LCPLewis Hamilton wants grand prix in Africa before retiring
woelkchenasking the sport’s bosses “why are we not in Africa?”.
Money. Lewis can afford to sponsor it if he cares about it.
edcastingThey didn’t ask Verstappen to sponsor the Dutch GP
Zandvoort secured the funding, then pulled out after Verstappen said he’ll not be in F1 for much longer.
so why does Lewis have to be the one financing or making the case for a race in a region where he has plenty of fans?
Because he said he wants a race to be there.
Ok, so if Zandvoort was able to finance a race on the basis of fan following alone without Max’s involvement, why can’t they do the same here?
why can’t someone do the same here?
Ask the owners of all the courses that don’t host F1 races in Africa.
MicrowAfaik there arecurrently zero courses with the necessary FIA grading of Grade 1 in Africa. Morocco has multiple Grade 2 circuits, and Kyalami used to be Grade 2 but that expired a year ago, so they are currently ungraded.
That means that in order to be eligible for an F1 race, these courses would need to modernize and undergo an FIA process.
I personally assume that due to this, any African race we could get would be a street track.
SlurpingPusHow many African drivers are in F1?
Oh really? Tell me then: who do Dutch F1 fans root for, when they visit the races?
As it happens, that’s Hamilton, because he’s liked there for some reason and is an honorary Brazilian citizen.
Ah, ok; so you don’t need to be from that region to have fans there… that’s what I thought.
Hamilton gathered reputation in Brazil by racing at Interlagos, back when there were Brazilian drivers in F1. Pray tell where he could’ve raced to have gathered fans in Africa that would now flock to the new circuit to see him.
Was Hamilton racing by himself in Brazil? By this logic, there are no F1 fans in Africa, or anywhere for the sport to expand into.
Well, you’re gonna come up with a better example, as Interlagos predates F1 itself, having been opened in 1940; and there’ve been five Brazilian drivers in F1 up to 1972, when F1 debuted in Brazil and when Emerson Fittipaldi was racing, who happens to have been born in São Paulo. There’s been thirty-two Brazilian drivers in total before 2025, when Bortoleto joined, so no shortage.
In fact, it’s probably better to look at how developed motorsport is in a country, for the measure of how ready fans are to go to races. South Africa does look the most promising in this regard — RacingCircuits lists seven active tracks and two more historic ones, out of twenty combined total on the continent. And actually, there have been previously seventeen South African drivers who started in an F1 race, and eight more who did idk what. But since it’s been forty-five years since the last of them, it’s still unclear if the interest would be there.