IndyCar President reveals F1 received $40M+ taxpayer money to race at COTA

New IndyCar President Doug Boles has pulled back the curtain on the massive fee that F1 demanded to race at the Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas. He made the surprising revelation while giving a key update on a potential F1 race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

F1 last raced at the IMS in 2007, the eighth and final US Grand Prix at the world-famous track. The pinnacle of motorsport returned to America in 2012, with COTA as the new home of the US GP. The Texas circuit landed a 10-year initial contract with an annual licensing fee of $25 million to be paid to F1.

Doug Boles recently revealed how F1 raised that amount to over $40 million, which the state of Texas pays from taxpayer money. While discussing F1's potential return to race at the road course of the IMS, which is the only American road circuit other than COTA to have an FIA grade one license, he said (1:07:44 onwards via the Speed Street podcast on YouTube):

"There's two challenges to them (F1) coming back here. One of them is there are three venues already in the US (Austin, Vegas, and Miami). I don't know that a fourth makes sense, so that would probably mean one of those three races probably shouldn't be on their schedule, which I don't see happening in the near future," Boles told Conor Daly.

"And then the other one, which is probably the bigger issue, is just how much sanction fee it takes to get a Formula 1 race. Most of the races where Formula 1 goes, they get a massive amount of money from the local tourism... The state of Texas has a super fund, and so the tax dollars actually, 40-plus million dollars goes to Formula 1 to show up to race at COTA," Boles added.

Boles, who has been the longtime President of the IMS, recently doubled his stake in the sport by also becoming IndyCar's new President, replacing Jay Frye.

In 2023, Matt Patton of AngelouEconomics revealed to KVUE that F1 made an estimated $110 million in hotel impact for Texas. He estimated the overall impact of the event to be over $1 billion.

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Doug Boles doesn't want F1 'distraction' at the IMS during crucial growth phase for IndyCar

AUTO: MAY 26 NTT IndyCar Series 108th Running of the Indianapolis 500 - Source: Getty

IndyCar is entering a new era with FOX as its exclusive broadcasting partner from 2025 onwards. The media giant has replaced NBC Sports and has already made groundbreaking progress in promoting the series with amazing commercials and crossovers with its other sporting properties, like the NFL.

While Doug Boles's key concern was the financial bomb that F1 requires, he admitted how having an F1 event at the IMS at such a junction for IndyCar wouldn't be the smartest thing to do.

"The state of Indiana doesn't have that ($40 million like Texas). So that money would have to come from this racetrack and if you take $40 million and start figuring out how much ticket prices have to be in order for us to get to a point where we just break even, financially it just doesn't make sense. Would we love to have one (F1 race)? Absolutely. But we're not going to have an F1 race here that doesn't at least break even, and frankly right now our focus is how do we grow the NTT IndyCar Series, and just the distraction of an F1 race here right now probably doesn't make a lot of sense," he said on the Speed Street podcast [1:08:28 onwards].

The 2025 IndyCar season kicks off this weekend with the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 2, with 27 drivers from 11 teams battling it out to stand on the top step of the podium.