Friendship and Formula 1 at the Miami Grand Prix | Hitting the Apex

As the Formula 1 circus descends on Miami this week, my Formula 1 journey comes full circle.

Formula 1 is considered by many to be a European sport, an elitist sport, and an overseas sport. An “other” not directed at Americans. And European snobbery has been on full display this week as pot shots are taken at Miami, with the waterless marina reinforcing the confirmation bias that Miami as a location is plastic, artificial, part of everything that is wrong with “modern” Formula 1 as it continues to expand outside of its European roots and into a global sport.

Miami is an odd target for vitriol, though. The dichotomy of Miami as insular, prideful community that often defaults to an “us vs. them” mentality  juxtaposed with the city’s status as an international melting pot will be on view this weekend. The barbs from across the pond sting, but we’ll do what Miamians do, which is respond acerbically while also opening our doors and throwing a hell of a party.

For many Miamians, the event will overshadow the sport. Some will attend and not watch another race. Others, however, will become new, lifelong fans. Miami as a sport destination has always been a bit of a Rubik’s Cube, holding potential if you just navigate the twists and turns in the correct order. La Liga famously tried to play a match here, hoping to tap into the Latin diaspora, bilingual community, and international flavor of the city. And Formula 1 is betting on those same forces intersecting with the party that is Formula 1 to bring new attention and growth to the sport in a market that on paper should be ripe for Formula 1 popularity.

Surely there will be several new fans of Formula 1 in Miami next week that don’t exist now. They will be introduced to a wonderful new world, and will look back on Miami as the place that opened their eyes to this sport, which is something I’m quite familiar with.

My love affair with Formula 1 did not start in Europe, or because I was drawn into the glitz and glamour. It started in Miami, at the University of Miami.

Friendship and Formula 1

As a freshman at the University of Miami, I met my best friend Roberto Barreto Filho. Roberto is Brazilian, hailing from the Amazonian city of Manaus. In college, we were randomly assigned as suite mates, and instantly bonded over a love of sports. Soccer was one of them, but he introduced me to a new sport, Formula 1.

And to his motorsport hero Ayrton Senna.

To new Formula 1 fans, Ayrton Senna is a mythical figure, something out of history books, the rote answer to the question of who is the most legendary driver in Formula 1 history. But go back a few decades and Senna was real, he was recent. The sport still had not gotten over his death. It was not unfathomable that he would even still have been racing at that point in the early 2000s had he not crashed at Imola. His shadow was seen in the sport. Roberto would regale me with tales of Senna winning races, driving with broken equipment, being pulled out of the car exhausted, barely able to walk. He would tell me of the time that Senna arrived home having clinched the World Drivers Championship and had the plane he was flying in escorted to the airport by the Brazilian Air Force.

There was no YouTube back then. We were relegated to tall tales and whatever random video clips we could download from the internet and play on RealPlayer. But pictures were readily available. And it was those pictures of Senna in the MP4/4 that not only hooked me into Formula 1, but into McLaren. The MP4/4 is still considered one of the greatest cars in Formula 1 history, and with Senna at the helm, it was unstoppable. I was introduced to the very different looking Mercedes powered McLaren of the late 90s/early 2000s and Mika Hakkinen, the Flying Finn. We would have endless debates about who was better, Michael Schumacher or Mika Hakkinen, with me, of course, taking up the cause of the McLaren man (in hindsight, Roberto was very right).

It’s hard to believe now, with the modern Formula 1 explosion, but back then, it was basically impossible to follow the sport in the United States. TV coverage was relegated to the fledging channel SpeedVision, and, when we were lucky, tape delays on Fox Sports. We’d find friends that had SpeedVision and watch at their houses, we’d scour the internet for articles and news of new developments to cars, of winter testing. There was not a lot of content, but what was available, we consumed.

And when Malaysia was added to the calendar, our ritual involved back-to-back races (in concert with the season opening Australia) that went on in the middle of the night, with the only thing keeping us awake being excitement and Red Bull. Long before Red Bull was competing and winning in Formula 1, it was fueling our sleepless commitment to the sport we loved.

But most of all, we longed for a race in Miami. We imagined mythical circuits in downtown, drawing on what at the time had been a recently run CART race in Bicentennial Park. But it never seemed real, just a dream. When Indy was added to the calendar, that all but killed the dream, especially when that race ended up being a flop (with the famous 2005 iteration signaling the death knell for the race, and at the time, seemingly Formula 1 in the United States).

It’s Coming Home

Fast-forward to present time, and that dream of a Miami Grand Prix is becoming a reality. The Formula 1 world has arrived in the 305, to put on an exhibition of man and machine, of elite skill and engineering, of mankind at its zenith.

The Formula 1 aristocracy might thumb their noses at us, simultaneously arguing that Formula 1 should be about the racing and not concerts and fake marinas while also ignoring the exciting track layout and themselves focusing on the sideshows. It’s easy for those that take this sport for granted, that have had it as a mainstay in their lives, accessible to them, to cast aspersions on us New Worlders. They don’t realize the sacrifice that it takes to follow a sport that is largely catering to European time zones and audiences. They fail to see that this sport belongs to everyone, and that one of the allures of it is that each locale puts its own spin on it, its own flavor.

Perhaps the non-locals would prefer the race was on the beach, or downtown. Somewhere water adjacent. Perhaps while they complain about the the race being too stereotypically Miami, they long for what they view Miami as, sand and ocean. Perhaps they want to see the port and the cruise ships. While poking fun at some of the attempts to mimic those experiences in Miami Gardens, perhaps the actual anger is their inability to see the cars fly past the Miami they see in movies and on postcards. And that is where they are missing the essence of Miami.

For this Miamian, there is nothing more quintessentially Miami than going to the place I’ve been to seemingly a million times to watch the Hurricanes play, and instead watching an obsession born on the campus that those same Hurricanes call home. That collision of worlds is a dream of mine, decades in the making. And that is Miami.

After steering my Formula 1 infatuation through gravel traps, runoffs, and slow pit stops, this week, Miami is Hitting the Apex.

Vishnu Parasuraman is a contributor for @FiveReasonsSports. He covers the Miami Hurricanes  for Sixth Ring Canes and Formula 1 for Hitting the Apex. You can follow him on twitter @vrp2003