The Formula E World Championship auto racing series will return to Miami in 2025
The ABB FIA Formula E World Championship will return to the Miami area in 2025 for the first time in a decade, the series officially announced Tuesday morning.
But the international electric car racing series won’t run through downtown Miami, as it did in 2015, nor at Hard Rock Stadium, as its FIA big cousin Formula 1 has the last three seasons. Homestead-Miami Speedway’s road course will host Formula E on April 12, 2025, as the fifth stop in the 17-race, 11-city 2025 season, which actually will open in Sao Paulo on Dec. 7.
The schedule, which features a Mexico City event on Jan. 11 and a six doubleheaders, including Monaco, on May 3 and 4, needs to be approved by the FIA World Mostorsport Council.
In contrast to a normal racing weekend, which features one or two days of practice, qualifying on a Friday or Saturday and the race the following day, Formula E tries to pack everything into one day to minimize regular life disruption.
Fans will “get to see the the final free practice session if they want to turn up early in the morning,” Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds said via Zoom. “They’ll get to see the full, qualifying experience. They’ll get to see the race. They’ll get to see the podium and the prize giving, and they get to interact with the Fan Village during the race the race time. So there’s a there’s definitely enough to keep you occupied for the full day.”
Dodds said he’d consider a crowd of 20,000 to 30,000 a successful event.
Racing at Homestead eliminates the logistics problems that hampered some fans’ enjoyment of the 2015 event down Biscayne Boulevard and around the Miami Heat arena. The paucity of pedestrian bridges meant it took people 20 minutes to get from one side of Biscayne to another. Also, setup problems made the event start late enough to push even the broad boundaries of Miami time.
While the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix has matured into a solid event, drawing 275,000 people over three days, Dodds says that didn’t play as large a role as you might think in Formula E returning.
“I think if Formula 1 had turned up and had a terrible experience in Miami, maybe we wouldn’t have looked at it quite so keenly as we have,” Dodds said. “But it’s an area we’ve been interested in, anyway.”
Dodds said when the Formula E series ran in Portland, “I was very surprised at last year’s race by the the warmth of the welcome we were given by the IndyCar fans, a lot of whom came to watch to the race in Portland. And, actually the race itself was very competitive, delivered the fastest average lap time and the high speed of any of our race tracks during the year.
“So, that opened our eyes a little bit to trying to work on existing successful Indy Car circuits of which homestead is obviously one. It’s hosted lots of IMSA, lots of NASCAR, lots of IndyCar,” Dodds said. “We love the idea of it being 30 minutes from downtown. Miami is a key area for sport for us. The climate works brilliantly for us, the time of year works brilliantly for us, and we’re hoping there’s enough sports fans in the Miami area that will come and give this this style of motor sport a try. So, it ticked an awful lot of boxes for us.”
Like the IMSA sports car series, Formula E will use Homestead’s road course, as opposed to using only the oval as IndyCar did during its time there and NASCAR does during its annual stops. Dodds said Formula E will alter the course to suit the cars’ power needs.
“We start [the race] with about half the energy we need to complete the race,” Dodds said. “The other half is generated during the race by breaking effectively or reversing the motor. So, we have to lay the course out to make sure that it gives us the opportunity to do that.
“So, we might put a few more turns and twists in there, or we might shorten it slightly or add sections in but we won’t know that until we get stuck into the the design process.”
The full 2024-25 schedule, subject to FIA World Motorsports Council approval:
▪ Sao Paulo, Dec. 7
▪ Mexico City, Jan. 11
▪ Diriyah, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 14 and 15 (doubleheader)
▪ Site to be determined, March 8
▪ Homestead-Miami Speedway, April 12
▪ Monaco, May 3 and 4 (doubleheader)
▪ Tokyo, May 17 and 18 (doubleheader)
▪ Shanghai, May 31 and June 1 (doubleheader)
▪ Jakarta, Indonesia, June 21
▪ Berlin, July 12 and 13 (doubleheader)
▪ London, July 26 and 27 (doubleheader)
This story was originally published June 11, 2024 at 9:04 AM.
