Miami GP organisers to consider holding night race

The Miami Grand Prix could be moved to a night time in future, race organisers have said this week, although any change would not be made in time for the next race in 2025.

Miami was added to the F1 calendar in 2022 and has always been held in the middle of the day, like the United States GP at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas later in the year.

But the third US race in Las Vegas was always conceived as a late night event, and the success of F1's most showbiz race has organisers in Miami contemplating a similar slot for their weekend in future.

“We’re not doing that in 2025 but we’re in the middle of a study to see what it would look like, how it would impact,” the president of the Miami Grand Prix Tyler Epp told Autoweek in an interview this week.

“We’re just at the beginning stages of looking at that optionality," he said. "We’ll see where we land on it. 2025 will be late afternoon, as we always are, Eastern Time.

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Beyond then, a change to the time slot remains very much in question. "I will tell you there are some unintended consequences of that, that even in our early discussions we’ve got to make sure we’re aware of.

“It’s really more about a couple of big points," he continued, acknowledging that it would have a significant impact in television broadcast times across the world outside the US, as well as closer to home.

"Number one [is how] it relates to the broadcast business for Formula 1 and how that does push it back a little bit and make it difficult for other parts of the world to see what we’re doing," he said.

"[Also], moving the race back to a twilight or an evening race, and how that impacts the community of Miami Gardens, and making sure we’re ahead of that.

"The other piece is the impact on the community, and making sure we’re aware and cognisant of the impact it has," he acknowledged. “We do need to make sure that all the consequences are planned ahead for.”

Epps admitted that he's a convert to the Sprint race format, which was held in Miami for the first time this year and will be back next season. “I will admit I was very wary of the sprint race and the impact it’d have,” he said.

“It was a positive for us. Our single day attendance was up on Saturday, and the feedback was directly because of the Sprint race. You couple the Sprint race with quali for the Grand Prix, it’s positive.

“I think we’re committed for the next two years with F1 to run the Sprint," he added. "We’re very happy with that to this point. Where we go from there, I don’t know.”

Epp said that the plan was to grow spectator attendance, although not by an excessive point to the detriment of the fan experience. "Just flooding the market with more people on campus creates bottlenecks and things we want to avoid.

"One of the key things we’re looking at is to stabilise the fanbase," he said, pointing to how of the Miami Dolphin NFL franchise works. "“We’re stealing a page from the Dolphins’ playbook a little bit" with a membership programme.

"We have strong ambitions, we want to be one of those key races in the calendar," he explained. "Moments like Lando winning his first race, or great passes in particular turns, and meaningful moments in history."

There had been concerns that having three races in the US every year would saturate the market and spread fan interest too thin, but Epp says that this hasn't been the case, and more races in the region ha actually been a boost.

“The working relationship [between events] is really positive," he said. "We’ve got a lot to learn from each other. It’s a healthy working relationship, adding Canada and Mexico to that in the North American centre as well.

"F1 gets some credit [for flexibility] here," he acknowledged. “You go to Vegas, you feel like you’re in Vegas. Hopefully in Miami you feel like you’re in Miami, and Austin the same way. They have a completely different offering for fans.

“We feel like we’ve evolved every single year. There’s different challenges every single year. We look at it like it’s an opportunity to stabilise the business a bit."

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