This weekend’s Miami Grand Prix was the most-watched F1 broadcast in the U.S. in the history of the sport, and it wasn’t even close. There are many factors for this, including that the event was broadcast on the terrestrial ABC instead of its typical ESPN, the race took place in the Eastern Time Zone so it was on at 4 pm Eastern instead of the normal early mornings we usually see, and to some extent, Americans wanted to see a race on home soil. A full 3.1 million Americans were watching Lando Norris take his maiden victory on Sunday, a new record taken from the inaugural Miami Grand Prix in 2022 which had just 2.6 million American viewers.
This race was notable in that it featured someone winning other than Max Verstappen, and while Lando managed the win with a mix of luck and strategy, his McLaren also had the pace to fend off Verstappen for a full stint. The Miami track isn’t much to write home about, and the on-track battles were few and far between, but it was pretty decent, I guess. What did you think of the Miami Grand Prix? Were you one of the 3.1 million of us watching?
Interestingly, Saturday’s sprint race on ESPN averaged 946,000 viewers, the largest audience for a sprint race in the U.S. since the introduction of that race format in 2021. For all the complaints about the sprint format, to see that event get nearly a million views on a Saturday afternoon is a revelation. I, for one, appreciate sprint races. More racing is more better.
The sport has been growing in popularity among Americans for the last handful of seasons, and it seems that the growth isn’t going to be slowing down any time soon. I wouldn’t expect this record to last very long — perhaps the events at COTA or Las Vegas later in the season will eclipse this one in mere months.