F1 calendar expansion puts squeeze on classic races
There’s no doubt F1 is enjoying a global boom in 2022. A heady
combination of a locked-down world desperate for live events
after two years of pandemic, the Netflix smash hit ‘Drive to Survive’ and the nailbiting 2021 championship campaign decided on the last lap of the last race has proved intoxicating.
The skyrocketing crowd numbers bear out the bout of F1 mania. The sold-out Australian Grand Prix was the best attended weekend in almost 30 years and one of the most popular events in the sport’s history. Tickets for this weekend’s EmiliaRomagna GP at the historic Imola circuit have also been exhausted.
The next race, a debut event in Miami, sold its 80,000
seats in less than 40 minutes despite the cheapest tickets costing around US$640 (B21,000).
The British Grand Prix in
July has reported the fastest sell-out in its history, and even
Singapore, not until October, has already sold all its weekend grandstand tickets.
F1 plans to meet the burgeoning interest with aggressive expansion plans to ramp up the number of races with Las Vegas confirmed as a venue from 2023 and New York mooted.
Events at Zandvoort in the
Netherlands and at Imola in Italy have also been revived, and Kyalami in South Africa is
firming for a return to put F1 on every inhabited continent.
But the with calendar capped at 24 races under the current commercial agreements it’s escaped no-one’s attention that the races out of contract are all deep in F1 heartland.
Along with Mexico and France, the heritage Belgian and Monaco grands prix are all up for renewal for 2023 but are at serious risk of being dropped as the sport hasn’t been afraid to turn the blowtorch on the previous untouch
able events.
“The arrival of offers from
new promoters has an advantage for the F1 platform, and that is to force the organisers of traditional grands prix to raise their level of quality in terms of what they offer the public and infrastructure and management of the event,” F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said
earlier in the year.
“It’s not enough to have a pedigree anymore. You also have to demonstrate that you are keeping up.”
Clear is that the slack will come from Europe. With the Middle Eastern races all on very long and very lucrative contracts and with the sport’s expansion plans centred on the
US, it’s the 10-race European leg that will be downsized by either rotating among themselves or being axed altogether.
The debate between money, heritage and expansion will
only become inflamed as the difficult decisions are made, but whether it’ll be enough to derail the runaway train of F1 interest remains to be seen.