F1 supremo to ditch controversial race venue – The 2025 Formula One season is under way in a fashion we’ve not seen previously. The flyaway races are usually a slow burn at the start of each season with the momentum starting to build as the European season gets under way. For the first time in F1 history, this year’s schedule has slated the first five Grand Prix to take place across just six weekends as the sport returned to Australia for the opening race which was swiftly followed by the rest of the Pacific rim events and two of the four middle eastern races will be complete come this weekend in Saudi Arabia.
Much unreported is the fact that Formula One has reacted to being forced to hold the opening two Grand Prix in 2024 on a Saturday. This was because Saudi Arabia demanded the change due to the Islamic Ramadan celebrations taking place in March that year. The timing of the Holy 29-30 days is calculated on the expected sighting of the new crescent moon in the Islamic calendar.
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However, unlike the Gregorian calendar used by most of the non-Islamic nations, the islamic calendar is shorter than 365 days which means each year the Ramadan celebrations shift forwards by approximately 10-12 days. Of course this coming weekend is the Christian celebration of Easter, yet ironically on the Sunday where the resurrection of Christ is celebrated, F1 will be racing in the Islamic nation of Saudi Arabia.
To date there do not appear to have been widespread protests across the Christian world over the timing of racing cars hurtling around the Jeddah track because its in competition with the most sacred days in the Christian calendar where Holy Communion is shared.
Bahrain had become the traditional F1 season opener for two reasons. First it is now where the F1 teams perform their winter testing schedule and is therefore it is the most convenient location to hold the first event of the year and secondly the prancers were prepared to pay a premium of around $10m to host the curtain raiser on the coming year of Formula One racing.
Even though Ramadan affects the Bahrainis in a similar fashion to the Saudi’s, they did not consider it necessary for the race to be rescheduled from a Sunday, even though the country’s population majority is Muslim. Yet due to F1 rules stating each Grand Prix must be at least seven days apart, by shifting the Saudi event to a Saturday meant the Bahrain Grand Prix also had to be moved.
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Middle East F1 attendance like a minor UK football team
As already mentioned, the middle east now has four of the twenty four F1 weekends each year, yet this is not due to demand from the local population but rather because the Arab nations are associating more and more with western sporting events in an attempt to drive tourism to their oil dependent economies.
Yet the reality is the interest from thee regional residents is minimal when compared to the European heartlands where F1 was born. This year Bahrain celebrated its biggest ever weekend attendance, up by 5,000 from 2024. Race day attendance at the Sakhir circuit was declared at 37,700 last weekend, a new single day record crowd for the event and a whipping increase of 700 from the 2024 race day figure of 37,000.
Saudi Arabia refused to publish official attendance figures in 2024, although it was suggested by the organisers that some 150,000 folk ‘watched’ the even in Jeddah across the weekend. Saudi were not the only ones to refuse to reveal their F1 attendance numbers in 2024 as neither did Azerbaijan, Austin, and Monaco.
Whilst Monaco traditionally doesn’t release this information, it could be assumed in almost all other cases that a refusal to publish figures is admittance of a decrease in attendance. In 2023 Texas experienced extremely hot temperatures for the USGP and a disastrous failing of the organisation failed to offer vital shade and essential water which led to a number of people being taken unwell.
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Despite the official F1 media failing to report this properly, clearly word of mouth got out and the numbers in Austin were significantly less last season than were seen the previous year. This year COTA organisers are extremely concerned at present given the trade war being waged by US president Donald Trump who has identified Mexicans as pariahs affecting the US economy. Almost a third of visitors traditionally travelling to the F1 race in Austin, make the 90 or so minute journey by aeroplane from Mexico.
Yet the Formula One calendar is not a meritocracy decided by the fans popularity of each particular event and so the middle eastern races, with the exception possibly of the season finale in Abu Dhabi, are by comparison to others not particularly well attended. Yet now one sixth of the F1 racing each year takes place in a region with little or no history of a love for motorsport.
Given the races in Europe are not hosted by those who intend to drive tourism and the propaganda of a visitor friendly global image, they are less dependant on sovereign wealth to pay the hosting fee to F1. Ticket prices are often more expensive in the heartlands of F1 but the crowds are exponentially greater than those in places like Azerbaijan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
In 2024, the British Grand Prix reported a weekend attendance just in excess of half a million people, second only to the record 520,000 to attended the 1995 Australian Grand Prix. Silverstone is now truly the home of F1 for race goers and given eight of the ten F1 teams are headquartered within an hour or so of the Northamptonshire circuit this is hardly surprising.
