Circuit of the Americas scores 39/100 (Low) on BaseScore for Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. See the crime mix, heatmap and emergency resources.
| Category | Score | Severity |
|---|---|---|
| Robbery | 51 | |
| Sex Offenses | 48 | |
| Vehicle Theft | 43 | |
| Theft from Vehicle | 43 | |
| Violent Crime | 42 | |
| Burglary | 40 | |
| Drug & Alcohol Violations | 40 | |
| Aggravated Assault | 40 | |
| Property Crime | 37 | |
| Vandalism | 35 | |
| Regulatory Offenses | 35 | |
| Theft | 34 | |
| Fraud | 34 | |
| Simple Assault | 32 | |
| Shoplifting | 22 | |
| Homicide | 21 |
Based on Base Operations benchmark data, this score of 39 is comparable to Burlington, VT (38), comparable to Bend, OR (37), and comparable to Bozeman, MT (37) among US cities.
Low Risk Tier (30–50)
Violent crime is rare, with low levels of petty theft or vandalism. High perceived safety and strong social control.
Recommended posture: Baseline precautions and minimal behavioral adaptation.
Circuit of the Americas (Austin, US) carries a BaseScore of 39/100 (Low), placing it in the same risk tier as Burlington, VT, Bend, OR, and Bozeman, MT. This assessment covers the 1.5-mile venue radius for October 2025–September 2026, ahead of the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix on October 23–25, 2026.
Circuit of the Americas operates within a Low-risk (39/100) security environment, comparable to small US cities with minimal violent crime. The 12-month dataset (October 2025–September 2026) shows 35 total incidents concentrated in property crime, with no recorded assault or drug offenses in the immediate venue radius.
The Circuit of the Americas 1.5-mile radius recorded a BaseScore of 39/100 (Low), placing it in the 1st quintile of US venues and statistically comparable to Burlington, VT (38), Bend, OR (37), and Bozeman, MT (37). The 12-month dataset (October 2025–September 2026) contains 35 total incidents with clear categorical dominance and a notable seasonal pattern.
This assessment analyzes data from October 2025 through September 2026 for the 1.5-mile radius surrounding Circuit of the Americas (COTA), ahead of the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix on October 23–25, 2026. The venue carries a BaseScore of 39/100 (Low), comparable to Burlington, VT (38), Bend, OR (37), and Bozeman, MT (37), placing it well below the threshold where violent crime becomes the governing risk factor. Property crime, principally theft, is the dominant pattern in the available data.
Source confidence: Low — General analytical context — limited direct source coverage.
The Formula 1 United States Grand Prix returns to Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, running October 23–25, 2026. The event is one of the largest annual sporting spectacles in the United States, historically drawing crowds in the hundreds of thousands across the three-day race weekend, including practice sessions, qualifying, and the main Grand Prix. COTA sits in southeastern Travis County, roughly 1.5 miles from this assessment's analysis radius center, in a semi-rural/suburban area with large surface parking fields, grandstands, a paddock/VIP zone, and an adjoining amphitheater used for concurrent concert programming. Attendance draws a mix of international visitors, corporate hospitality guests, and VIP/paddock-club clientele, creating a layered crowd-management and access-control environment across multiple consecutive event days.
Source confidence: Medium — Supported by validated sources, with limited direct corroboration.
Circuit of the Americas is located in southeastern Travis County, outside Austin's dense urban core, in a landscape characterized by open land, highway corridors, and low-density commercial development rather than dense residential neighborhoods. This geographic separation from downtown entertainment districts is a relevant factor: Austin's most frequently reported crime concentrations — the North Lamar/Rundberg corridor, the East Riverside apartment belt, and the 6th Street nightlife district — sit well outside the immediate 1.5-mile venue radius (austincrimes.com). This suggests baseline ambient crime exposure in the immediate venue vicinity is lower than in Austin's core entertainment zones (Medium confidence).
The venue's primary infrastructure dependencies are road-based: SH-130 and US-183 serve as main arteries for the large volume of race-day vehicle and shuttle traffic, and the surrounding area includes extensive surface lots that function as the principal ingress/egress points. Austin-Bergstrom International Airport lies roughly 8–10 miles to the northwest and sees a measurable surge in private and commercial air traffic during the race weekend, warranting coordination with airport-adjacent security and ground transportation partners (Medium confidence).
Demographically, the immediate area is sparsely populated relative to the scale of event attendance, meaning the temporary population influx during race weekend vastly exceeds local residential density. This dynamic shifts the primary security burden toward traffic management, perimeter control, and crowd flow at a purpose-built venue rather than pre-existing neighborhood crime dynamics. Austin's broader auto-theft and break-in patterns, concentrated in dense commercial parking areas and entertainment districts, are instructive for massive temporary parking fields at COTA, where vehicle break-ins and theft from unattended cars represent a plausible opportunistic risk during the multi-day event (Medium confidence) (austincrimes.com).
