Inspired by the Gordon Bennett Cup and Circuit des Ardennes races he had competed in, William Kissam Vanderbilt II founded a series of road races in the United States. First established in 1904, the Vanderbilt Cup became an institution on New York's Long Island, attracting American and European competitors alike, but crowd-control problems caused spectator deaths and the cancellation of the 1907 event. Upon its 1908 return, the American Automobile Association did not adopt the new Grand Prix regulations of the Association Internationale des Automobiles Clubs Reconnus, leading the rival Automobile Club of America to sponsor the American Grand Prize using Grand Prix rules. The Savannah Automobile Club of Savannah, Georgia, won the rights to stage the event.
The Savannah Automobile Club laid out a 25.130 mi (40.443 km) course; Georgia Governor M. Hoke Smith authorized convict labor to build the oiled-gravel circuit and sent state militia to control the crowd. The inaugural Thanksgiving Day race featured factory teams from Benz, Fiat, and Renault; after Ralph DePalma led early before falling back, it came down to a three-way battle won by Louis Wagner's Fiat by 56 seconds. The 1909 race was pushed back, and after the 1910 Vanderbilt Cup saw fatalities the Grand Prize was cancelled, then saved at short notice by the Savannah club on a shorter 17.300 mi (27.842 km) course, where American David Bruce-Brown won for Benz by 1.42 seconds. The 1911 event returned to Savannah with the Vanderbilt Cup; Bruce-Brown triumphed again, driving a Fiat. Public pressure over convict labor and road closures pushed the 1912 race to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where Bruce-Brown was killed in practice and Caleb Bragg won after a final-lap collision with DePalma.
The Grand Prize was not held in 1913 as oval board-track racing took off. For 1914 it ran at the Santa Monica Road Race Course near Los Angeles, where Eddie Pullen's Mercer won by over 40 seconds. In 1915 it shifted to San Francisco alongside the Panama–Pacific International Exposition; with World War I underway the field was almost entirely American, and Dario Resta's Peugeot cruised to a seven-minute victory in heavy rain and mud. For 1916 the Grand Prize returned to Santa Monica as part of the AAA National Championship; both leading cars retired before halfway, and although Johnny Aitken took over a teammate's car for the win, the AAA awarded points only to Howdy Wilcox, so Resta took the championship.
The Grand Prize was discontinued after 1916, as a lack of European participation and growing American interest in oval racing pushed road racing aside. The Vanderbilt Cup was revived in 1936 and 1937 to Grand Prix regulations at the Roosevelt Park Autodrome near New York City, but domination by Bernd Rosemeyer and Tazio Nuvolari made the races a commercial failure. The Indianapolis 500 kept a connection to European racing, running to Grand Prix regulations between 1923–1930 and from 1938 until 1953; the Grand Prize trophy was awarded to its winner between 1930 and 1936, when it was replaced by the Borg-Warner Trophy. The race was included in the World Championship from 1950 through 1960.
Riverside International Raceway opened in 1957 near Los Angeles. For 1958 a USAC Road Racing Championship round there was billed as the "United States Grand Prix"; Chuck Daigh won in a Scarab, beating Dan Gurney's Ferrari. Alec Ulmann, who had founded the 12 Hours of Sebring, staged a Formula One race at Sebring International Raceway in 1959, billed as the "II United States Grand Prix" and run as the final round of the season three months after Monza. The grid included seven American drivers, but New Zealand's Bruce McLaren, in a Cooper, took his first F1 win and was at the time the youngest driver ever to win a Grand Prix, taking the lead on the last lap when teammate Jack Brabham ran out of fuel; Brabham pushed his car over the line to finish fourth and, with Tony Brooks third for Ferrari, he and Cooper took the Drivers' and Constructors' championships. The promoters barely broke even and, when prize-money checks bounced, Charles Moran and Briggs Cunningham paid the money. Ulmann moved the race to Riverside for 1960, where Stirling Moss won from pole in a privately entered Lotus; the event was again poorly received and Moran and Cunningham again paid the prize money.
In August 1961, promoter Cameron Argetsinger offered the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Race Course in upstate New York; the Automobile Competition Committee for the United States accepted, and the venue hosted the race for the next 20 years — longer than any other location — becoming known as the "Mecca" of American road racing and receiving the Grand Prix Drivers' Association award for best-organized Grand Prix in 1965, 1970, and 1971. Innes Ireland took a surprise first win at the 1961 race, the first for Team Lotus, before a profitable crowd of over 60,000. Jim Clark won in 1962, Graham Hill won the next three in a BRM, and Clark won again in 1966 and 1967. In 1968 Mario Andretti took pole on his first Formula One start, but Jackie Stewart won in a Ford/Cosworth-powered Matra; Jochen Rindt won his first F1 race in 1969, the same day Graham Hill was thrown from his cartwheeling Lotus and broke both legs. Because the race fell near the end of the calendar, organizers offered large purses, totalling $200,000 in 1969 and $275,000 by 1972.