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Europe the powerhouse for F1 fan engagement
TV audiences which generate more than 25% of F1’s income are also huge in Europe, whilst the rest of the world is in single digit percentages. The latest figures suggest the global TV audience is 750m a year, with the much lauded doubling of those watching in the US now around 45m, a similar number to the US viewership for the Indycar series.
The F1 teams have negotiated under the Concorde agreement – which binds the FIA, F1 and the teams contractually – that a minimum of one third of the F1 events each year must be held in its European heartlands. To ensure this number was achieved around a decade ago, Bernie Ecclestone preciously designated the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as in Europe, although it is the wrong side of the Ural Mountains to geographically qualify.
Yet now as with F1 around the world, European interest is resurgent and with more than 80% of the global TV audience, it remains the powerhouse for the sport in terms of fan engagement. The 2025 F1 calendar lists ten European races of the twenty four, yet for the F1 money men this is prEoblematic given the lack of need to promote the countries for tourism purposes by wealthy sovereign funds. The result is that despite ticket sales driving revenues of up to ten times of those in the middle east, the hosting fees paid to F1 are much smaller.
With a number of new countries interested in hosting Formula One, something has to give because the teams are refusing to increase the annual roster beyond the current 24 race weekends. Liberty Media who own the commercial rights to the sport of course is profit driven in terms of its planning for the future of F1, and so including more and more remote global destinations prepared to offer eye watering hosting fees is the natural way to go.
Imola for the chop
This means reducing the number of races in Europe to the minimum agreed of eight and the next to suffer the chop is in Ferrari’s heartland. Italy currently has two Grand Prix a year, the first in what was traditionally called Imola and the second in September at the Cathedral of Speed that is Monaco.
The Imola venue was abandoned by F1 having been a stalwart on the F1 calendar between 1981 and 2006, then named the ‘San Marino Grand Prix.’ The as Covid-19 virus swept the globe in 2020, a number of countries closed their doors to most sporting events and so Imola stepped up along with others to offer a one off opportunity for F1. To hold a Grand Prix.
The race weekend has remained on the calendar since, but now is almost certain to be the next European event dropped as the next round of contracts are agreed. Ahead of the Saudi F1 weekend, F1’s supremo Stefano Domenicali is paving the way for the announcement that the now called Emilia Romagne Grand Prix is soon to be dropped.
“Italy has always been and will be an important part of Formula 1,” he tells Italian broadcaster RAI. “But it will be increasingly difficult to have two races in the same country because interest in F1 is growing and it’s a situation we will have to deal with in the coming months.”
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Amusingly the previous title for the race in Imola was ‘the San Marino Grand Prix’ and as with the designation of Azerbaijan being European, this allowed F1 to declare the event as non-Italian but in the principality of San Marino – which was not in fact geographically the case.
“It’s hard for this situation with Imola and Monza to continue together on the calendar for long,” adds Domenicali which is ironic given the USA now has three Grand Prix and struggles to attract a mere million viewers each race weekend. “From a human point of view it will not be easy,” he admits, “but I have to exercise an international role that puts me in front of many requests around the world from emerging countries that can allow F1 to grow.
There has been a sentiment that Imola has survived on the F1 calendar for the last five years due to its willingness to assist F1 in its hour of Covid need. Yet so did Istanbul, Mugello – also in Italy – along with the one time home of the Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao.
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Domenicali himself hails from Imola, but his crocodile tears for the race he once called home should not fool anyone. History and an actual passion from the locals for motorsport mean little in the current world of F1, where money rules the roost and the next Grand Prix will go to the highest bidder.
F1 is currently reeling from its failure in Las Vegas where race fans attendance dropped significantly from the inaugural year. The race in Sin City was first billed as the ultimate in decadence, glitz and glamour, but now F1 is selling tickets for as little as $50 for the 2025 event.
Of course sport is today about financial investment and return for those who promote it for the fans, yet there’s a risk F1 could alienate its core base in Europe, where still the majority of its finance is derived. 30 times more people in Europe watch F1 than those in the USA despite their populations being similar. F1 can never be what it is in Europe in any other region of the world and those planning the future of the sport forget this at their peril.
Imola is in itself a controversial circuit, the place where Ayrton Senna was killed and often it hosts a processional F1 race. Yet F1 must not forget its roots and core base of European fans whilst searching for ever more seemingly exotic venues close to cities with big populations and a large number tourists.
(Statistics obtained from Blackbook Motorsport)
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