In its spell as F1 host, Miami has become America's Monaco - ESPN

MIAMI — Welcome to the Miami Grand Prix, America's Monaco.

Wow. As you all read that sentence, I could almost hear the seizing up of hearts and redlining of tempers among my fellow motorsports enthusiasts. It sounded like an all-at-once combination of Nigel Mansell's engine kill switch (or whatever) at Montreal in 1991 and Juan Pablo Montoya after getting knocked on the noggin by a camera operator.

This isn't a straight-up, one-for-one comparison of the two races. That would be too soon, unfair and, quite frankly, foolish. The equivalent to sizing up Oscar Piastri vs. Juan Manuel Fangio, or the Pop-Tarts Bowl vs. the Rose Bowl. However, when we do run this 4-year-old race up against its nearly 100-year-old granddaddy on the Mediterranean like one of those old-school car magazine Tales of the Tape, the event we shall all witness this weekend doesn't look as janky as those who initially called it the «Parking Lot GP» sold us back in 2022.

So, might I suggest grabbing a mojito and a pastel shirt and allowing me a moment to defend that statement of Miami as America's Monaco?

No, the Miami Grand Prix (Sunday, coverage begins at 2:30 p.m. ET on ABC and ESPN3) doesn't see Formula 1 cars streak through the waterfront streets of South Beach like they do in Monte Carlo — even after so many other races with that same title did that before, right here in the Magic City. From the 1980s all the way up to 2015, sports cars, IndyCars and Formula E wove their way around the same roads where Sonny Crockett once chased bad guys (for a history lesson on that, read here).

No, there aren't multimillion-dollar yachts floating nearby, covered in scantily clad beautiful people, bobbing up and down in 26-century-old Port Hercules, sipping