Yahoo Autos Chance to return to Miami ‘a big draw’ for Formula E – Dodds
Formula E’s calendar for the upcoming 2024-25 season, announced today, featured the standout revelation that the series would be returning to Miami for the first time in a decade.
The championship visited the south Florida city in its inaugural season, with a race on the streets being won by Nicolas Prost for the e.dams Renault team ahead of Scott Speed for Andretti and Abt Sportsline’s Daniel Abt.
Formula E has made no secret of its desire to increase its footprint in North America, having also raced in Long Beach in that first year (as well as the year after), New York between 2017-22, and north of the border in Montreal in 2017. More recently it’s raced in Portland – where it will return in two-week’s time – but while the Pacific Northwest event was a huge success on its debut last year, the championship couldn’t resist the lure of Homestead Miami Speedway.
Formula E’s only previous visit to Miami came in its first season. Andrew Ferraro/Motorsport Images
“We think it’s a really good circuit, well suited to our style of racing, and the Miami name that comes with it, from a global audience, a global television audience, is a big draw,” Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds said of the move to Miami.
“I thought it was a very successful race in Portland last year, a very strong turnout and ticket sales have been pretty good this year as well for what is a doubleheader,” he said of Portland. “The race in Portland last year was a little bit of a surprise for us, I think. It delivered a much better race than we thought it might, and I think it being an IndyCar track, that opened our eyes up to the possibility of using other IndyCar tracks in the U.S. and the IndyCar crowd who largely came to watch it, because it is an IndyCar crowd there, were very very positive about our style of racing, the infrastructure we brought, the extent of the show.”
But while Miami’s return to the calendar has come at Portland’s expense, that’s not intended to be a trend that will continue, with Dodds describing the U.S as one of two “priority markets” for the series, along with China.
“We probably have around seven or eight different large U.S. cities currently talking to us about putting a race on in their city, so those conversations are live and always ongoing,” Dodds said. “One thing I’ve said previously is our calendar can sustain two races in North America and probably two races in China as the two locations in the world where we could put on two races, so I think what you might find in time is the North America market is an ‘and’, not an ‘or’, so we add an additional race location as opposed to continually changing out the U.S. locations.”
One potential additional U.S. location remains Los Angeles. Often talked about, it had been expected to be on next season’s schedule. But while Dodds confirmed “it’s not one for Season 11”, he did insist “I wouldn’t write off Los Angeles as a potential venue” for a future race.
