Thirty five years after Ayrton Senna drove his McLaren to victory in the last Formula 1 Detroit Grand Prix, the event returned to the city's downtown streets.
IndyCar raced thrice more on a modified version of the track used by F1 from 1982-88, but this run ended infamously after 1991, when Mario Andretti crashed into a recovery truck and son Michael then shunted into Dennis Vitolo’s stranded car that the wrecker was trying to tow. Its time was up.
The event headed to Belle Isle – mimicking Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve as a race track on an island in the middle of the city. The good news was that it was a self-contained venue and offered a decent challenge that the drivers enjoyed. The bad news was that it was an absolute hassle for the public to access and was poorly attended. The Belle Isle race even died in 2001, but was resurrected by Roger Penske six years later and became a staple of the IndyCar Series thanks to his efforts.
Emboldened by its purchase of IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 2019, the Penske Corporation set itself the task of going a step further and returning its Detroit event beneath the shadow of the mighty Renaissance Center – seven interconnected skyscrapers that form General Motors’ global headquarters.
Penske Corporation’s president Bud Denker and Penske Entertainment’s Michael Montri were inspired by the success of the Nashville IndyCar event. And in August 2021 they put their minds to recreating the Detroit GP at its spiritual home.
Like Nashville, the key to this event is minimising disruption to locals, lest they create action groups to get it banned. That came at the cost of a shortened 1.645-mile layout, compared to the old 2.5-mile track – but it still used a few common roadways. It also meant a juggling act of city and state, as key roads Jefferson Avenue (owned by Michigan) and Atwater Street (owned by GM) needed approval, engineering studies and road repairs. For instance, the seven-eighths of a mile straight on Jefferson – where the IndyCars topped 180mph – has 162 manhole covers that all needed welding shut. The Turn 3 grandstand effectively spanned a freeway. And another fun factoid: it’s the only race track on the planet that has an international crossing literally beneath it: the Detroit Windsor tunnel connects the US and Canada.
Source: Autosport