The inside story of F1's newest race track

Formula 1’s inaugural Miami race this weekend is arguably the most eagerly anticipated event on the 2022 world championship schedule, representing the first time that two grands prix will be held in the United States in the same year since Dallas and Detroit were on the calendar almost 40 years ago.

The all-new Miami International Autodrome is situated 13 miles north from one of America’s most vibrant cities, and in this Drive to Survive era it’s a much anticipated event by Miamians. Tickets quickly sold out – the cheapest grandstand seat on race day was priced at over $600, but they’re now north of at least twice that.

Racing in the shadow of the Hard Rock Stadium, home to the Miami Dolphins NFL and University of Miami college football teams, the event is bankrolled by real estate magnate and philanthropist Stephen M Ross. He owns both the stadium and the Dolphins team, and created a new company with his CEO Tom Garfinkel called South Florida Motorsports. Garfinkel, an ex-Chip Ganassi Racing executive, is ‘managing partner’ for this event and brought in Richard Cregan – the former Toyota World Rally Championship and F1 manager who has successfully overseen F1 circuit projects in Abu Dhabi and Sochi – as CEO.

To create the track, SFM and Formula 1 enlisted Apex Circuit Design, the Buckinghamshire-based company best known for delivering Dubai Autodrome in 2004 and dozens of race tracks around the world since. Apex has been involved since Ross’s first efforts to bring F1 to a street track in Miami – around Bayfront Park on Biscayne Bay – stalled in 2019 due to vehement opposition from residents.

After switching the plan to his Hard Rock Stadium site, further delays occurred due to COVID-19 and a group of well-organised local activists who were against bringing the race to their predominantly African-American community (a lawsuit that alleged the event was racially discriminatory was dismissed last July). A last-ditch legal effort, which claimed that the event would risk permanent hearing damage for locals, was dismissed by a judge two weeks ago, refuting their claim that it was “unavoidable”. A change of mayor in Miami Gardens – the city within which the site lies – plus the creation of a $5million community fund and F1 in Schools package swung the deal to gain City Hall’s approval last year for a May 2022 date, the first race in a 10-year contract.

The 19-turn, 3.36-mile track is Apex’s first full-delivery of an F1 project, and its founder and director Clive Bowen traces the origins of its deal to a conversation he had with Ross Brawn – F1’s managing director – concerning his beliefs about what made a great race-track design.

ANALYSIS: Why the Miami Grand Prix weekend will be a game changer for F1

“I was able to talk to Ross Brawn some years ago, soon after Liberty had taken over Formula 1, and I suggested some ideas that I thought they’d be interested in,” says Bowen. “He liked those ideas and, after a meeting, I think their specialist engineering team also liked what they heard, and so when the time came to do an initial engineering feasibility for Miami, we were asked to get involved on the downtown project.

Ross Brawn was interested in initial ideas for the Miami track design

Photo by: Miami GP

“From there, let’s say our involvement grew legs, we got involved in a greater level of detail, and we were pretty close to a homologated set of drawings that we had for that downtown design, but then things started to look difficult.”

Despite strong support from Miami’s mayor, the downtown plan hit a brick wall when it came to the City Hall approval process. Enter Plan B…

“The stadium has been here for so long now, it’s almost like its own living organism. There are so many events going on like NFL, Miami Open tennis and music concerts, so it’s a site that’s constantly changing" Charles Metcalfe

“Richard Cregan was already very involved then, and has since become CEO here, and he suggested we should look at this stadium location – given that the promoter was the owner here,” adds Bowen. “Richard and I worked on a concept that is incredibly close to what we’ve ended up building.

“Yes, there have been changes, but they’re nuances rather than fundamentals – for example, the work that’s gone on for the track to go underneath the flyovers. That was a concept from day one, although the original plan was for the track to also utilise 199 Street to the south. There was already a relationship and understanding, working not only with the promoter here but with the FIA and the Formula 1 technical team.”

The track’s proximity to the stadium – Bowen refers to the track as “acting like a moat” – is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s a world-class stadium with many facilities already in place. On the other, it holds a swathe of other events that had to be worked around to build an F1 track, both in terms of scheduling and access.

Apex senior designer Charles Metcalfe explains: “The stadium has been here for so long now, it’s almost like its own living organism. There are so many events going on like NFL, Miami Open tennis and music concerts, so it’s a site that’s constantly changing.

