It’s day one of the Miami Grand Prix — a full two days from the race itself — but the well-heeled and famous are lined up outside the track running around Dolphins stadium.
The tickets to the Miami International Autodrome may have cost up to $6,000 each, but they had sold out weeks before.
As I watched Bethenny Frankel, of Real Housewife’s of New York fame, struggling with her pass into the track, it hit me how much things had changed for the sport.
Maybe this is hard to believe, but I’d been reluctant to take up an offer from multinational lottery company Allywn to spend a day at the track.
Here’s why. My very first Grand Prix, some 20-odd years before, was on order from my boss.
That’s because, as hard as it seems in 2026, no-one else would go to the Melbourne Grand Prix in 2001.
Yep, free tickets, all-access passes, and you couldn’t interest a soul in the office.
I ended up going on to cover another two further races in 2002 and 2003.
Back then, the crowd was also vastly different to the one in Miami.
I’ve always appreciated cars and motorsport but the fans of F1 were still a completely foreign species to me; almost exclusively middle-aged men, most back then in Ferrari caps and flags.
I remember finding it baffling that fans would dress head-to-toe in gear from a brand of car 99% could never afford.
The sport was the preserve of an obscure subculture of motorheads, who only emerged around the race weekend.
The tickets were easily available, maybe because the sport was so inaccessible to those who didn’t closely follow it.
When you arrived at the track, and despite supposed all-access press passes, you had a spot on a rickety makeshift grandstand with little actual close-up access to try and learn something about it.
And forget about a close look at the cars or a stroll through the pits.
From memory, I didn’t even stay until the end but instead skipped out to head back to the office and write my story from there.
The start was as exciting as ever, but that was about it when it came to interaction.
This was even before the team Red Bull arrived, and of course, before Netflix’s brilliant sports documentary show Drive to Survive propelled the sport into mainstream consciousness.
Before American ownership transformed the commercial side of the sport.
Drive to Survive broadened Formula One from lap times and tire strategy, to rivalries, glamour and behind-the-scenes drama.
Now America hosts three races, celebrities flock to the paddock and even Cadillac launched its own Formula One team in 2026.
Everyone wants to be part of F1 now, which is why Allwyn chose to sponsor Team McLaren and the F1, Louis Vuitton ads are plastered across the track, and celebrities are lined up outside the gates days before the race.
A quick circuit through the track reveals as many woman as men in the crowd.
Rather than being stuck in the stands, there’s a walk through pit lane, and a stop at the garage of new Maclaren star, Oscar Piastri, where you can watch as the mechanics prepare the cars.
A generation ago, this kind of access was unimaginable.
Standing there watching the crew work, with celebrities, influencers and die-hard racing fans all sharing the same space, it became obvious why Formula One has exploded.
The sport didn’t just get bigger.
It reinvented itself.
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