Auto News 5

On a brisk Friday morning in mid-November, under a postcard-perfect blue sky, I'm greeted by dozens of beaming ushers dressed in crisp red, black, and white uniforms outside a pristine entrance plaza. "Welcome to Circuit of the Americas," several of them chirp as they vie to hand me a track map. For a brief, disorienting moment, I feel like I'm arriving not at the spanking-new venue for a revived United States Grand Prix but at a bizarrely friendly Austin, Texas, version of Disneyland.