represent scale and spectacle. One built around marina visuals and lifestyle imagery; the other around neon, the Strip, and the Sphere. Even the Las Vegas podium—drivers transported in vintage cars to a secondary location—feels designed as much for broadcast as for racing.
Crucially, these additions did not dilute Austin. They reinforced it. COTA has become the sport’s stable centre in the US: accessible, popular, and structurally sound, while Miami and Las Vegas serve a more entertainment-driven audience.
Three versions of America. One championship.
The same fragmentation once defined the team landscape.
In the 1970s, three American teams competed in Formula 1: Shadow, Penske and Parnelli. None became long-term fixtures in the European-dominated paddock, even if Penske and Shadow achieved greater success in IndyCar and Can-Am.
The most ambitious project came from Carl Haas in the 1980s. Backed by Beatrice, Lola engineering and Ford Cosworth, it had scale and resources. It still failed. Results were limited, retirements frequent, and after two seasons Haas left Formula 1.
It would take nearly three decades for another American team to return.
Gene Haas entered the sport in 2016. The operation has survived—no small feat—but remains one of the smallest on the grid. Its best result came in 2018, with fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Hardly the foundation for mainstream cultural impact.
Even its naming reflects its origins. “VF” does not reference Formula 1. It comes from Haas Automation terminology: “vertical” (for vertical machining) and “first” (as in “very first”). A technical label that predates the team itself.
Today, however, a very different symbol has arrived: Cadillac.
Backed by General Motors, it brings something Formula 1 has never had in the modern era—a major American manufacturer with genuine global automotive weight. Its entry is not just another team on the grid. It is a structural development.
Alongside it comes Colton Herta, who has left a secure position in American racing to step into Formula 2, with no guarantee of a future promotion. A risk that underscores how narrow the path into Formula 1 still is.
The last driver to make a successful transition from top-level American single-seaters to Formula 1 was Juan Pablo Montoya. That alone illustrates the scale of the challenge.
Still, momentum has been building.
In Surviving to Drive, former Haas team principal Günther Steiner reflects on the early years of the US push:
“When they announced the Austin Grand Prix, I wasn’t sure it would become a permanent fixture. You have to give credit to Drive to Survive for creating that initial interest in the States. There is no doubt about that. But if people hadn’t liked it, they wouldn’t have come back.”
That is the crucial point.
The concern around Drive to Survive was always whether it would produce a disposable audience—more interested in narrative than in racing. Instead, it has acted as a gateway.
John Rowady, CEO of US sports marketing agency rEvolution, puts it more directly:
“The real story of Formula 1’s growth is demographic,” he told Autosport. “Compared to the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, F1 has a younger fanbase, especially among 16–24-year-olds, and a strong female audience. The average US F1 fan is between 32 and 35 years old—far younger than the major leagues.”
His conclusion is simple:
“F1 doesn’t need to chase older audiences. It is already building the next generation.”
That is the real shift.
Not just expansion. Not just visibility. But a change in who the sport belongs to.
Liberty Media has not been constrained by Formula 1’s uneven history in the United States. It has treated that history instead as unfinished infrastructure.
The potential was always there.
What changed was the system built to unlock it.