Drivers fainting in the heat, a disintegrating track… and some great racing – the story of the first time F1 came to Texas

Next week Formula 1 will return to the Circuit of The Americas for the US Grand Prix – the 12th running of the race in Austin, but the 13th time F1 will have raced in Texas. F1 Hall of Fame journalist David Tremayne looks back at the first time the Grand Prix circus put on a show in the Lone Star State, back in 1984…

Remember Dallas, the popular TV soap opera of the eighties about everyday feuding oil barons? Well, when F1 first went to Texas, the whole thing smacked so much of a far-fetched storyline from the TV series that the race might as well have been held at the mythical Southfork homestead of the warring Ewing family.

Texan Buddy Boren had conceived the idea of a race in 1982 and and with the help of Long Beach GP creator Chris Pook and finance from local promoters Don Walker and Larry Wardrop, created a 2.424s-mile track in Dallas’s Fair Park, home to the annual State Fair of Texas.