Now this next one in the news seems like it might happen. Maybe not as an additional race but as an instead of venue for the Spanish GP.
It seems just as they return the Catalunya track to something half reasonable with the burying of the Health and Safety chicane we had at the end of the lap, and returning to possibly the fastest last couple of turns on the calendar.
Worse still it is apparently all but signed we will be heading to the streets of Madrid for the Spanish GP in a couple of years after the Catalunya contract expires..
Madrid F1 race a step closer as venue boss claims deal is close
A Formula 1 race in Madrid is a step closer to reality after the boss of the proposed venue insisted that he knows when a deal will be signed.
José Vicente de los Mozos, the president of the executive committee of the IFEMA fairgrounds and convention centre located to the northeast of the Spanish capital.
Opened in 1991 IFEMA has become a major centre for conferences and conventions, and there is enough land in and around it to form the basis of a race circuit, with the existing buildings called into use.
It is operated by a consortium of public bodies, consisting of the city council of Madrid (31%), the regional administration of the community of Madrid (31%), the Madrid Chamber of Commerce (31%) and the Montemadrid Foundation (7%).
Since March it has been the host of the officially-sanctioned and well-received F1 Exhibition, which in effect has served to help the city to stake its claim for a race event. (pic below)
Of course who could forget when we last had two GPs in Spain. A nightmare. Yes, the dreadful and thankfully short lived Valencian (or European GP as it officially was tagged). Nasty.
Fernando enjoyed the last Valencia race though..... and Kimi got to drink some champagne so he was happy. And some bloke called Michael got his last ever podium there.
Thing is this Mozos bloke implies its all in place and just needs a squiggle on a piece of paper to be fact. Valencia too dreamed of it being a huge tourist magnet to the Valencian region. So much so they build a new International airport at Valencia to deal with all these potential tourists. That never materialised. I think the Valencian Mayor ended up in jail with frud charges.
“I know when we're going to sign it and when we're going to do it," said de los Mozos of a future race deal in comments reported by Europa Press.
He added: “We have followed the process indicated to us. The Spanish Automobile Federation has been informed from the first moment, we have signed exclusivity, and now we are advancing with the contract.”
He noted that the event would generate €500m for the region and that it would be “not a race, but an experience - the best in Europe.”
Barcelona has a deal to run the Spanish GP until 2026, and it’s not yet clear if the plan is for the new event to eventually take over the title, or if it will run as the Madrid GP.
Speaking to F1’s own Beyond the Grid podcast recently CEO Stefano Domenicali played down the prospects of a race in Madrid while acknowledging the sport's current boom in Spain.
“It is true that Madrid wants to host a race in the future,” he said. “And no decision has been taken so far. That's another great sign of the state of the health of F1.
"And this is the right competition that will not involve at all any political discussion, only commercial and technical and sporting discussion we'll be taking the next couple of months.
“And for the best of F1 we will take the right decision. I'm sure about it. But we need to remember that we still have years of contract with Barcelona, and we are really very, very happy with the way that Barcelona is handling the future because, of course, this has helped them to react, to push for the improvement that is needed at all levels, everywhere.
“And then this, of course, is in a moment where we have Fernando [Alonso] performing incredibly well, and we have Carlos Sainz in Ferrari. Both of them have a lot of fans.
"We see that the TV rating figure is growing incredibly well in Spain. So the market is very, very strong now. And so that's great that we have these kinds of hopes for the future.”
While Spain briefly sustained two events in Barcelona and Valencia Domenicali insisted that times have changed and that it is unlikely that it would happen again.
“In that time the business was not so big,” he said. “And [we still had] a European-centric calendar. Today we have a worldwide calendar approach, with bigger and more races, for sure.
“But I think that in Europe even in the future I'm expecting to see races where the rotational principle could be applied, but not two in the same year.”
The Madrid area previously hosted F1 when the Spanish GP was held at Jarama, to the east of the city and not much further away from the centre than the new venue.
The track first held the race in 1968, initially alternating with Montjuich Park in Barcelona, which co-incidentally like the proposed new venue was a street track adjacent to an exhibition facility.
Montjuich was closed after the tragic 1975 race and Jarama briefly became the permanent site of the Spanish GP until it held its last F1 event in 1981. The race was later revived at Jerez in 1986 before moving to its current home in 1991.
What are they going to ditch to fit two additional GP's in ? Miami please. And ditch something from the Middle East. Of course between Liberty and their lust for anything American, and the commercial side of F1 will be unlikely to give up on the many tens of millions in hosting fees they each generate.