Welcome to Miami! How the 'impossible' race is ready for F1's return

Four weeks after staging the finals of the Miami Open tennis tournament, and seven weeks before hosting the first of seven matches during football's World Cup, Miami's Hard Rock Stadium is this week at the centre of the Formula 1 universe as it stages the first race of the 2026 season's resumption.

One of F1's highest-profile events since joining the calendar four years ago, Miami's own preparations for the fifth running of its Grand Prix may have been unaffected by cancellation of April's Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix, but organisers are fully aware of the extra focus that has inevitably being placed externally on this weekend's return to racing.

"We definitely don't change our planning as we started planning back in the summer of 2025 for 2026, so we're right where we needed to be, but I think the anticipation definitely grows for the race," said Katharina Nowak, the Miami GP's president, in an interview with Sky Sports.

• When to watch the Miami GP live on Sky Sports
• F1 2026 Calendar | F1 2026 Standings | F1 Gossip Column
• Download the Sky Sports app for expert analysis, best video & more📱
• Not got Sky? Get Sky Sports or stream with no contract on NOW📺

"And the energy and the hype around the Miami Grand Prix, given the fact that there's been four weeks of no racing, I don't think anyone saw that type of news coming this season. We obviously respect the decision because safety is the number one most important thing.

"But I've gotten a lot of clues or hints from people in the industry that there's a lot of excitement around Miami, which we, of course, embrace and are excited to hopefully continue to deliver an excellent event."

Since Miami joined the calendar in 2022, the Sunshine State of Florida has become established as the first of what are now three stops of the F1 season in the United States.

Hard Rock Stadium is the permanent home of the NFL's Miami Dolphins and located in Miami Gardens, which is about 15 miles north of the vibrant city's downtown area.

In the words of Nowak, the team behind the race "does the impossible" in transforming the 265-acre site into a Grand Prix facility each year, particularly as the race takes place just a month after the Miami Open - which features both ATP and WTA events - finishes.

There are around 250 structures put in place for the F1 weekend, with the 3.36-mile, 19-corner temporary track itself running outside the stadium.

The inside of the 65,000-seater stadium down on the pitch is uniquely where the F1 team hospitality units are housed, the press conferences are held in the stadium's locker rooms, while there is a permanent paddock building on the outside of the stadium. It's a process of transformation from one sporting event to another which is now well established, with the event also now firmly fixed prominently on the city of Miami's diverse sporting calendar.

"You think back to when the Miami Grand Prix started and we had this perfect storm of Drive to Survive really taking off and coming out of Covid," said Nowak.

"And the city has changed so much since that and we are just continuing to lean into Miami more and more each year. And so we really feel not only have we established within the F1 industry, but the city of Miami has really continued to lean into what we're doing."

For 2026, that has continued through the creation of a free five-day fan festival in Miami Beach, while the different fan zones around the venue have been redesigned to reflect the culture, food and entertainment of the various districts of the city.

And after their 'fake' marina caused a stir in Miami's inaugural year, organisers have gone even bolder for 2026 by creating of a 50-foot tall, 264-foot long life-like super yacht structure which sits on the inside of Turns Five-Nine as their new showpiece hospitality experience.

But ambitions for the event, which has drawn an event-record 275,000 weekend attendance in each of the past two years, don't stop there given F1 last year signed a huge deal to keep the race on the calendar until at least 2041 - a commitment which Nowak says allows them "to think big and think about where we want this to go".

"A lot of what we've been talking about over the last couple of months has been, how do we turn this into the next Super Bowl in the United States?" said Nowak.

"The Miami Grand Prix already is a world-class global event and turning that into another Super Bowl in the United States but on a global scale is something we're chasing right now.

"And I think every year we're going to continue to work on building more and more programming into the weekend so that it really does become something that you fly in on on Sunday or Monday of the week before because you have to come to see the different events that are happening Tuesday through the Sunday."

For the Austrian-born, Miami-raised Nowak, the 2026 race carries extra personal significance given it is her first year in charge of an event she has been involved with since the start.

Nowak was last September named as successor to Tyler Epp, who joined the new US-owned Cadillac team, and at 28 years old became the youngest president of an F1 race and just the second woman currently holding such role after Emily Prazer, who heads up the Las Vegas Grand Prix.

"It's been an interesting eight months, I have to say," said Nowak, who first joined the Miami Dolphins organisation in 2019.

"It has felt very natural because I was in the vice-president of business operations role, which essentially was the second in command to our former president. And Tyler still is and was a major mentor for me and just teaching me the ropes and making the transition for me very, very smooth because I was able to see behind the scenes everything that he was working on for the last two years.

"And also just absolutely grateful to (managing partner) Tom Garfinkel and (Miami Dolphins owner) Stephen Ross for making the decision to put a 28-year-old young female in motorsports and putting her in that role. I think there are a lot of people that probably would have made a different decision so couldn't be more grateful and humbled by their decision."

Not that Nowak has allowed herself chance to celebrate landing the prestigious role just yet.

"It's a bit of a crazy thing to think about how much has happened in the last eight months and I've been getting asked a lot of questions about whether I've celebrated and how historic this is. I keep saying to everybody, I'll celebrate on May 4 when I get through the race!"

Formula 1 returns from Friday with the Miami Grand Prix, the season's second Sprint weekend, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime