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As Formula One returns to Austin, Texas, for this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, one of the sport’s other American venues is also occupied with a major event.
Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium, the centerpiece for the grand prix held at the start of May, will be used for three nights of Taylor Swift’s record-breaking Eras Tour, which begins its final stretch of North American dates this week.
Both F1 and Swift have experienced extraordinary surges of popularity in recent years in very different realms. But eight years ago, they shared top billing at the Circuit of The Americas.
The 2016 event, at which Swift played a concert on the Saturday night after qualifying, proved to be critical for the future of the United States Grand Prix, a race that has since been the cornerstone of F1’s rapid American growth.
“It was a big-dollar commitment at the time, and it paid off,” COTA chairman Bobby Epstein told The Athletic. “We’re grateful to Taylor for taking the chance.”
F1’s current foothold of three American races would have been unthinkable a decade ago when holding one grand prix stateside was a considerable achievement. There had been a five-year absence for F1 in America between the final event at Indianapolis in 2007 and its return in 2012 at COTA, the first purpose-built facility for the sport in the United States.
COTA quickly became one of the drivers’ favorite tracks thanks to its challenging, undulating layout, and it was popular with fans. The first year pulled in a Friday to Sunday race weekend attendance of 265,000 — which looks small compared to the 2022 record of 440,000, reported by F1 — as crowds flocked to see the sport’s return to the United States. Even with a calendar fixture toward the end of each season, giving the potential of seeing a race that could influence the crucial part of a championship battle, there was a struggle to build greater interest. The weekend figures dropped to 250,000 for 2013 and lower still to 237,000 in 2014.
But the 2015 race left serious doubts over the future of the grand prix in Austin. As Hurricane Patricia brought record rainfall and high winds to Austin, FP2 was canceled, and qualifying was postponed to Sunday morning after three hours of rain delays. After long waits at the track hoping to see some on-track action, the disappointed fans had to contend with the grass parking lots turning into mud baths, making getting in and out of the track challenging.
Sunday’s grand prix went ahead on schedule as Lewis Hamilton clinched his third world championship, but weekend attendance dipped to a low of just 224,000, leading to concerns about the event’s popularity.
Hurricane Patricia made the 2015 U.S. GP a dour affair. (SIPA USA)
There was also a fresh challenge to fund the United States Grand Prix. In the weeks after the race, Governor Greg Abbot’s office announced it would cut $6 million in state funding for the grand prix. Bernie Ecclestone, then F1’s CEO, admitted at the time that it looked challenging to see a future for the race in Austin.
It left Epstein and his team looking for new ways to boost the event’s fortunes if they wanted to help secure the long-term future of F1’s only American grand prix.
“We had a lot of people very upset about the experience they had with the rain and the mud, and we needed to make it up to them,” Epstein said. “We put in a lot of sidewalks, and we paved a lot of parking lots, and we got a lot more buses. But on top of it, we wanted to do better and offer more.”
That is where Taylor Swift came into the picture.
Austin’s reputation as a music city meant adding concerts to the race weekend offering had always been a big part of COTA’s identity. Kid Rock and Elton John were among the first headliners, but as plans came together for 2016, Epstein and his team looked for the biggest star possible.
Swift’s manager at the time, Scooter Braun, lived in Austin and was put in touch with Epstein, who wanted to see if there would be interest in being the 2016 race headliner. Swift had no performances scheduled for the year, having spent the entirety of 2015 on her “1989” album world tour.
If any diehard Swifties were desperate to see her in concert that year, they would have to go to the F1 race. Suddenly, a United States Grand Prix ticket became much more valuable. A three-day general admission ticket started at $150 and would include access to the concert.
“We remember the massive amount of criticism we took from the race fans when we said we were going to bring in a performer like that, that it was taking attention away from the racing,” Epstein said.
Ecclestone was among those to share some concern, semi-jokingly asking Epstein if he should even bother to bring the F1 cars to COTA.
After watching Hamilton lead a Mercedes front row lockout in qualifying on Saturday, 80,000 fans stayed well into the evening at the track to watch Swift’s show from the infield, making it — at the time — one of her highest-attended shows. The 15-song set mainly featured songs from “1989” and “Red,” and there was no new material, but it did have a first performance of “This Is What You Came For,” a song that Swift wrote for Calvin Harris and Rihanna.
The concert received rave reviews. Billboard called it a “knockout performance,” while Rolling Stone said, “it showed no drop off or rust from a star determined to remain one of the biggest names in music for a long time to come.” How true that would prove.
Swift closed out the set with “Shake It Off,” which fit the mood of COTA’s weekend. After all the struggles of the previous year, it had drawn a record crowd of almost 270,000 fans who enjoyed good weather and good music on top of the racing action. It was an important bounce-back after the 2016 washout, proving that F1 had a bright future in Austin.
It also helped draw in a very different demographic of attendees as younger fans, more women and more families attended. “When we look back, we feel validated for the vision that this group had to do that and offer more to the race fan and allow them to bring family members,” Epstein said. “You can give a very full amount of entertainment, and not at all compromise the quality of the on-track action. You don’t have to take anything away from the race by giving more to the fans.”
The change in F1’s fan demographic to become younger and more diverse has been a core part of its recent growth, particularly in the “Drive to Survive” era. But Epstein felt COTA had been ahead of the curve thanks to its off-track offerings.
“I don’t know if we’re given any credit for it, but we’ll take it because it’s true,” he said. “We started (it), we did. We got a much younger audience starting to watch and pay attention to that, because of Taylor, Justin Timberlake (the 2018 headliner), and Ed Sheeran (2022).
“You start looking at some of those, and that’s who was paying attention to those artists, with Instagram and things that people post on, it very quickly reaches that demographic and that generation.”
Fans explored the track during qualifying as they waited for the Taylor Swift concert. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
COTA’s model of having a huge headliner perform on a race weekend has become common in F1. Under Liberty Media, which completed its acquisition of F1 in early 2017, grands prix have now been turned into multi-day events where the off-track entertainment is a big part of its offering to fans.
However, even with the addition of new American events in Miami and Las Vegas, each of which has its own appeal, the concerts have remained a big part of the United States Grand Prix’s identity in Austin. Sting will headline on Friday before Eminem performs on Saturday night. Like Swift in 2016, it will be his only live show of the year.
Epstein expected that with changes made at the track to allow even more fans to attend, it would likely break Swift’s record at COTA and draw in a crowd of 100,000 people.
“It’s a fun event to play, just the way that the whole setting is,” Epstein said. “I think the agents and the performers know about it now. It has credibility, and it’s something that they want to be named the headliner for the United States Grand Prix.
“Playing at the halftime of the Super Bowl is a pretty well-recognized honor for performers. I think playing the US Grand Prix is also an honor.”
With more than 12 months until the 2025 race — which will mark 10 years since F1’s low point in Austin, when the future of the sport in the United States looked to be in doubt once again — Epstein is already engaged in conversations about the next headliners. He said getting a big name was “somewhat expected of us.”
“I know the conversations we’re having for 2025,” he said. “I’m pretty excited about it.”
Top photo: Sipa USA