Interview
Spa Circuit facing big challenge: 'Letting it bleed to death is not ideal'
- Ludo van Denderen
The Belgian Grand Prix will be the first to face it, no doubt more will follow soon: the rotation of Grand Prix weekends on the Formula 1 calendar. One year F1 will visit a circuit, but the competition will only return every other year. Former team principal Guenther Steiner shared his thoughts on this new idea in Formula 1.
Talking to GPblog, Steiner states that he remains neutral in terms of the initiative. "I don't think it's a bad thing," the Italian believes, only then to ask himself the question: "Is it really going to work commercially?"
Steiner explains: "It's difficult to put a Grand Prix on, but if you're not doing it for one year, then you really rely just on money coming from outside. How you market the Grand Prix is difficult. If you are one year off, you have to build up every year, again and again."
"You need to spend more money to get the people to know again, if you have something which is always there, people get used to it. If you let it die and then resurrect it, come and go. My experience is that it's not ideal, but it was never done (rotating), and sometimes it's good to try. Maybe it works, but I don't think it will be this easy in general," Steiner continued.
Steiner sees no issues sporting-wise
If the Italian looks purely at the sporting aspect of this system of rotating between events, he has nothing against it. "It's pretty cool because everyone goes to different places every year. That's fine."
However, he then once again reiterated: "It's just like how to make it worth commercially good, that actually, in the years when they got the Grand Prix, they actually can make the revenue to make it sustainable."
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