Source confidence: High — Backed by validated Base Operations threat data.
Data for the Circuit of the Americas 1.5-mile radius covers October 2025 through September 2026 and reflects a reported total of 35 incidents across tracked categories, dominated by Theft (26), Vandalism (6), and Robbery (3). This is a low-volume environment overall, consistent with the area's Low-tier BaseScore of 39, and no violent crime or assault incidents appear in the available dataset for this period (Confidence: Medium, limited to reported data categories).
Month-over-month incident counts show a cyclical pattern rather than a sustained trend: an October 2025 peak of 12 incidents coincided with the prior year's major event calendar at the venue, followed by a decline to 5 in November 2025. Counts fluctuated modestly through the winter and spring (8 in December, 9 in January, 5 in February, 8 in March), then rose again to 11 in April 2026 before trending downward through summer into a low of 4 by September 2026 (Confidence: Medium).
This pattern suggests incident activity around the venue may correlate with scheduled large-attendance events rather than reflecting a steady baseline crime rate, though the data provided does not break out event-specific dates to confirm causation (Confidence: Low). No multi-year comparison is available, limiting assessment of longer-term directional change. Notably, the October 2025 count represents the highest single month in the 12-month window, which is relevant context given the recurrence of the Grand Prix in October 2026 (Confidence: Medium).
Source confidence: High — Backed by validated Base Operations threat data.
Property crime is the defining characteristic of the current threat picture within 1.5 miles of Circuit of the Americas, with theft accounting for 26 of 35 total recorded incidents (approximately 74% of all reported activity). This pattern is typical of a Low BaseScore (39) environment, where opportunistic property crime — not violence — drives the risk profile. Vandalism (6 incidents) and robbery (3 incidents) represent secondary but comparatively minor contributors (Confidence: Medium).
No incidents of assault, sexual assault, drug offenses, or broader violent crime appear in the provided chart data, despite these being flagged as primary industry-relevant categories for entertainment and large-event security planning. This absence should be read as a gap in the current reporting window rather than confirmation of zero risk, particularly given that large-scale events such as the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix draw dense crowds, alcohol consumption, and high-value personal property — all factors that elsewhere correlate with elevated theft and petty crime exposure (Confidence: Medium). Monthly data indicates incident counts are variable rather than steadily rising or falling, with the most recent three months (July–September 2026) trending at or below the 12-month average, suggesting no emerging escalation pattern ahead of the October 2026 event window (Confidence: Medium).
For event security planning, the practical implication is that theft — including vehicle break-ins, bag theft, and opportunistic pickpocketing in dense crowd zones, parking areas, and transit corridors — represents the most probable property-crime concern, while robbery's lower but nonzero incidence warrants baseline vigilance at access points and after-dark pedestrian routes. Broader Austin-area reporting has highlighted citywide attention to entertainment-district safety coordination between police and venues, reflecting a general municipal focus on crowd-event security planning (fox7austin.com). Standard commercial precautions and property-crime controls, consistent with the Low risk tier, appear proportionate to the data, though temporary event-driven crowd density should be factored into access control and bag-check planning (Confidence: Medium).
Source confidence: Medium — Supported by validated sources, with limited direct corroboration.
No specific, credible, or recent terrorism plots targeting Circuit of the Americas or the Austin Grand Prix have been identified in available reporting. Broader industry threat analysis for 2026 notes that large public events and gatherings remain a persistent target category for extremist actors and that critical infrastructure has faced increasing hybrid physical/digital attacks amid heightened geopolitical tension globally (securitas.com). This is a general industry-wide trend rather than an Austin- or COTA-specific indicator (Medium confidence).
High-profile international sporting events with large crowds, international VIP attendance, and global media coverage generically carry elevated symbolic value for both international terrorist organizations and domestic extremist movements, a standing baseline consideration for major motorsport events rather than a reflection of specific intelligence on this race (Low confidence). No named threat actor, cell, or attack has been linked to COTA or Austin-area motorsport events in the sources reviewed.
Given Austin's Low BaseScore (39) and the absence of documented terrorism-related incidents in the research base, terrorism risk at this event should be treated as a standing, low-probability/high-consequence planning category typical of any major international sporting event, rather than an elevated or location-specific threat (Medium confidence). Event organizers typically coordinate with federal partners (FBI, DHS) for SEAR-level designation and threat briefings ahead of events of this scale; no such designation was identified in open-source research reviewed for this report.
Source confidence: Medium — Supported by validated sources, with limited direct corroboration.
General context — limited source coverage for this section.
