TREMAYNE: How F1 returned to America after a decade’s absence, 25 years ago at Indianapolis

Twenty-five years ago, Formula 1 came back to the United States after almost a decade’s hiatus.

Following the inaugural F1 US Grand Prix at Sebring in 1959, and the wonderful and now much-missed Riverside in 1960, and thence Watkins Glen from 1961 to 1980, it had found a less permanent home in Phoenix from 1989 to 1991. But it wasn’t the same.

In the Arizonian event one year, a smart local writer opined: “If 35,000 people attended the race, a lot of them came disguised as empty seats.”