Hank Aaron Drive has spent the past several years becoming one of the most visibly transformed streets just south of downtown — new apartment communities, ground-floor retail, and the fresh infrastructure for MARTA's first bus rapid transit route. For two hours on a Saturday evening, it became something else entirely: a Formula 1 playground.
Red Bull Showrun Atlanta, an F1 exhibition staged in partnership with Ford Racing, took over several blocks of the Summerhill corridor from 5 to 7 p.m., drawing spectators to a free, family-friendly event built around championship-winning race cars. The course began on Hank Aaron Drive just south of Fulton Street — near the 1996 Olympic Cauldron, itself the subject of an ongoing debate about whether it should be relocated across downtown — then ran down to Georgia Avenue at Georgia State University's Center Parc Stadium before turning toward Panther Walk, a short street threading between apartment communities.
Red Bull framed the event not as a competitive race but as a showcase of speed and skill, meant to deliver a taste of elite motorsports in the heart of the city. A City of Atlanta events calendar described it as a chance to see a Formula 1 car and professional drivers up close in a demonstration of the car's speed and power on city streets. An event map showed street closures at more than a half-dozen points around the affected blocks.
The showcase arrived carrying friction. Summerhill NPU leadership said the F1 event interfered with construction progress on MARTA's Rapid A-Line, the first bus rapid transit route in metro Atlanta: installation of the red paint marking the dedicated bus lanes was halted to avoid damaging the new surface. MARTA officials said they had notified both the city and Red Bull about potential impacts to service and construction along the corridor. The event had already been relocated once — it was originally slated for Midtown near Piedmont Park before safety concerns moved it to Summerhill, according to an NPU official.
Other neighbors welcomed it, pointing to the economic boost and the attention it brought to a district that has spent the better part of a decade rebuilding itself. That tension — a corridor engineered for transit and walkability hosting a two-hour celebration of internal combustion — is a fair snapshot of where Summerhill sits right now: finished enough to be worth showing off, and still under construction.
Original reporting: Urbanize Atlanta (2026-07-27)
