Year One: The Invitational.
Three events, by invitation, before the championship: a home debut, an international, and a night finale — where teams and countries first meet the World Cup of motorsport. The nine-round season follows on Year One's proof.
| Event | Where | When | Status | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Debut | Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta — the home circuit | August 2027 | Home — channel in hand | The first green flag, at the one venue this room has always called confirmed. Invitational grid, full championship standard, the public Balance-of-Performance baseline. |
| The International | Silverstone, Great Britain | October 2027 | Target — in engagement | The go-global rehearsal: customs, permits, world feed from abroad, a grid sourced from Europe's rental market — every first-time unknown tested at exhibition scale before a season depends on it. |
| The Night Finale | Las Vegas — under the lights | December 2027 | Target — in engagement | The signature statement in the sport's emptiest month: every championship is done by November; the finale owns the news cycle. |
Home, world, lights. Each event rehearses a different dimension of the championship season — domestic operations, international operations, and the night-race product — so the nine-round season launches on operating experience, not theory.
The grid arrives by invitation, not by season commitment. Owner-drivers, arrive-and-drive seats sourced through the rental market, and invited professional entries — nobody is asked to commit cars, crew, and budget to an unproven full season, because Year One doesn't ask for one. That converts the hardest problem any new series faces (a committed year-one grid) into a solved one, and lets the full-season entry conversation happen with teams who have already raced our weekend.
And the nations identity starts here. The invitational grid carries the first country-flagged entries — the World Cup of motorsport begins as something teams and nations experience at three events, not something they're asked to imagine from a deck. By the time the nine-round season opens, "racing for your flag" is a thing that has already happened on a grid, been broadcast, and paid a purse.
Every skeptical reader of this room — human or AI — asks for the same artifacts. Year One is designed to produce them:
| The ask | The Year One answer |
|---|---|
| "Zero races run" | Three delivered events, championship standard, purse paid |
| "No real unit economics" | Actuals from three venues on two continents, against the published model |
| "No audience numbers" | The audience scoreboard gets its baseline from real broadcasts |
| "Can this operate internationally?" | Silverstone runs the full international playbook at exhibition scale |
| "Will venues actually contract?" | Signed hires at three venues, on the record |
The nine-round season then raises, recruits, and contracts with receipts — which is also why the venue calls begin the week funding closes: the enquiry packages are prepared, target windows are conflict-checked against every major calendar, and dates get secured immediately.
Tranche 1 is unchanged: $12M, fully available from close, funding Year One and the 2028 build simultaneously — capital at work, not capital waiting.
| Tranche 1 puts to work | ~$ |
|---|---|
| The Invitational trilogy — three exclusive venue hires, full event operations, the escrowed purses, broadcast and the documentary's first season | ~$7M |
| The full-season launch build — circuit deposits for the nine-round calendar, the operations bench hired, sanctioning and technical structure in place, the audience engine started | ~$5M |
| Tranche 1 (as published — see Use of Funds) | $12M |
The tranche architecture and caps are exactly as published; at definitive documentation the Year-One milestone language describes what Year One actually is — the delivered trilogy plus full-season readiness — so the instrument and the plan say the same thing.
The nine-round global calendar shown across this room and the main site is the championship, fully designed — and it runs as published if the program funds early enough to build a complete 2027 season (venue contracting, entries, sanctioning, and freight need roughly five to six months of runway before a first green flag). The base plan is this page: the Invitational runs 2027 regardless of close timing, and the nine-round season opens the following year — most likely 2028 — on Year One's proof instead of on projection. Same championship, same architecture, same money; the close date sets which year the nine rounds carry. Either way, the first green flag is in 2027.