FORMULA 1 UNITED STATES GRAND PRIX

The Formula 1 United States Grand Prix is the American round of the championship, run over three days in late October at the Circuit of the Americas, fifteen miles from downtown Austin: practice on the Friday, qualifying on the Saturday, and on the Sunday fifty-six laps of a circuit of 5.513 kilometres, with concerts on each day and the crowd let onto the track at the end. It was the first circuit in the country built for Formula One, and has held the race every year since 2012, except 2020.

From the grid the cars climb a gradient of more than eleven per cent to the first corner, the highest point of the circuit, whose apex sits on the crest of the hill.

Savannah to Austin

The race began in 1908 as the American Grand Prize, at Savannah, on twenty-five miles of oiled gravel laid by convicts with the leave of the governor of Georgia, and with the state militia sent to hold back the crowd. Louis Wagner won it in a Fiat by fifty-six seconds, on Thanksgiving Day.

It has been held on and off ever since, fifty-four times at ten places by 2025: at Sebring in 1959, at Riverside in 1960, and for twenty years from 1961 at Watkins Glen, called “the Mecca of American road racing”, and, last before Austin, at Indianapolis in 2007.

The circuit in Texas was first proposed in 2010 and drawn by the promoter Tavo Hellmund and the motorcycle world champion of 1993, Kevin Schwantz, with Hermann Tilke. It stands on some eight hundred and ninety acres of open land in south-eastern Travis County, meant once for a subdivision called Wandering Creek. Red McCombs, an investor, wanted to call it Speed City; it was named the Circuit of the Americas in April 2011. Building stopped late that year in a quarrel between the promoter and the investors, and the race kept its date only after McCombs and Bobby Epstein made a new agreement with Bernie Ecclestone.

Mario Andretti, world champion in 1978, opened the circuit on 21 October 2012, and more than a hundred thousand people watched Lewis Hamilton win for McLaren. Hamilton has won the United States Grand Prix six times, more than anyone. In 2022 some four hundred and forty thousand came over the three days, a record for Formula One in North America. The race is contracted to Austin through 2034.

The Weekend

The circuit borrows its corners. Turns 3 to 6 are laid out after Maggotts and Becketts at Silverstone, or the S Curves at Suzuka, and Turns 12 to 15 after the stadium section at Hockenheim. An observation tower, hung with a red veil of steel tubes, stands over the Grand Plaza, 251 feet high, with a staircase of 419 steps winding to a platform at 230 feet and a veil of eighteen steel tubes meant to recall the streaks of a racing car’s lights.

Practice is on the Friday, qualifying on the Saturday and the race on the Sunday. The Main Grandstand, on the straight, has food and drink brought to the seat; the Turn 1 stand looks over the start to downtown Austin; the stadium section is for close racing. The grandstand tickets include concerts on the festival lawn on the Friday and Saturday evenings, and after the podium on the Sunday the crowd goes out onto the circuit.

In 2026 the weekend runs from 23 to 25 October, the eighteenth round of the championship, and for the first time on four days: the circuit opens on Thursday 22 October for F1 Academy. Maroon 5 play on the Friday, Post Malone on the Saturday and Alesso after the race on the Sunday. Max Verstappen won in 2025, his fourth victory here.

What to Know

It runs from a Friday to a Sunday in the second half of October: in 2027, from 22 to 24 October.

Tickets are sold for the three days, by the day, and as a Flex Pass across six premium grandstands. For 2026 the Main Grandstand ran from $1,309.50 to $2,030.50 and sold out, and the Turn 1 stand from $1,206.50 to $1,464.50. Club SI sold out; the Guest House at Turn 20, new and permanent, has an open bar and a roof terrace.

Nothing is published. Smart casual, as the Court keeps it: a jacket without a tie, proper trousers, and shoes for walking the circuit; it can still be near thirty degrees in late October.

Fly to Austin-Bergstrom. Official shuttles run in their own lane from downtown Austin and the Travis County Expo Center to the Grand Plaza gates; cars for hire set down on McAngus Road, and parking must be bought ahead. The circuit’s travel office sells rooms at the W Austin and the Hilton Austin Downtown among others, some fifteen miles from the track.

The mistake is to arrive without a shuttle pass. A pass bought at the circuit is standby only, and a seat on the bus is not guaranteed.

The Court

The Formula 1 United States Grand Prix is not the Court’s own. Places in the Main Grandstand or in hospitality at the circuit are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Austin, and the table afterward. The championship goes on to Las Vegas in November.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.