The story of F1's first failed Big Apple grand prix

It seems that, when addressing modern Formula 1’s business sensibilities, it is becoming increasingly impossible not to mention the championship’s boom in popularity over the previous few years. The growing presence of F1 in the current cultural zeitgeist has been the main driving force behind greater sponsorship interest, the inflating values of the 10 teams on the grid, and economic powerhouses queuing up to get their own countries on the calendar.

This is why the United States, capitalism’s own backyard, has landed three races on this year’s schedule. F1 toiled for years in its largely wasted efforts to ‘crack America’; subpar street circuits did nothing to enhance the series’ image in the eyes of Americans brought up on a diet of NASCAR and Indy cars, while F1’s finest racers hated the bumpy, claustrophobic nature of the 90-degree city streets. Perhaps F1 thought it had finally ‘made it’ after landing a race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway – American motorsport’s heartland – but this faded away after 2007 as F1 succumbed to its own hubris.

These days, F1 has a settled race at the Circuit of the Americas, just outside of Texas’ state capital Austin. Miami has now hosted two races and looks set to stay amid its own brand of bombastic ebullience, while Las Vegas is the newest addition to the F1 calendar. A decade ago, a race at Port Imperial in New Jersey was planned, but financial insecurity ensured that its place on the 2013 calendar was never fulfilled.

F1 had previously made three trips in a season to the US in 1982. Long Beach held that year’s third round of the calendar, the United States Grand Prix West, while the Detroit Grand Prix and the critically panned Caesars Palace Grand Prix held races in June and September respectively. By coincidence, the new Las Vegas circuit runs along the (in)famous Strip, just alongside the old Caesars Palace car park...

It was set to have three in 1981, before Watkins Glen (the East to Long Beach’s US GP West) fell off the calendar. But there was also set to be a little-known third in 1983, with F1 set to break into the New York metropolitan area and return to the Eastern Seaboard – 30 years before the abortive Port Imperial race was set to go ahead. This third US race in 1983 came down to be between any one of three locations: the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey; the site of the decommissioned Mitchel Air Force Base in Hempstead, Long Island; or at Flushing Meadows in Queens.

At this time, there was a non-zero possibility that this could have served as a fourth US race on the calendar. The Caesars Palace Grand Prix had not been dropped yet and was set to continue into 1983, before F1 decided that the race was no longer worth having. CART instead picked up the race for 1983 and 1984, running the circuit as a flat ‘oval’.

The Meadowlands option was solid, as the Sports Complex infrastructure already existed. Although in a different state, the New Jersey borough of East Rutherford remained part of the same continuous concrete jungle to which New York City encompassed. It was certainly closer to central Manhattan than Mitchel Field, now home to the Nassau Coliseum, another option to convert part of a sports complex into a racing venue. Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, which had hosted the World’s Fair in 1939 and 1964, was also put forward as the site had fallen largely into disrepair and needed regeneration.

Meadowlands was considered as an option but F1 instead pushed on with Flushing Meadows in Queens

Photo by: David Hutson / Motorsport Images

According to the 28 October 1982 edition of the New York Times, promoter New York Grand Prix Inc. had $10m to invest in sorting out the infrastructure for the race. It had also apparently paid Bernie Ecclestone $2m for a multi-year deal on the F1 calendar – a snip by today’s standards.

Daniel Koren, the president of NYGP Inc., stated at the time that “we’re examining several factors in considering a site. There are some positives and negatives with the locations. One site can park 40,000 cars, another only 10,000, but is close to mass transportation.”

“F1 races are among the world’s most widely viewed sporting events,” Koren added, according to the Reading Eagle. “In 1982, 1.2 billion people watched grand prix racing in person and live on television. Drivers are national heroes and the races are the focus of celebrations and national attention. The New York race will become part of a tradition that dates back to Le Mans at the turn of the century.”

Its plans for a race in 1983 hit a brick wall; New York City corporation counsel mandated that the planned New York Grand Prix needed to undergo an environmental impact study before it could go ahead. This process was predicted to take six to eight months of review

It was an optimistic outlook, although getting a race together in the early 1980s was probably easier to achieve. It’s surprising by today’s standards to see such a short lead time on events – but back then, F1 circuit homologation was not nearly as stringent as today.