“Our designs and planning have had to constantly adapt to fit in with the surroundings, which has been a fun challenge. It’s become a design/build project where the final product isn’t really confirmed until the race weekend itself, because you have to be so fluid and malleable to cope with what else is going on.

Miami GP track is situated around the Hard Rock Stadium, home to the Miami Dolphins NFL team

Photo by: Miami GP

“We’ve been able to piggyback on all of the stadium’s facilities and services that are already in place. The hospitality areas already in place around the stadium have been adapted and integrated with our track design, so we can get the full benefit of what’s already here.”

An example of this is the pit building. In initial plans this was going to be temporary, positioned in a space that was a plaza entrance from the stadium to the car park, but Ross saw an opportunity to enhance his property. When they’re not being used to house 20 F1 cars, the garages will likely be used as a ‘mini market’ for local food producers to sell to tailgaters at the football games.

“The owner decided if we’re putting this much money into it, let’s not throw that away because it’s a huge investment in the infrastructure to get it to work on this side [of the stadium] to get the power, air conditioning and sanitary requirements,” says Apex project director Sam Worthy. “So now it’s permanent, including all the garages and race control, and there’s a lot of shared services between this and the stadium itself.

“The other levels above the garages, which will be the main Paddock Club, they are temporary right now to allow flexibility. When they’re not there, it will be a terrace for other events so it’s really multi-purpose.”
Being a stadium, the venue has excellent access roads in and out and sits adjacent to the Florida Turnpike, the major highway that connects Miami to Orlando. And while the majority of the track is contained within the stadium’s boundary, the track has to cross Don Shula Drive, a public road that leads to the nearby arterial 199th Street, between Turns 13 and 14.

“There’s a lot of planning and logistics involved around getting a road opened and closed in time; it’s also been a real issue with the build of the circuit in terms of organising road closures so you can relay the asphalt,” adds Metcalfe. “Those existing roads were also not to the standard that F1 requires, so we’ve had to work with the Florida Department of Transport, and it’s been an incremental process of shutting down certain areas piece by piece.

“On race week, there are certain areas which will be shut down when the track is hot [active] and we require a very fast turnaround time to get the public traffic flowing again, and also to service certain areas inside the track that are essentially closed off while the sessions are happening. It’s an interesting challenge.”

Track design was obviously constrained by the parcel of land around the stadium, and this is where Bowen’s philosophy of creating challenging corner sequences comes into its own. Using simulators, his team has been able to optimise the available space and elevate the track’s expected average lap speed to around 135mph, while creating three realistic overtaking opportunities.

Laying of new asphalt had to be done in stages

Photo by: Miami GP

“Racing comes first and foremost in our company’s design philosophy,” says Metcalfe, who has been involved with the project since planning began. “As a company our ethos is to challenge all of the F1 teams, their cars, their race engineers and, of course, their drivers. So we focus on corner sequences, a dynamic range of corners – from fast-speed to low-speed – and to achieve this we do a lot of simulation work and intentionally ensure there are different corner sequences in a lap that flatter different vehicle set-ups.

“There is a very high-speed and high lateral-g section from Turns 4 to 8 where cars will likely struggle to pass and where vehicle performance on the exit of Turn 8 is critical to lap time, followed by two fast power-limited corners at Turn 9 and 10 where it is credible to imagine side-by side racing.”

“We certainly don’t want a giant iguana falling on one of the F1 drivers, because that would be a problem! They can climb trees and jump out or crawl across the track. We have procedures in place" Sam Worthy

Towards the end of the lap comes a sting in the tail – a devilishly tricky sequence of technical corners that the drivers likely won’t enjoy so much, since they’re designed to catch them out…

PLUS: Why the Miami GP is a central chapter of F1 2022's biggest storyline

“In sector three, where we have the low-speed and grade-changing Turns 14 to 16 beneath the Turnpike flyovers, it’s intentionally a very challenging technical sequence,” Metcalfe adds. “We have engineered ‘mistake generators’ in the form of grade – and grip – change on corner apexes that could result in changes of position and where a team might choose a set-up that optimises low-speed traction over high-speed grip.

“We’re seeking to challenge the race engineers and their vehicle set-ups as much as possible. It’s notionally a street track with some really challenging corners, so you’d expect high downforce, but we have some really long straights and some high-speed corner sequences too that would favour a lower-drag set-up.”

The section that snakes beneath the overpasses also had to pass the FIA’s height-clearance regulations, as well as the rules for elevation change over a certain distance.

