What is all the fuss about the boats at the 2022 Miami Grand Prix?

Miami is the home of the annual Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show, one of the biggest, most anticipated and spectacular events on the annual boating calendar, and not just in the US.

As the fairly new owners behind the F1 circus, Liberty media, look for ways to enhance the F1 experience beyond just what happens on the track, the first-ever Miami race featured fake water with 10 boats docked on it.

While US media suggested the array of boats stole the show, rather they were so much like a fish out of water, excuse the pun, that they stood out from all the other colour and noise of the event.

The Miami GP track, a street circuit set up in the car park of the Miami Dolphins’ American Football League sports stadium about 30 kilometres from the Fort Lauderdale-based marina where the boat show is held each year, does back onto a canal that drains out into Biscayne Bay.

However, according to US media reports, the boats in the fake “Miamarina”, named after a nearby real-world marina, nestled in between turns four, five and six, had to be inside the circuit to reflect Miami’s reputation as the home of sun, palm trees, sand and water – all adding up to the perfect environment for motor yachts.

Tickets to get inside the marina cost up to $US9500 ($A13,500) a person, with the boats providing what its promoters, the owners of the stadium that hosts the Dolphins, said were part of a five-star experience over the grand prix weekend.

Boats have always featured prominently at Formula 1 events. Most memorable is the annual tryst at Monaco, where the cars race along roads fronting the harbour. 

In 2006, Kimi Raikkonen, sitting in second place, retired from the race after his engine caught fire. Rather than go back to the pits, he jumped the fence and sat out the rest of the race on his yacht.

Other circuits have also featured water, including the Canadian GP (the circuit is built over an island in Montreal’s St Lawrence River), the Marina Bay street circuit of the Singapore GP, Yas Marina in the UAE and the Russian GP at Sochi on the shores of the Black Sea.

Historical F1 races to feature water in close proximity include the street circuit at Detroit, Shanghai (the city is cross-crossed with drainage canals), and Valencia in Spain.

One more race to feature water prominently is the Australian Grand Prix, which winds around Melbourne’s Albert Park Lake. The shallow lake was originally built to drain the swamps that once dominated the area, but hosts a yacht club that regularly races off-the-beach dinghies.

Apart from dinghy races put on for the sake of the grand prix’s international coverage, the only other floating structure on the lake over the race weekend is a temporary floating footbridge that connects the northern side of the circuit with the southern side.

Boatsales.com.au has asked the Australian Grand Prix’s organisers if a floating hotel similar to Miami’s is likely to make an appearance at a future event.

We’ll let you know the answer.