Johannesburg.- In line with the desire to Lewis Hamiltonabout the return of the Formula 1 to the only continent without circuits in the calendar, South Africa Prepare a candidacy to organize a Grand Prize three decades later.
Two projects are in the ‘pole’: an urban layout in Cape Cabo and the historic Kyalami circuit, on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
A committee created by Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie must decide “in the third quarter of this year,” Mlimandlela Ndamase, member of it, explained to AFP Mlimandlela.
“We will organize the Grand Prix in 2027, there is no doubt,” the minister said earlier. “Either in Cape or Johannesburg City, it doesn’t matter.”
The continent has the important support of the seven -time world champion Lewis Hamilton, which in August valued that “we cannot add races everywhere and continue ignoring Africa“
The ‘Timing’ seems adequate: the F1, whose 2025 season starts on March 16 in Australia, “does not want to be a world championship that stays without going through an entire continent,” the specialist Samuel Tickell, researcher at the University of Münster, in Germany, in Germany, valued for the AFP.
The calendar, which this season has 24 major awards, seven more than in 2009, has experienced continuous expansion. Adding circuits in Africa should not, therefore, mean the exclusion of other quotes.
Almost clear path
The rate required by the owner of the F1, Liberty Media, as organization expenses, would not be an obstacle to the highest category, values Simon Chadwick, a sports professor and geopolitical economy of the Skema Business School in Paris.
“Even if the careers are not commercially viable, both for some countries and for their support, that does not imply a problem,” says the author of the work ‘The future of mechanical sports: business, politics and society’.
Chadwick recalls that “for a long time China builds sports infrastructure for African countries in exchange for access to their resources.”
The Kyalami circuit, owned by the Porsche Local Division pattern, Toby Vinter, has a degree 2 certification, a level just below what is required in F1.
The track will require reforms, although it has just been renewed, as stirred by the South African flags painted around several curves, six colors that the F1 has never seen, because the last Grand Prix was played in 1993, before the election of Nelson Mandela.