No activist campaigns, protest movements, or civil unrest activity specifically targeting the Circuit of the Americas or the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix were identified in available sourcing. Large-scale motorsport and entertainment events can draw attention from several recurring categories of activism nationally and globally: environmental groups objecting to motorsport's carbon footprint, labor or community organizations raising concerns about event impacts on surrounding areas, and advocacy groups leveraging high-media-visibility events for unrelated causes. Industry reporting notes that boycott, divestment, and sanctions-style campaigns and brand-targeted activism are a growing trend affecting major public events and sponsor-heavy gatherings generally (securitas.com), a dynamic relevant to a globally broadcast, sponsor-intensive event like the US Grand Prix (Confidence: Low).
Given the absence of location-specific protest history in the research base, event planners should treat activism risk as a general planning consideration rather than an elevated threat. Monitoring of social media and local permit filings in the weeks before the October 23–25, 2026 event window is a reasonable low-cost measure. No credentialed activist organization or recurring demonstration pattern tied to COTA or Austin motorsport events was found in sourcing reviewed for this assessment (Confidence: Low).
Source confidence: Medium — Supported by validated sources, with limited direct corroboration.
General context — limited source coverage for this section.
No cyber incidents or threat campaigns specifically targeting Circuit of the Americas, the US Grand Prix, or Austin's entertainment sector were identified in available sourcing. Security industry analysis for 2026 broadly notes that major public events increasingly face combined physical-and-digital threats, with hostile actors using digital intelligence gathering, malicious advertising, and information leaks to plan or amplify disruptions against high-profile gatherings (securitas.com) (Confidence: Low).
Ticketing platforms, mobile credentialing systems, and point-of-sale/vendor payment networks at large international events are generic targets for phishing and fraud schemes that exploit high transaction volume and attendee urgency, consistent with general phishing and malware patterns described in standard cybersecurity guidance (support.microsoft.com). Austin's active cybersecurity community, reflected in state and regional security conferences held in the region, indicates institutional awareness of digital threats but does not itself constitute evidence of elevated risk to this event (xcelevents.swoogo.com) (Confidence: Low). Event organizers should apply standard credential, payment, and network-segmentation safeguards as baseline practice.
Source confidence: Medium — Supported by validated sources, with limited direct corroboration.
No organized criminal groups, gangs, or named threat actor organizations were identified in available sourcing as specifically active at Circuit of the Americas or targeting the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix. Reporting on Austin's broader entertainment-district crime dynamics centers on opportunistic, volume-driven property crime — auto theft and vehicle break-ins — clustering around dense apartment complexes, commercial parking lots, and nightlife zones such as 6th Street, rather than coordinated criminal enterprises (austincrimes.com) (Confidence: Medium).
Downtown Austin's entertainment district has experienced episodic violent incidents, including shootings, prompting a joint initiative between the Austin Police Department and bar operators focused on violence-prevention training and active-shooter preparedness (fox7austin.com). This activity is geographically distinct from COTA, located outside the urban core, but illustrates that localized, often alcohol- or dispute-driven violence rather than organized threat-actor activity is the dominant pattern in Austin's nightlife-adjacent environments (Confidence: Medium).
For a large-scale international event drawing dense crowds, standard event-security risk categories — individual opportunistic thieves, ticket and merchandise fraud operators, and isolated interpersonal-conflict actors — are more probable than organized gang or extremist group involvement, consistent with the location's overall Low BaseScore of 39. No evidence of cartel, motorcycle club, or extremist cell presence specific to this venue or event was found in sourcing reviewed (Confidence: Low).
Source confidence: Low — General analytical context — limited direct source coverage.
Local Emergency Number: 911 (police, fire, medical)
Nearest Major Hospital: St. David's South Austin Medical Center, 901 W Ben White Blvd, Austin, TX 78704, is the closest full-service trauma hospital to Circuit of the Americas (COTA), located roughly 15-20 minutes north of the venue via US-183 and Ben White Blvd depending on event-day traffic congestion. Main line: (512) 447-2211. For event weekends, on-site medical and trauma units are typically staged directly at COTA per standard motorsport-event protocols; advance teams should confirm current on-site medical tent locations with event organizers.
Nearest Police Resource: Austin Police Department Southeast Substation/District, serving the COTA area, coordinates with Travis County Sheriff's Office for venue perimeter and traffic control during major events. Direct non-emergency APD line: (512) 974-5000.
Nearest US Consulate Resource: Austin does not host a foreign consulate relevant to most domestic VIP movements; international delegations should route emergency consular needs through their home nation's Houston consulate network or the U.S. Department of State's Overseas Citizens Services line at 1-888-407-4747 for guidance.
Medical Evacuation Considerations: Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, approximately 20-25 minutes from COTA, supports fixed-wing air ambulance access; rotary-wing medevac landing zones are standard at large-scale motorsport events and should be confirmed with race organizers' medical operations plan. Given F1 weekend traffic volumes, advance teams should pre-identify alternate ground routes to St. David's South Austin and confirm on-site AMR/EMS staging locations.
