Harpoon Harry’s is a great little place in Key West, Florida. They advertise being the best breakfast in town and that must be right because I went there every day I was there. I recommend it highly to people who like a good atmosphere, friendly people and great value-for-money, which is something that is quite hard to find in this pleasant holiday town, at the southern-most point on the mainland of the United States of America. People constantly queue up next to a big bollard thing that says this, waiting to have their picture taken there.
They have a sign on the wall: “I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned”.
This is funny because in Key West roosters rule the roost – and they cross roads whenever they feel the urge. The locals expect nothing less. It’s a long story, but there was once a time when cockfighting was a big thing in Key West. This is a fairly unpleasant activity in which people gamble on roosters fighting one another. This was always popular in the Caribbean and back in the day settlers from the islands brought the tradition with them.
These days it is illegal and when the state of Florida banned cockfighting (in the 1980s) the owners of these fighting birds threw open the cages and since then the birds and their descendants have been truly free range and have roamed the streets at will, protected from harm by local law. Kill a chicken in Key West and you can get fined $500.
Key West is an interesting place – for a day or two. It used to be Florida’s most populous city, made wealthy by salvaging wrecks, sea sponges, salt, fishing and cigar manufacturing. These days it is a tourist spot where conch (pronounced conk for some reason by the locals) and Key Lime Pie come with every meal. And evenings are whiled away sipping exotic cocktail and avoiding wild chickens.
The tourist industry is down to a man called Henry Flagler, who was one of the magnates in Standard Oil (alongside John D Rockefeller). He visited St. Augustine in the north of Florida in the 1880s and realised that the state had a lot of charm, but lacked hotels and good transport. So he began investing in building hotels and then railroads down along the coast, creating what he hoped would become the American Riviera. He acquired vast amounts of land and developed communities such as Daytona Beach, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Flagler effectively created the state of Florida we know today.
When the US took over the construction of the Panama Canal in 1904 Flagler saw the potential to turn Key West into the primary port for goods for the East Coast of the US and decided to extend his railroad across the Keys, a string of islands and swamps covering 120 miles from Key Largo to Key West. The Overseas Extension, also known as Flagler’s Folly, was an astonishing railroad that literally went across the sea. It was finished in 1912 and for 23 years was the only way to get to Key West unless one went by boat or flew. Tourism began aided by famous residents such as Ernest Hemingway who sang its praises. The airline Pan American was established in Key West in 1927 to fly passengers and mail to Havana, Cuba, which was then a glamorous den of vice, thanks to America’s misguided Prohibition Laws, which did much to nurture crime and gangsterism (and NASCAR!) which drove the fun seekers offshore.
But Mother Nature was a tough opponent and in 1935 a hurricane swept through the Keys, 42 miles of the railroad was washed away (an astonishing statistic if you stop and think about it). The cost to rebuild the railway was too high to consider and, as automobiles were becoming more important, the State of Florida purchased the land and bridges belonging to the railroad and built a road instead. The Overseas Highway was born. These days more than two million visitors go to Key West each year, heading home with hats, tree shirts and all the usual junk Americans buy when on holiday.
Without Flagler, who knows what Florida would be today? Flagler’s motive was to make money and I see many parallels between him and Stephen Ross, the man behind the Miami Dolphins. Ross is the man who paid to get Formula 1 to Miami three years ago. Now he has agreed a new 10-year contract with F1 that gives the Hard Rock Stadium the longest deal today, extending to 2041. The financial details have not been made public but it has to be a commitment worth more than $1 billion. That is great news for F1, which has a stable base in the US for years to come and can add the contract to its balance sheet and raise the company value accordingly. It also means that the Miami Dolphins can invest more, in the knowledge that F1 is not going to go away any time soon. Investments can now be made to improve the venue and new ways can be created to generate revenues.
Monetizing venues is a challenge for the sport’s industry but the Dolphins are working hard at it, holding plenty of football games during the NFL season, hosting the Grand Prix and the Miami Open tennis, plus concerts, World Cup soccer games and so on. There is plenty of opportunity to do more and it will be interesting to see what happens next. The current F1 Paddock inside the stadium is not bad. It is gets very hot and the artificial grass causes endless static electric shocks and there is a problem adding a 14th hospitality unit for the new team.
So either one of the current occupants needs to go elsewhere; they need to put the existing tents outside and add an extra one; they have to build a completely new set of smaller tents and throw the old ones away; or they could build something permanent outside the stadium, which could be used for other things during the rest of the year. Perhaps they could look at what has happened in Las Vegas and add facilities that will generate year-round revenues.
At the moment, much of the circuit is dismantled after each race, although at the end of last year the Dolphins launched the Precision Drive Club, offering an ultra-luxury private club designed to monetise the Miami Grand Prix facilities. The fees for the 100 members are not disclosed but they are able to drive their own high-end sports cars on the track, along with hospitality, driver training simulators and car storage and there has been some new track laid to to shorten the F1 circuit and allow it to be used without disrupting the Turnpike access roads. It is used only 40 days a year.
