F1's US Strategy: A Discarded New York Option, a Calendar Locked to 2041, and an Unaudited '300 Partners' Claim

The heaviest number at the Autosport Business Exchange was not a lap time. Chase Carey, 72, Formula 1's chief executive from 2026 to 2026, told the panel that during the early planning of the American expansion, three cities were on the table: New York, Miami and Las Vegas. Miami and Las Vegas are on the calendar. New York is not, and in Carey's own words it was "realistically recognised as not going to happen."

The headline built on that quote — that F1 targeted a third US city alongside Miami and Las Vegas — sits in the same report as the sentence that contradicts it. "Targeted" implies live intent. The body says the option was assessed and rejected. That is the first red flag, and it belongs to the desk, not the reporter.

The real anomaly is elsewhere. On the same panel Carey gave a figure: F1 has "about 300 partners", of whom "over half are US-based." That is the number the entire American thesis rests on, and it is the number for which no definition was offered, no audit was performed, and no challenge was raised.

The shape of the panel, and the story buried in paragraph seven

Autosport convened the event and Autosport reported it, including its own judgement that the panel line-up was "impressive." On stage were NASCAR's Tim Clark, Penske's Jonathan Gibson, General Motors' Mark Reuss and seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson. This was not an F1 team-politics briefing. It was a commercial networking platform across four American motorsport streams, where the people sharing a stage were also competing for the same sponsor dollars and the same broadcast attention.

And in paragraph seven of that report sits the item that should have reached the headline and did not: Christian Horner's first US public appearance since leaving Oracle Red Bull Racing. A recently departed championship-winning team principal, in New York, alongside GM and Penske executives on a business panel, is not a signal of a return to a pit wall. It is a signal of executive repositioning into the commercial and management talent market. The report records the appearance; it does not record the purpose.

What lands on my desk

In 2026 I built Force India's standardised race-weekend pack for the engineering office at Silverstone — fourteen metrics: tyre degradation curve, dirty-air loss per corner, undercut window, pit-stop delta. It went live at the Spanish Grand Prix and ran all twenty rounds. Debrief time fell from ninety minutes to twenty-five. That season gave me a rule I have not broken since: if I cannot name the metric and its source, the sentence does not get published. A standardised pack is never neutral; it decides what gets counted. That is exactly the question this report leaves open. What was counted to reach 300?

Reconciliation one: headline against body

Carey said that "at that point" only three locations made sense — New York, Miami, Las Vegas — and that these were "iconic locations that wow people." That is the post-hoc rationalisation of a completed decision set, delivered by the man who made the decision. It omits the earlier American attempts the report never mentions, notably the abandoned New Jersey/Port Imperial project of the early 2010s. This does not make Carey dishonest. It makes "only three" a historical footnote rather than a live plan.

Reconciliation two: nobody asked what 300 means

In paddock convention, "partner" means the 20 to 30 official sponsors. Three hundred cannot be a count of sponsorship contracts. It almost certainly aggregates licensees, promoters, broadcasters, hospitality clients and suppliers — a large-looking number with no single meaning. The figure is pending verification. Until it is broken down into genuine global sponsors versus regional licences, the line about "over half US-based" should be read as a concentration signal, not a strength signal.

Reconciliation three: 8.3 percent of the calendar, locked for eleven to fifteen years

Miami's deal runs to at least 2041; Las Vegas through 2037. Two of twenty-four slots — 8.3 percent — are fixed for the next eleven to fifteen seasons. The effect is not on racing but on bidding: any venue wanting in, whether a fourth US round or a new European or Asian one, has already lost negotiating leverage. This is not calendar commerce. It is calendar administration.

Reconciliation four: dependence on a single national advertising market

If more than half of 300 partners are US-based, F1's commercial base is tied to one country's advertising cycle. Carey presents this as strength. I read it as correlation risk. In 2026, when Force India entered administration and I was retained for eleven days, I mapped every constructors' point from 2026 to 2026 against spend, headcount and wind-tunnel hours. The memo went into the data room and the Stroll-led consortium bought the team. That summer taught me that a team dies of its balance sheet before it dies of its lap times. Fifty percent-plus exposure to one market is the same lesson at a larger scale.

Reconciliation five: the engineering bill for street venues

This is not in the report; it is my framing. Two of the three chosen locations are street or semi-permanent facilities, and the engineering consequences are known: low baseline grip, an evolving surface, minimal run-off. A November night race in Las Vegas puts atypically low asphalt temperatures against tyre warm-up and graining behaviour. Three US rounds plus a compressed calendar raise freight and personnel load, and operational error rates at street venues have historically risen with that load. This is inference, not a claim, and I am logging it at low confidence.

Reconciliation six: the question the report does not ask

Why New York failed is not stated anywhere — not land, not permits, not resident opposition, not funding, not circuit layout. That is the single largest informational hole in the piece. There is also no FIA voice in the report at all, despite calendar additions formally requiring FIA sporting approval. The entire narrative attributes agency to one party: the commercial rights holder.

The counter-audit: write the null hypothesis first

My method is to write the boring answer down first and then test how far the evidence beats it. Null hypothesis: this is a former executive validating his own record at a trade event, containing no new information.

The evidence does not fully beat it. Exactly one datum is new — that New York was one of the three considered. Everything else is framing. And even that datum cuts both ways: it does not prove the US strategy was correct, only that an option was considered and dropped. Correlation and causation are not separated here. Two races running and two long extensions is not a vindication of site-selection logic; the US advertising cycle, post-Netflix audience growth and premium hospitality demand are external causes the report never isolates.

The model misses here too, and I will publish the residual rather than hide it: models do not capture human decisions. Carey is 72, more than three years removed from the chair, speaking at a trade event — his purpose is legacy, not audit. Horner in New York is the same category: not a seat, but the direction of a seat. Putting either of those human variables into a model would be dishonest.

One more reading, at low confidence: the New York revelation functions commercially as scarcity marketing. It establishes that the two chosen venues beat an "iconic" alternative, which supports their premium pricing with sponsors. That is interpretation, not fact, and it is logged as such.

What to watch next

Whether a fourth US round arrives is not a commercial question but a governance one, because two of twenty-four slots are shut until 2041 and 2037. What I will track: whether FOM ever publishes a breakdown of the 300 partners; Miami's 2026 attendance and broadcast numbers; and whether a current official ever reopens New York — the topic was raised by a former CEO, not the incumbent, and that silence is the loudest signal in the piece. Based on twenty-six years of watching this paddock, what gets announced is rarely what gets counted. The question is not which city was third. The question is why it became necessary to say so now.