MIAMI GARDENS — They spent well into seven figures building a boat that will never touch the water and will be torn apart faster than the Titanic.
It’s that kind of year at Hard Rock Stadium.
A year no one could soon forget.
When the checkered flag for the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix was waved Sunday afternoon for 19-year-old Kimi Antonelli, it was the final act of a project that required 3 1/2 months of construction. But that checkered flag also served as a green light to tear down hundreds of structures before the next big thing comes to town.
That next act: merely the largest sporting event in the world. The FIFA World Cup.
That’s the story for Hard Rock Stadium this dizzying year of 2026. Prep for one monster sporting event, invite the crowd in, tear it all down. Rinse, repeat.
When the Panthers won back to back Stanley Cups, we celebrated, just as we have when the Dolphins, Heat, Marlins and Inter Miami won championships. Makes sense. On a whole different level, maybe we should take a deep breath and appreciate what is happening now, even in this playoff-less late spring.
The journey began with Indiana and Miami deciding college football’s national championship in a thriller. Then we welcomed the world’s best men’s and women’s tennis players for the Miami Open, then just hosted an F1 race that a handful of years ago would have been a pipe dream, and now we can look forward to seven World Cup matches, including a quarterfinal, that was Joe Robbie’s dream when he built this place.
It’s a lineup that can hold its own against any stadium in the country.
Katharina Nowak, president of the Miami Grand Prix, goes one step further, crediting her cast of thousands, including those who worked nights to beat the clock, with pulling off “the type of stuff we do at Hard Rock Stadium that really no other stadium does in the world.”
What? South Florida isn’t worthy of Super Bowls anymore?
Too bad the NFL doesn’t see it that way. Reports surfaced with Dolphins owner Stephen Ross saying that South Florida, once a staple in the Super Bowl rotation, is on the outs because it no longer meets the league’s requirements for the event, including insufficient hospitality space. Because the NFL is following Spirit Airlines to the poor house, you understand.
Talk about putting a damper on the weekend that not even the skies could pull off. Speaking of which, the entire race was virtually totally dry despite concerns of a deluge that led organizers to move up the start by three hours.
Once it was lights out at 1 p.m., drivers put on a dramatic show, but so did their teams with steady and conflicting forecasts. It was going to come down in buckets or not at all. Take your pick. Just hope you have the right tires for the occasion.
Antonelli had all the right answers.
“This is just the beginning,” he said during the celebration. “The road is long.”
Nobody has to tell the folks at Hard Rock Stadium. It’s one thing to pull off this chameleon act so many times within a period of 148 days, it’s another thing to do it the way Ross demands: sparing no expense. Looking around the F1 campus, you’d find about 250 structures you’ll never see for a Dolphins game.
“Everything — the infrastructure, the power, the plumbing — everything you pretty much see is temporary,” said Natalie Clark, senior director of event operations. “So all of it, that takes us 3 1/2 months to build, has to be removed, right? So we’re under the gun. Sunday night, the race finishes and we’re all very excited and then immediately we start loading out. So we have about 25 days to remove everything off of our site that has been built up for the last 3 1/2 months. And then they start building the World Cup.”
The month leading into F1 weekend turned into a sprint for the crew, including those who worked the 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. shift, refueling the machinery, chlorinating the nine pools, anything that can be done without keeping the neighbors awake. That’s the other element of these transformations that are easy to overlook.
“When the tennis tournament takes place in the last two weeks of March, we are focusing our attention further away from the stadium, because obviously we’re sensitive to noise, that the tennis players don’t experience noise in the background,” said Todd Boyan, senior vice president of stadium operations.
It’s the kind of jigsaw puzzle that makes Nowak grateful for all those hours as a kid playing Tetris.
All this work, and then they dismantle it
Nowak was the one married to the idea of building the MSC replica yacht that towered over all but the stadium itself. After she first commissioned an architect to produce a drawing, she turned up her nose at the result. She didn’t want a tugboat; she wanted luxury. She got it. Five levels including a captain’s deck on a yacht 264 feet long, 96 feet wide and about five stories high, with a 360-degree view of the track and campus. Buried below the ship is “The Underworld,” the kitchen. Sea bass has to be cooked somewhere.
“You’ve done all this work to make this incredible experience and then within minutes we dismantle it,” Clark said.
That’s the price of refusing to let a good idea go to waste.
“Anything’s possible with the right support,” Clark said.
Anything, such as setting up eight “neighborhoods” throughout the F1 campus to mimic South Florida’s eclectic communities. There was a little Little Havana. Miami Beach. Coconut Grove. And, yes, Miami Gardens. They each had their own motif and corresponding cuisine.
“Now that we’ve done the MSC Yacht Club my mind’s starting to go, ‘What else can we do that’s never been seen or done before?’ ” Clark said.
One race is over, now race begins to prep for World Cup
With the F1 leaving town, FIFA soon will arrive.
“Every minute counts here,” Clark said, explaining that FIFA expects “a clean and clear site” for World Cup preparations for the first match here, June 15. Outside of the stadium and garage, everything (including the yacht) will head into storage until next year.
Soon after the paddock inside the stadium is removed, a new batch of grass will be trucked down from Palm Beach County and stitched together by FIFA to form the World Cup playing surface. The one fortunate break is that when Robbie built the stadium, he did so with a field meeting FIFA specifications. While many stadiums are ripping out lower-level seats, Hard Rock is able to add nine rows. One wrinkle: The name “Hard Rock Stadium” will be concealed during the tournament. It’ll simply be “Miami Stadium” to meet FIFA’s restrictions regarding sponsorship.
The consolation match, on July 18, will wrap up this 6 1/2-month sports buffet. Hard Rock Stadium, the largest Airbnb in South Florida, will be occupied by its regular tenants, the Dolphins and Hurricanes.
For most of the fall, anyway.
Bruno Mars and Usher have concerts scheduled for the stadium that never rests.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: F1 Miami Grand Prix is history, World Cup next as stadium never sleeps
Reporting by Hal Habib, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