The plethora of US street races at the likes of Caesars Palace, Dallas, and Phoenix were quickly put together by fencing off existing roads (or, alternatively, car parks) and surrounding them with barriers. Cynics might suggest that Formula E’s current crop of circuits are of a similar ilk, although recent races in Cape Town and Jakarta have required vast civil works to resurface and re-route roads in those areas.

Of the three mooted locations, the Flushing Meadows venue was carried forward into F1’s plans for the 1983 calendar. A 25 September date was set, three weeks before the season closer at Kyalami, using a section of the Flushing Meadows Corona Park below the World’s Fair grounds and the Unisphere. The mooted location around Meadow Lake puts one in mind of the Albert Park circuit that arrived in F1 13 years later, albeit with multiple chicanes expected to be installed to bump up the length of the 2.5-mile circuit. 

But the citizens of Queens were not particularly enamoured with the idea of a race on their doorsteps. As the plans escalated, the promoters planned to repave the roads around the park and fit new drainage solutions. There were 113 trees that would have to be felled for the new course, but pledges were made to replant these among the landscaping works. The race, according to the promoters, would be worth over $5m per year to the local area.

A slot on the 1983 calendar was secured reportedly after promoters reached a deal with Ecclestone, but local bureaucracy meant the race fell through the cracks

Photo by: Motorsport Images

This did not stop a civil “Stop the Grand Prix” campaign against the race. This was formed on the bedrock of the usual legitimate concerns over congestion, parking, and increased pollution and noise within the area. Many were unsure if hosting an F1 race would be good for the park, and whether the planned building works and subsequent races would affect biodiversity over the long term.

Political issues were also cited, and the 21 March 1983 issue of the New York Times explained that opponents to the race felt that NYGP Inc president Koren, having previously served Queens Borough president Donald Manes as an aide, was pulling strings in local government to make the race happen. The company promoting the race featured a number of former city officials in its ranks, but Koren stated that this was to ensure that NYGP Inc had the knowledge needed to "guide us through all that [bureaucracy]”.

This initially paid off for Koren and co, as the Queens Borough Board gave its approval. But its plans for a race in 1983 hit a brick wall; New York City corporation counsel mandated that the planned New York Grand Prix needed to undergo an environmental impact study before it could go ahead. This process was predicted to take, according to an NYGP Inc spokesperson, six to eight months of review; as the verdict had been handed out in May of that year, there was no chance that the review would be completed by the 25 September date.

The NYGP organisers and New York City mayor Ed Koch thus lobbied Ecclestone for a postponement into 1984, which would theoretically give the organisers the time to conduct its environmental review and make any necessary changes to grease the wheels in government. But the race never came to pass as the environmental study took far longer than anticipated. The 1984 race was postponed to 1985, and it was not until June of 1985 that the Flushing Meadows race was given permission by the New York Parks Department to go ahead. 

Expecting to hold a race that September was far too short notice, however, and the race was finally cancelled and never revisited. Brands Hatch was hastily slotted into the 25 September slot on the 1983 calendar, becoming the first F1 race to run as the European Grand Prix, while the 1984 September slot went to the new Nurburgring GP course. The 29 September slot in the 1985 calendar was left unoccupied.

What of the other venues? The CART races at Meadowlands were not considered a success and failed to capture the imagination of a dedicated fanbase, despite Marlboro’s heavy investment in the race’s promotion. Mitchel Field never even got that far, and was never considered a viable location for any kind of racing activity thereafter.

Despite F1’s best efforts with the 2013 Port Imperial race, it was beaten to the punch of hosting a race in the New York City metropolitan area by Formula E, which landed a race in the Red Hook area of Brooklyn – although Portland is currently serving as the all-electric championship’s US home as the Red Hook Ferry Terminal undergoes refurbishment.

New York made a speculative bid to host an F1 race last year, suggesting Randalls Island as the venue, but Liberty Media felt that this was not an iconic-enough locale to consider. One would imagine that only a race in the centre of Manhattan would be good enough for F1 in its current status to consider...

F1 was beaten to the punch of holding the first major international single-seater race in New York by Formula E in 2017

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images