Lewis Hamilton is keen to keep the Formula 1 to its “real racing history” hosts such as in UK rather than taking it to new ventures across the globe.
Formula 1 calendar will see the new entrant to its track list. Vietnam will host its debut race in 2020.
“On the racing side, I don’t know how important it is to go to new countries as such,” the five-time champion said.
“If you had the Silverstone Grand Prix and a London Grand Prix, it would be pretty cool.”
Hamilton on the F1 calendar
Multi-year engagement between F1 bosses and Vietnamese has been made for F1 cars to perform on the roads of Hanoi from April 2020.
Liberty Media, who took over F1 sports in 2017, had expressed their interest of expanding the horizon of sport to new destinations across the globe. The new addition to F1 calendar is the first inclusion that the new management has decided to incorporate after the change of ownership.
The expansion plan of Liberty media is an extension of the sport evolution which has took over the years The F1 sport has included Bahrain, China, Turkey, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, South Korea, India, Russia and Azerbaijan to their calendar since 2004.
The historic host countries; Britain, Germany, Italy, France and Belgium; prices have made it hard for the F1 owners to keep them on the calendar. The same reason has pushed them to opt for new countries to reduce the mounting hosting costs.
“We’ve got a lot of real racing history in England, Germany, Italy and now in the States it is starting to grow,” said Hamilton. “But you only have one event per year in those places.
“If it was my business, I’d be trying to do more events in those countries.
“I’ve been to Vietnam before and it is beautiful. I’ve been to India before to a race which was strange because India was such a poor place yet we had this massive, beautiful grand prix track made in the middle of nowhere. I felt very conflicted when I went to that grand prix.
“We had a grand prix in Turkey and hardly anyone came. Cool track, cool weekend but poor audience.”
He added: “If you have the German Grand Prix and you’ve got a Grand Prix in Berlin, I think connecting to cities where a lot of people are is probably a good thing, not necessarily going to countries where they don’t know so much about Formula 1.”
