South Africa is attempting to organize a new Grand Prix and restore the continent’s championship more than 30 years after Formula One engines last roared on African tarmac.
Two tracks vie for the top spot in the high-octane spectacle: the less picturesque but storied Kyalami race track outside of Johannesburg and the street circuit in Cape Town.
Al Jazeera examines the campaign to reintroduce motorsport’s top competition to Africa.
What is the decision-making process for the proposed track?
In the third quarter of the year, committee member Mlimandlela Ndamase has informed the AFP news agency that a committee headed by South African sports minister Gayton McKenzie will choose the winning bid.
McKenzie is confident in South Africa’s chances. No doubt about it, he declared in early February, “The Grand Prix is definitely coming in 2027.”
We don’t care if Cape Town or Joburg host the Grand Prix in South Africa, as long as it’s there.
The notoriously difficult Kyalami circuit, which zigzags about 30 kilometers (20 miles) outside of Johannesburg and has a huge, colorful South African flag on the track, once hosted hordes of famous drivers and racers.
When was the last F1 race in Africa?
The last Grand Prix held on African soil was in 1993, one year before apartheid’s first democratic elections. Frenchman Alain Prost won it as a Williams.
What has the media said about South Africa’s F1 bid?
Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion who has long supported an African Grand Prix, can rely on South Africa’s bid to host F1 to win.
According to Hamilton in August, “We can’t be adding races to other locations and keeping Africa out.”
The sport wants to “go to every continent,” according to University of Munster in Germany expert Samuel Tickell, who is under the leadership of US conglomerate Liberty Media, which purchased the Formula One Group in 2017.
He told AFP that returning to South Africa would be “something very important for Formula One, which hasn’t competed there since the end of the apartheid era.”
What is the F1 legacy of South Africa?
According to Tickell, the sport had some “historical moments” in the nation, such as the 1982 threat of a “super licence” restricting drivers’ contractual rights.
Ferrari’s Jody Scheckter, who won the continent’s only world championship in 1979, is also present in South Africa.
A South African F1 race: do they exist?
Given that the F1 calendar is constantly expanding, creating a race on the continent would not require excluding other locations. For instance, there are seven more Grands Prix in the upcoming season than there were in 2009.
Sky-high operating costs and hosting costs would not be a hindrance, according to Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economics at the Paris-based Skema Business School.
He claimed that because it’s a strategic payoff, even if races are not commercially viable, some of the countries and their supporters won’t care.
For instance, he claimed that China has “long been providing African nations with access to their natural resources” by creating sports infrastructure.
The Kyalami race track in Johannesburg has been graded to the same level as an F1 race, which would require some extra effort to hold an event.
Cape Town, which was recently voted the “best city in the world” by Time Out magazine, would host an alternative circuit competing for the title.
The route has already hosted a Formula E race in 2023 and was constructed around the stadium for the 2010 men’s football world cup, which was built in the shadow of the iconic Lion’s Head mountain overlooking the ocean.
Is there a continental rival to South Africa?
Igshaan Amlay, the CEO of Cape Town Grand Prix, predicted that a city-wide F1 street circuit would “outclass Monaco.”
However, according to Chadwick, the real conflict may be between Rwanda and its rival cities, whose president, Paul Kagame, met with the FIA and F1 owners Liberty Media at the Singapore Grand Prix in September.
The nation is an NBA partner and has sponsorship from Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain.
Chadwick remarked, “Rwanda is in the lead.”
Morocco has long wanted to host an F1 race.
Nothing prevents the South African sports minister from requesting a “why is it that when it comes to Africa, we are treated like we can only get one” question.
Source: Aljazeera
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