“This whole sequence was a real engineering challenge,” says Apex project lead design engineer Andrew Wallis. “Clive Bowen’s concept design required us to route the track through this zone, and for us to get beneath the first overpass, we had to meet the FIA regulation that requires at least four metres of clearance. But as we have to tie into the levels of the Turnpike slip road that has a 7% crossfall, our track surface was climbing just at the point where we needed it to be falling.

An underpass is one of the unique features of the Miami circuit

Photo by: Charles Bradley

“There is also an F1 regulation about the rate of change of elevation linked to the square of the speed of the car, so this design basically threads the needle in three dimensions to ensure that the cars go slowly enough to align with the camber of the crossing and then get back under the overpass.

“We’ve created this pretty dramatic corner sequence where you have a sharp chicane, which has a minimum design speed of 80km/h [50mph] to meet the rate of change regulation, and it’s also completely blind for the drivers because of the elevation change. We simulated over 10 design iterations here. We’re right on the limitations of design in this area. Arguably this is the most technically challenging part of the track.”

Speaking of challenges, some threats might emerge from outside of the asphalt. Florida is renowned for its electrical storms – especially in the late afternoons, when the race has been timetabled for – and flash flooding could occur. The venue is barely above sea level, and so special drains have been designed to carry water away from the track surface and into a vast storage system or the nearby river.

Meantime, overhanging trees on the back straight give the circuit some character – “Mr Ross loves greenery,” says Worthy – but could cause some falling branch or leaf litter issues. A landscaper will be on hand throughout the race weekend, just in case.

ANALYSIS: How the Miami GP has prepared for Florida’s natural hazards

The other potential issue is from a track-invading species. Running parallel to the 1.2km straight is a waterway named Snake Creek that stretches to Maule Lake in North Miami Beach – and wherever you see water in this area, you’ll likely find feral green iguanas that can grow up to six feet in length and weigh over 20lb.

“We certainly don’t want a giant iguana falling on one of the F1 drivers, because that would be a problem!” says Worthy. “They can climb trees and jump out or crawl across the track. We have procedures in place to have the marshals come around and poke into the openings [in the concrete walls] to ensure none are hiding in there or up in the trees. The marshals will be issued with nets for the iguanas, and the focus will be on capture and then release them somewhere away from the track… It’s a pretty unique thing to have to deal with!”

Apart from the outcry over the expensive ticket prices, the main accusation from F1 fans has been ‘why build a race track in a car park?’

Designers consider Miami track a permanent circuit

Photo by: Charles Bradley

“It’s a fully engineered race track, not a car park,” replies Bowen to that barb. “It has conventional corner sequencing to showcase an F1 car’s performance and to create a proper race environment that you’d normally seek to achieve with a permanent race circuit – that is manifestly obvious here.

“When you’re working on a true street track, you’re working with the roads you’ve got and you’re limited by intersections. So your corner geometry is dictated to you. Here, we were able to innovate and use the same principles that we would for a permanent race track.

“We have created a permanent race circuit that, when the barriers get taken away, will be used for whatever the site demands. I’m not sure there’s another F1 track that does that" Clive Bowen

“The other thing that’s really quite important about this site, compared to Caesars Palace of the early 1980s, is this site is not just a car park. This is a multi-use venue with a very choreographed landscape, so there’s a significant amount of greenery and we’ve worked as closely with the owners as we can to ensure there’s a perception of a park setting with the track.”

The alternative was the downtown Biscayne/Dodge Island street track that couldn’t happen. Autosport brings this up as we stroll along the back straight of the new track, and it provokes a tinge of regret mixed with relief.

“I was always amused by the opportunity of saying you were ‘getting out of Dodge’ when you turned around and came back over the bridge!” quips Bowen. “The concept was good, it was sound, it had the amazing backdrop – the helicopter camera shots would’ve shouted ‘Miami’. It was, however, an incredibly compromised site at every level.

“Using US Route 1, along Biscayne Boulevard, was going to be a challenge, because we didn’t have any proper straights. But, in the same way that Baku does, it would’ve made an intriguing street circuit. We were disappointed when we didn’t get to follow that one through, sure, but what we’ve been able to do here is more conventional in one sense and, equally, more radical and ultimately much better.

“We have created a permanent race circuit that, when the barriers get taken away, will be used for whatever the site demands. I’m not sure there’s another F1 track that does that, where the surface of the race track is used for rock concerts, tennis competitions and football tailgating!”

Miami Grand Prix has a contract with F1 for the next 10 years

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images