Next week, Formula 1 will return to Circuit of the Americas for the United States Grand Prix – the twelfth race of the race in Austin, but the thirteenth time F1 will race in Texas. F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne remembers the first time the Grand Prix Circus put on a show in the Lone Star State, back in 1984…
Remember dallasthe popular soap opera of the eighties about the daily fights between oil barons? Well, when F1 first went to Texas, it all seemed so far-fetched as the TV series story that the race could very well have been held on the warring Ewing family’s mythical Southfork farm.
Texan Buddy Boren had conceived the idea of a race in 1982 and, with the help of Long Beach GP creator Chris Pook and funding from local promoters Don Walker and Larry Wardrop, created a 2.424-mile track on the Dallas Fair Park, home of the annual State Fair of Texas.