United States

Eight Grands Prix and a Continent of Kitchens

From the Indianapolis 500 to the Las Vegas Strip, America has raced in more places than almost anyone, and it cooks with the same restless range.

No country has tried as many ways to hold a Grand Prix as the United States. Our records count 83 World Championship races there under eight different names. It began with the Indianapolis 500, which counted toward the championship from 1950 to 1960, while the United States Grand Prix arrived at Sebring in 1959, moved to Riverside and then settled at Watkins Glen, its home every year from 1961 to 1980.

The decades that followed brought street races at Long Beach, Detroit, Dallas and Phoenix, two Caesars Palace Grands Prix in 1981 and 1982, and a return to Indianapolis from 2000 to 2007. Since 2012 the United States Grand Prix has made its home at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, and with Miami joining in 2022 and Las Vegas in 2023, the country no longer settles for one race when it can have three. Two Americans have been world champion: Phil Hill in 1961 and Mario Andretti in 1978, who won 12 Grands Prix, while Dan Gurney won 4. Haas F1 Team, founded in 2014, carries an American entry on the modern grid.

American cooking grew from Native American foodways, European settlers, African American traditions and wave after wave of immigration, and it still reads like a map. New England leans on seafood and corn, with chowders and baked beans born of one pot cookery. The South builds on corn and pork, from grits and spoonbread to fluffy buttermilk biscuits with country ham. Louisiana kitchens carry French, Native American and West African influences, and the Southwest brings chili peppers, cumin and beef.

For a race weekend, the pleasure lies in choosing a region and cooking its everyday food well. A pot of gumbo, a skillet of cornbread or a bowl of chowder will each tell you exactly where in the country you are standing, no map required.

A taste of United States

Circuits

Drivers

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