Formula 2 finally went Stateside in 2026 and, for a championship that sells itself as the final proving ground before Formula 1, it felt overdue. The surprise isn’t that the racing worked — it always does — but that it took a calendar crisis to make it happen.
Miami and Montreal were never meant to be part of the plan. They became emergency exits after April’s Bahrain and Saudi Arabian F1 weekends were called off amid geopolitical tensions, taking F2 with them and leaving the category staring at an ugly three-month blackout between Australia and Monaco. In a series built around rhythm — drivers learning tyre behaviour, engineers building baselines, rookies finding confidence — that kind of hole isn’t just inconvenient. It’s corrosive.
So the paddock packed up and crossed the Atlantic for the first time. Not even GP2, F2’s predecessor, managed that. Miami’s sprint went to Campos driver Nikola Tsolov; the feature race on Sunday was won by MP Motorsport’s Gabriele Minì. The results mattered, sure, but the bigger story was the feasibility test: could F2 actually operate in North America without bending itself out of shape?
Bruno Michel, the championship’s CEO, didn’t pretend this was simple opportunism. Miami in particular was a hard sell, not because of appetite, but because the weekend was already crowded with support categories.
“We’re discussing,” Michel said in Miami when asked if F2 could become a regular presence across the Atlantic. “With Montreal, we are really discussing. Miami is a bit more complicated, for one simple reason: Miami already has support races… the Porsche and McLaren trophies… and that’s why it was not easy.”
That’s the bit outsiders often miss: F2 doesn’t just “turn up” with a couple of containers and a set of tyres. It’s now welded to F1’s operational spine — the FIA systems, marshalling structures, race control setup, even the way DRS is administered. Michel was blunt about what that means for future expansion: if F2 is in America again, it’s because F1 is there too.
“We can’t do standalone anymore,” he said. “Now we’re so much intricated in the systems of Formula 1… It would be almost impossible for us, or we would not be racing the same way. I’m not sure we would have a DRS if we’re not racing with Formula 1! It’s as simple as that.”
In other words, the romantic notion of F2 filling gaps with an independent event — the sort of thing GP2 could occasionally pull off — is basically dead. The championship’s growth and professionalism have come with a trade-off: dependency.
That dependency shapes the entire North America conversation. The obvious options are the existing F1 stops — Miami, Austin, Las Vegas — and Michel namechecked that reality without dressing it up. But the practical constraints go well beyond picking a venue. Even getting Miami onto the 2026 schedule required improvised problem-solving, including creating a paddock “from zero” in a location away from the main F1 footprint.
The genesis of the North American double-header was almost accidental. Michel said he’d been in discussions with Montreal’s promoter as far back as Australia, initially about future seasons, and had dismissed a 2026 appearance because the calendar was already locked. When the Middle East rounds collapsed, the earlier conversation suddenly looked like a lifeline. From there, the logistics argument practically wrote itself: if you’re shipping freight to the continent anyway, doing two races — Miami then Montreal by truck — is the only way to make the numbers even remotely sensible.
“Quite a simple thing to think about,” Michel called it. “But after that, to organise, a more complicated thing to put together.”
F2 has chased visibility for years, yet Michel laughed when asked why North America took so long. “Logistics and money!” he said — and the laugh carried the familiar undertone of truth. These teams live on tight margins; the drivers are effectively paying customers; the season is a contract as much as it is a championship. Lose races and you’re not just trimming sporting content — you’re detonating agreements.
That’s why replacing Bahrain and Saudi Arabia wasn’t optional. F2 regulations only require a minimum of six events for a championship, so there was never a threat of the season technically collapsing. But the commercial reality is harsher: fewer rounds means thorny negotiations between teams and drivers, and a product that risks slipping from view.
“For us, it’s a big difference because we have fewer races,” Michel said. “The drivers are paying for the season. The teams have contracted the drivers for a certain number of races… it’s very important for us to deliver a calendar.”
There’s also a longer play here that F2 has talked about for years, but rarely executed: making the series feel relevant on American soil, not just available via streaming links at awkward times. Michel pointed to the potential knock-on effects — not least convincing more US-based drivers that the F2 route is for them, rather than a European detour with little cultural gravity.
He referenced American drivers already trying the ladder, and used Colton Herta as the type of example F2 wants more of. Michel’s point was less about any one driver and more about traffic flow: plenty of F2 graduates head to the US and thrive, but the pipeline in reverse has never truly opened.
Of course, none of this means F2 is about to become an American mainstay. Michel stressed the series doesn’t want to bloat beyond its current size — 14 F2 events and 10 for F3 — because the cost curve gets ugly fast. F1 might like the show that F2 and F3 bring, and promoters might like the added value, but someone still has to pay to freight a paddock across an ocean.
So Miami and Montreal may end up remembered as an emergency patch rather than the start of a permanent American swing. But even as a patch, it proved something important: when forced, F2 can move like a major championship. And now that it’s tasted North America — and North America has been reminded what F2 looks like in the flesh — it’ll be harder to argue it doesn’t belong on at least one of F1’s US weekends.
The irony is that F2 needed a crisis to reveal a route it’s probably wanted for a long time. Whether it returns by choice will depend on the same two things Michel laughed about: money, and the brutal reality of logistics.