Emerson Fittipaldi won in 1970 in just his fourth F1 start, holding off Pedro Rodríguez; the emotional win came after team leader Rindt had been killed at Monza, where he was posthumously crowned champion. In 1971 the course was reconfigured and lengthened to 3.377 mi (5.435 km), heightening the challenge; François Cevert won his only Grand Prix for Tyrrell and the biggest cash prize in Formula One to date, $267,000. Stewart won in 1972, with Cevert second for a Tyrrell 1–2. In 1973, on the weekend of his planned 100th and final Grand Prix, Stewart's teammate Cevert was killed in qualifying; Stewart and Ken Tyrrell withdrew the team and Stewart retired immediately, while Ronnie Peterson beat James Hunt by 0.6 seconds in the race. The 1974 race decided the championship in Fittipaldi's favour, but was marred by the fatal crash of Helmut Koinigg. In 1975 a chicane was added; Niki Lauda won after Clay Regazzoni was black-flagged. Hunt won for McLaren in 1976 and again in the wet in 1977, holding off Andretti's Lotus 78. Carlos Reutemann won in 1978 and Gilles Villeneuve in a wet 1979. By then the track had deteriorated and concerns mounted over the surface, security, and rowdy fans who set fires in the "Bog". Alan Jones won the 1980 race for Williams after charging from 17th, with Reutemann second; the race was initially on the 1981 calendar but cancelled when debts could not be paid.
After Watkins Glen's demise, Formula One ran briefly on street circuits in Detroit and Dallas and a Las Vegas car park; the Detroit Grand Prix lasted longest, from 1982 to 1988. In 1989 Formula One moved to Phoenix, Arizona, bringing back the United States Grand Prix name for the first time since 1980. The Phoenix Street Circuit was unpopular with drivers and largely ignored locally; built on a grid system, it consisted almost entirely of second-gear 90-degree corners. The 1989 race was held in June heat with 34,441 of 40,000 tickets sold; it then moved to March as the season opener. McLaren dominated all three years, with Alain Prost winning in 1989 and Ayrton Senna in 1990 and 1991. The 1991 circuit was revised due to a new basketball arena and seen as an improvement. In October 1991 FISA voted to cancel the contract with Phoenix; Ecclestone said poor sightlines, not attendance, were the problem. No Formula One event was held in the United States for the next nine years.
The race returned in 2000 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, using a 2.606 mi (4.194 km) infield road course running clockwise with about a mile of the oval; the crowd was estimated at over 225,000, one of the largest ever in F1. Michael Schumacher's win was his second of four straight to end the season. In 2001, three weeks after the September 11 attacks, Mika Häkkinen took his last Grand Prix win. The 2005 race became a farce when Michelin tyre problems left only six Bridgestone-shod cars to start; Schumacher won ahead of teammate Rubens Barrichello, with Tiago Monteiro third for Jordan. Schumacher won again in 2006, and Lewis Hamilton won the final Indianapolis race in 2007. On 12 July 2007 it was announced the race would not return, as the two sides could not agree on terms, and the United States Grand Prix was not on the 2009 calendar.
Various efforts to bring the race to the New York City region failed. On 25 May 2010, Austin, Texas, was awarded the race on a ten-year contract; the purpose-built track was designed by Hermann Tilke on 800 acres east of the city and named the Circuit of the Americas. After contract disputes the race was confirmed for 2012, where reigning champion Sebastian Vettel took pole but Hamilton won, finishing almost 40 seconds ahead of third. In November 2015 Texas cut nearly $6 million of the required funding; the race was confirmed to continue in March 2016, and that year was the best-attended Austin Grand Prix, with nearly 270,000 over the weekend boosted by a Hamilton–Nico Rosberg title battle and a Taylor Swift concert. The 2020 race was cancelled due to COVID-19; the race returned in 2021, and COTA is due to host Formula One until 2034.
The United States Grand Prix is the longest-running Formula One World Championship event held in the United States; four other separate F1 events have also been staged there. From 1976 to 1983, the United States Grand Prix West ran at Long Beach, California — making the United States the first nation since Italy in 1957 to hold two Formula One Grands Prix in one season. The Caesars Palace Grand Prix ran in Las Vegas in 1981 and 1982, and the Detroit Grand Prix from 1982 to 1988; the 1982 season featured three Grands Prix in the United States, the first time a country hosted more than two in World Championship history. A one-off Dallas Grand Prix was held in Fair Park, Texas, in 1984, plagued by track-surface problems in extreme heat. The first Miami Grand Prix was held in 2022, and the first Las Vegas Grand Prix took place on 18 November 2023.
From 1908 to 1916 the race was named the American Grand Prize. Six American drivers have won the United States Grand Prix, all but one when it was the American Grand Prize, which was not part of the Grand Prix calendar; Chuck Daigh also won the non-championship 1958 race at Riverside. While the event has been part of the Formula One World Championship, no American has won it, although Mario Andretti won the 1977 United States Grand Prix West in Long Beach.
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