Various F1 team bosses are in favour of the idea of adding a surprise race to the Formula 1 calendar from next season onwards to improve the show.

Some team managers support the idea of adding a “surprise” race to the F1 calendar to bring a little more unpredictability to the sport and thus improve the spectacle.

This year, due to the health crisis, F1 had to be creative in replacing the cancelled destinations and therefore chose to add circuits that the Formula 1 championship motorsport world hadn’t visited for a long time or even never visited before.

In 2020, circuits such as Mugello, Imola, Istanbul, Portimao in Portugal or the Nürburgring have therefore appeared on the calendar and the various team bosses would not object to one of these races being added to the calendar as a “surprise” Grand Prix.

These surprise tracks might also include old favourites such as Sepang in KL, or perhaps Indy (also mooted for a return, read more on that here).

“It’s great that F1 is going to these different venues and we have more with Istanbul and Imola. ” said Christian Horner, Red Bull Racing Team Director.

“It keeps the competition going for a place in one of the 22 races on the calendar and I think it would be nice to have some sort of invitation race once a year to go to these different tracks. ”

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff is also in favour of the idea and finds the concept very interesting.

“I think it’s an interesting new concept that was born out of the need to have more races in the COVID era, and it’s interesting. ” said Wolff.

“You can certainly see more vulnerability. Teams show up with little knowledge on these tracks, and you can see that the performance is very different from a track where we often go. 

“You come to the Nurburgring or you come to Silverstone, where we’ve been every year, so there’s not much you can optimise by just being creative or flexible in thinking, because we’ve been there so many times. ”

Haas has the exact same feeling from Guenther Steiner, who would like to be a little more unpredictable:

“I like change, if you always do the same thing, you always know the result – it’s much more predictable when you always do the same thing.

“I think it would be great if we could do a rotation if it’s commercially possible, and that’s something Formula One should look into. 

“Seeing what happened at Mugello, I am really looking forward to the Nürburgring, Portimao and Imola. ”