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Finland could be the next new stop on the F1 calendar in the near future. That is the claim of the country's Ilta Sanomat newspaper, reporting that Bernie Ecclestone is not ruling out the concept of a street race in Helsinki.
The report said the F1 supremo had talks during the Hungarian grand prix weekend recently with the former wife of Robert Lappalainen, who in the mid-90s promoted DTM races in the Finnish capital. "He (Ecclestone) would welcome the championship to Helsinki, and showed the green light to our plan," Marja-Leena Lappalainen confirmed.
However, Helsinki mayor Jussi Pajunen said: "I have never been to a formula one race, but judging from what I saw on TV, that would be a very ambitious project. I think that to organise a race like that in Helsinki is not very realistic." (GMM)
Grand Prix of Belgium
G. Zhou
Replies (5)
Login to replycalle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Nice! Was way too long ago since a scandinavian country had the honour to host a GP.
f1dave
Posts: 782
No more street courses !
khasmir
Posts: 893
Strange, green light but the mayor is not even on board...
Most likely another move from Bernie to put more pressure on other promotors to pay more. They can't keep adding races, 20 is enough.
calle.itw
Posts: 8,527
Im probably alone in my opinion, but I think more races than 20 would be very welcome, and could very well attract more viewers. While I don think they should remove this mid season break, I think there's too much time between many of the races. More races could also mean more economic gain, so money pressure from greedy Ecclystoned might decrease on existing contracts, so we might get to keep races such as Monza and Nurburg. :)
scf1fan
Posts: 58
I could see them doing more than 20 races, but they would have to organize them a little differently I would think. They could do Canada, US, Mexico and perhaps Brazil (the "America's" leg) in 3-4 consecutive weeks, then the middle east, then Pacific/Asia, then Europe in some order . . . With Europe still being "home" they might run a "fly-away" leg, then come back to Europe for a few weeks and a break before flying off again. Or, do two on a fly-away then two at home, etc. Which would make it less flexible to schedule. So, if for every three weeks there were two races . . . the current 36 week season could have 24 races as a max.
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Someone would have to give though on who would open and close the season.
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Just saying it could work and it might be more efficient for the teams to get more use out of their facilities.