Will future Formula E races be in Homestead? Downtown Miami? Neither?
Now that the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship series has come and gone again, headed for Monaco to race on the same weekend Formula 1 will be in Miami Gardens, will the electric car racing series be back again? And, if there is a 2026 return, where will the Miami E-Prix run?
Downtown Miami, where the race ran in 2015? Homestead-Miami Speedway, where TAG Heuer Porsche's Pascal Wehrlein won Saturday?
READ MORE: Wehrlein wins the Formula E Miami E-Prix after crash unplugs teammate Da Costa
That question assumes a 2026 return.
On Friday, as teams prepared for their first practice on the Homestead road course, Formula E series CEO Jeff Dodds said his people liked Homestead as a facility. And, the hospitality suites were sold out.
'So, that's not a challenge. The challenge is...,' Dodds looked out beyond the garages and across the track and chuckled a bit ruefully, 'it's one of the world's largest grandstands. You've got nearly 50,000 seats around the start-finish line. I think we would say if we got 15 to 20,000 people over the weekend on this site, that would be a great result to us in Year 1. Particularly when we heard the NASCAR had only a few thousand people for the last race (in March). NASCAR has 80% awareness in the U.S., we have 22%.
'That's our nervousness. Will people turn up?'
The answer fell within Dodds' desired range, at least according to Formula E's official announced attendance: 17,000 after weeks of limited South Florida marketing and local media coverage.
Running at Homestead makes logistics and the quick weekend move-in easy — permanent grandstands, garage areas, a big media center (which Formula E reporters and team-connected media packed), options for credential pickup, plus infield space for hospitality tents and Formula E's mobile broadcast and technology center. Drop in a couple of chicanes and Homestead's road course was ready to go.
But, just because they were driving on a course that lives as a road course didn't mean even the winner was wholly happy in Homestead.
With the course's long, wide straightaways, Pascal Wehrlein and everyone else expected the plethora of passing — 'chaotic' was the word of the weekend — but what actually bothered him were the spots where going offline meant only kicking up a bunch of dirt and obscuring the vision of trailing drivers.
'In qualifying, it ruined my lap, so I started form P9 instead of more toward the front,' Wehrlein said. 'Those kinds of things you don't have if you're racing the street circuits. If you make a mistake, you're in the wall. I like that challenge. I don't like it if something is artificially easy.
'In the future, I really want to come back here, but hopefully, we can be on the street circuit.'
Going back downtown means the high rise residents, greater in number than 2015, putting up with traffic and pedestrian constraints of Friday track construction by barrier placements, Saturday of practice, qualifying and race and Sunday barrier removal. These are the same folks who kept Formula 1 out of downtown Miami, and might not care that Formula E's not nearly as high maintenance as its FIA big brother.
Lola Yamaha driver Lucas di Grassi said he enjoyed Homestead as a 'very technical, very difficult' track, and the newness took away any advantage his experience might have.
'If this is the place for us to be in Miami, it's great,' di Grassi said. 'We love to race in Miami. But, again, the first year we raced here in downtown Miami, that track was also very very cool. If I could choose, I'd choose downtown Miami.
Third place driver Antonio Felix Da Costa, who also ran downtown in 2015, concurred, 'Hopefully, we can migrate back to the cities. That would be awesome.'
In the postrace podium media session, the drivers were asked, 'If only one U.S. track could be kept, which would it be?'
Without hesitation, di Grassi said, 'Long Beach' and Da Costa seconded, 'Long Beach.'
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