This weekend marks the 24th running of a Formula 1 Grand Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, Mexico — but how exactly did this beloved track come to be?
Today, we’re going to dig into the fascinating history of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, a track constructed in a public park that soon played host the the Olympics.
Mexican Grand Prix: A short history of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez
Located a whopping 7,000 feet above sea level, the 2.664-mile Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was originally designed as a thesis project by a student named Óscar Fernández.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2019, Fernández recalled his passion for combining his passion for civil engineering with his love of cars, saying: “I went to Indianapolis to study it and the Avus circuit in Berlin, and studied as much as I could from books.”
With no one at the university qualified to evaluate the viability of the circuit, it ended up in the hands of Gilberto Valenzueal, then the director of Mexico City’s public works — who was so intrigued by the design and its stunning 180-degree banked Peraltada corner that he knew he needed to turn it into a reality.
Though that corner has been scrubbed from the current iteration of the track layout due to safety concerns, the track itself was one of the first proper racing facilities in the country of Mexico, serving as a motoring hub for much of Latin America, which had only recently appeared on the international racing fraternity’s radar.
The track’s very first race took place in 1959. Called the Mexico City 500 Miles, it was appropriately won by hometown icon Pedro Rodriguez, with his younger brother Ricardo coming home in third.
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The state-of-the-art facility in the Magdalena Mixhuca Park continued to improve, and in the early 1960s, it appeared on Formula 1’s radar. At the time, in order to host a race, a track needed to contest a non-championship Grand Prix as a way to demonstrate that it was a good fit for the series.
That triumphant race came in 1962 — but, sadly, it was marred by tragedy. That aforementioned 20-year-old racing hero Ricardo Rodriguez was killed during an unofficial practice session, sending the country into mourning. The death of his brother Pedro Rodriguez in 1971 prompted the track to take on the name it still holds to this day, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
That being said, the track hasn’t always earned a comfortable reputation in the world of Formula 1. The track was scrapped from the F1 calendar after the 1970 race, after the already-unruly crowd got too out of hand; fans sat trackside and ran across the racing surface, prompting a delay to the start of the race. Later, a dog managed to run onto the track, causing damage to Jackie Stewart’s race car.
The track reappeared on the F1 calendar in 1986 after construction of a new pit complex, but again, it departed after 1992 as a result of ongoing safety concerns.
Because the track is located in a public park that doubled as the official sporting complex of the 1968 Summer Olympics, it has undergone ample renovations to draw in other elements of the park — most notably, the Foro Sol baseball complex, which arrived in 1992 and was implemented into CART’s Mexico City track layout in 2002.
In 2014, Formula 1 once again recognized the circuit, including it on its provisional calendar — but it wasn’t meant to be until the subsequent year, after a renovation by F1’s oft-hired track designer Hermann Tilke.
Under those renovations, the front stretch was slightly extended and reprofiled, with the goal being to accommodate a new media center and modern paddock. The esses between Turns 7 and 13 were modified, while the high-radius turns were trimmed back and the Fora Sol section was altered to bisect the fearsome Peraltada.
The gorgeous track is notorious for multiple reasons, including its passionate fanbase and its high altitude that makes it a unique aerodynamic challenge for the cars that hit the track — and for its history, so deeply rooted in the culture and history of the gorgeous city.
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