Facility details are based on publicly available information and may change. Verify addresses and operating hours before travel.
Source confidence: Medium — Source list and methodology statement included below.
| Category | Incident Count | Share of Total |
|---|---|---|
| Theft | 26 | 74% |
| Vandalism | 6 | 17% |
| Robbery | 3 | 9% |
| Total | 35 | 100% |
| Month | Incident Count |
|---|---|
| Oct 2025 | 12 |
| Nov 2025 | 5 |
| Dec 2025 | 8 |
| Jan 2026 | 9 |
| Feb 2026 | 5 |
| Mar 2026 | 8 |
| Apr 2026 | 11 |
| May 2026 | 8 |
| Jun 2026 | 10 |
| Jul 2026 | 8 |
| Aug 2026 | 6 |
| Sep 2026 | 4 |
| Location | BaseScore | Tier |
|---|---|---|
| Circuit of the Americas, Austin | 39 | Low |
| Burlington, VT | 38 | Low |
| Bend, OR | 37 | Low |
| Bozeman, MT | 37 | Low |
The Base Operations dataset for this location covers three reported categories (theft, vandalism, robbery) over a 12-month window and does not include assault, sexual assault, drug offense, or violent crime incident counts, despite these being flagged as primary industry-relevant categories for entertainment/event security. This is treated as a reporting gap, not a confirmed absence of risk. No multi-year trend data was available, limiting longer-term pattern analysis, and event-specific date tagging was not present in the dataset, preventing direct confirmation of causal links between large events and incident spikes.
This assessment integrates Base Operations quantitative threat data with qualitative intelligence from open sources collected via deep research AI agents. Confidence levels reflect source reliability: High (government/Base Operations verified data), Medium (multiple corroborating sources), Low (single source/extrapolated). AI agents can provide incorrect or misleading information. To ensure up to date accuracy of threat assessment, analyze the latest data in Base Operations.
Primary Data Source:
Web Research Sources:
Answered directly from this assessment's Base Operations data. Questions reflect what people actually search about this venue.
Circuit of the Americas scores 39 out of 100 on BaseScore — the Low tier, alongside Burlington, VT (38), Bend, OR (37), Bozeman, MT (37).
At Low (30–50), violent crime is rare, with low levels of petty theft or vandalism. Only 35 categorised incidents are logged inside the radius for this period, so read the BaseScore and the hex grid as the reliable signals and the category counts as indicative.
Risk is not uniform — the 55 sampled hex cells range from 1 to 55, with a median of 36.
0 cells score 70 or above and 51 sit below 50, so conditions vary block to block rather than across the area as a whole. The interactive heatmap above shows where the higher-scoring cells sit relative to the venue.
Theft leads the recorded categories, at 74% of logged incidents — Theft (26), Vandalism (6), Robbery (3).
These counts come from a small sample (35 categorised incidents), so treat them as indicative of the mix rather than a full incident census. The BaseScore is the more dependable signal of the area's profile.
Monthly recorded volume ranged from a low of 4 (Sep 2026) to a high of 12 (Oct 2025) across the assessment window.
The assessment reports this as a trend series rather than a forecast. A major event concentrates crowds regardless of where the baseline sits in that cycle.
No specific, credible, or recent terrorism plots targeting Circuit of the Americas or the Austin Grand Prix have been identified in available reporting. Broader industry threat analysis for 2026 notes that large public events and gatherings remain a persistent target category for extremist actors and that critical infrastructure has faced increasing hybrid physical/digital attacks amid heightened geopolitical tension globally (securitas.com).
General context — limited source coverage for this section. No activist campaigns, protest movements, or civil unrest activity specifically targeting the Circuit of the Americas or the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix were identified in available sourcing. Large-scale motorsport and entertainment events can draw attention from several recurring categories of activism nationally and globally: environmental groups objecting to motorsport's carbon footprint, labor or community organizations raising concerns about event impacts on surrounding areas, and advocacy groups leveraging high-media-visibility events for unrelated causes.
Local Emergency Number: 911 (police, fire, medical) Nearest Major Hospital: St. David's South Austin Medical Center, 901 W Ben White Blvd, Austin, TX 78704, is the closest full-service trauma hospital to Circuit of the Americas (COTA), located roughly 15-20 minutes north of the venue via US-183 and Ben White Blvd depending on event-day traffic congestion. Main line: (512) 447-2211.
BaseScore is a 0–100 threat score normalised for population density and weighted by crime severity, so locations compare like for like across cities and countries.
This assessment sampled a 1.5-mile radius around Circuit of the Americas over 2025-10-01 → 2026-10-01. The 30–50 band is Low. Below 70 property crime is the primary driver of risk; at 70 and above violent crime becomes the governing factor.

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