“This is a very ‘on brand’ vision”
If you build it they will come. Or, in the case of a mooted Formula 1 street circuit for Copenhagen, if Jan Magnussen and Hermann Tilke sketch out a layout for a fast course through one of the most picturesque cities in Northern Europe, people will start to get excited.
MN’S sister title Autosport broke news of a proposed Copenhagen Grand Prix earlier this month and it quickly became apparent that this plan is much more than a ‘back-of-the-fag-packet’ sketch.
A carefully drawn course would take drivers right through the heart of the Danish capital, skirting the Parliament building (the Borgen – familiar to any fans of the Scandi political drama of the same name), shooting under the dark glass panels of the national library (The Black Diamond), before blasting on to the fringes of Copenhagen’s ‘free love and drugs’ quarter, Christiania.
The layout is two almost mile-long straights joined by a couple of hairpins and MN can confirm from a visit there 10 days ago that it would be extremely fast. A few laps on a bicycle revealed the circuit to be almost flat (in every sense) and largely uninterrupted by impediments to speed. It’s reminiscent of Baku.
Denmark has never staged a round of the world championship (though the Roskilde circuit did host F1 races in the ’60s), but the booming home popularity of Haas driver Kevin Magnussen would surely guarantee ticketing success, with fans likely attracted from across Scandinavia, Germany and northern Europe.
K-mag grins as he talks us round a map of the circuit. “It would be flat everywhere,” he says, “apart from the 90-degree section after the parliament building. Other than that it would be super-fast, but with two big braking areas, so there would definitely be some passing.”
He pauses, then shakes his head, still chuckling: “I can’t imagine racing my car around here. I mean, this is where I walk to the shops.”
In UK terms it would be the equivalent of a track based on this year’s ‘London Live’ layout while also looping in Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge. This could hardly be a more ‘on-brand’ vision in terms of Liberty’s ambition to ‘take F1 to the fans’.
It’s no coincidence that the Danish bid makes the Parliament building a key landmark: it has crossparty (though not unanimous) political support, and the would-be promoters are led by ex-government minister Helge Sander. None of this, of course, means the grand prix – tipped for summer 2020 – is nailed on, although a financial consortium, led by Lars Seier Christensen, of Saxo Bank (former investors in the Lotus F1 team), is already attracting private-sector funding which the government has pledged to match.
And if the money’s in place, then, as anyone familiar with F1 will know, wheels tend to turn…