All in all, the race brings huge value to the whole of south Florida and costs the public next to nothing. I have no doubt that property prices is the area are rising and that Ross can make money from that as well, just as Flagler once did.
I’m also sure that a lot of NFL franchise owners are looking at what Ross has achieved and are more than a little envious, which is why it is wise for the Dolphins to get a deal to secure the future for as long as possible into the future. Others with deep pockets might be tempted to try to do the same… With Austin’s contract up for renewal at the end of 2026, COTA might find itself in choppy waters as a result. Remember that next year IndyCar will have a race on the streets around Jerry Jones’s AT&T Stadium, home of the Dallas Cowboys, in Arlington, Texas, which is basically a copy of the Miami GP idea. Jones is an ambitious fellow and might like to try to grab F1 instead. He turned up at Monaco a year or two ago, taking a look…
Mexico has also renewed its race deal but only for three years, which suggests that both parties are nervous about the future of F1 in Mexico if Sergio Perez is not involved. Mexicans might still attend races, but I doubt there would be the same fervour.
GM had some sort of event at which they launched its F1 branding, or something like that. As far as I can tell it was basically a flashy trailer which showed nothing except rockets, girls in sunglasses and so on. Those who know about F1 think that Cadillac will be at the back next year. Who knows? But it is rather amusing to hear the driver rumours as the all-American team is thinking about hiring a Mexican and a Chinese.
If you think about geopolitics at the moment (and how touchy Mr Trump can be) this would not be a brilliant thing to do. Still, when you have an engine strategy like GM has recently announced, you know that bizarre decisions are possible.
In recent days Alpine has announced it is suspending its sales in the US, following a similar announcement from Aston Martin. The latter revealed a drop of 13 percent in its revenues in the first quarter compared to last year. The company increased its wholesale volume by one percent but the revenues dropped because there were fewer higher-priced special models sold. The company lost another £79 million, pushing up its debt load to £1.3 billion. Despite this Aston is still saying that it will hit its planned targets for the year. I am not quite sure how that will be achieved in the current economic climate, even with only 10 percent tariffs. Without the US market it is hard to see how this can happen as the US is responsible for more than 30 percent of the company’s sales and even with the existing inventory in the US (which will last until June) it will be hard to turn things around.
The departure of Jack Doohan from Alpine was predictable (if unfair) but the news that team principal Oliver Oakes was departing came as a surprise. There were lots of theories about him going to Red Bull and such things, but the truth is unrelated to F1. What is perhaps more interesting is what Alpine will do to find a replacement. You’ll always find someone willing to be a team principal but the best people will likely steer clear of Enstone. There have been a whole bunch of team principals coming and going in recent years and I still think that the team is going to be sold to the highest bidder at some point within the next couple of years. With no US sales and a delayed launch in America (because of the tariffs) the Alpine business plan is shot to pieces. Making an electric sports car company work without access to the US and Chinese markets is about as sensible as jumping out of an aircraft with someone throwing a parachute after you. Selling the whole thing (car division and all) would be a good option for Renault given that the Chinese are rolling out some pretty impressive cars at rock bottom prices these days. Building cars in France, rather than China would be a very attractive option for some car makers, although they might baulk at the troublesome French unions. If you want some idea of what the Chinese might achieve, you can always read about Xiaomi for example. Click here to see what I mean.
The other thing worth mentioning is that I noticed the other day that Lotus Cars, which is owned by Geely, has recently revived the “Team Lotus” name, bringing together its factory-supported racing programmes, partner teams, Lotus Cup championships and its driver development schemes. The company says that the revival of Team Lotus “signifies our commitment to global competition and motorsports culture”. OK, for the moment, this is all to do with GT cars but one cannot help but wonder where that might lead one day. Team Lotus was a staple in Formula 1 from 1954 to 1994 and there were some scrappy attempts to revive the name but that ended just over nine years ago. Group Lotus has been owned by Geely since 2017. Geely owns a string of other brands and is involved as a shareholder in the Aston Martin car company, of which it owns around 17 percent. For me the only logical place for Team Lotus to be is in F1, but only if it is a serious effort, with big money behind it.
I could write a great deal about motorsport’s political machinations but most fans are not really interested. They just want the sport to be run well, without too much intrusion from the governing body.
After four decades in the sport, I am convinced that in the end people get what they deserve – karma is a real thing. Some people in power end up being frightened by shadows, fearful that they will be exposed and surrounded by people they know they cannot trust. They all have things that they don’t want the world to know – and they are frightened that it may all one day unravel. It usually does… They may be rich beyond compare but they end up alone and friendless. Success only has value if it was achieved in the correct fashion. If you cheat, you cheat yourself most of all.
I prefer to use my energy on the positive and good people that abound in this great sport. And on that subject, I asked Carlos Sainz a month ago in Bahrain if he wanted to be the FIA President, having heard a quiet whisper on the subject. He was a little surprised, I felt, but said he was happy with his life as it was. He didn’t say no, but I chose not to write anything – because I was not sure he would do it. I suppose that goes to prove that sometimes one CAN be too quick to discover the best stories…
In the meantime, I need to talk to Ollie Oakes…
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