The future is bleak for classic GP tracks

Scroll through the 1996 Formula 1 calendar published on Forix, AUTOSPORT's comprehensive motorsport data archive website, and the first thing that strikes you is that during the last full season before F1's commercial rights were hived off to entities controlled by then-incumbent caretaker Bernie Ecclestone that list of races runs to 16 rounds.

The second salient point is that 11 of those 16 races, almost 69 per cent, were staged in Europe, with the remaining five held in Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and Japan. Interestingly, both Germany and Italy hosted two rounds, the former at Hockenheim and the Nurburgring (as the European Grand Prix), and the latter at Monza and Imola (San Marino).

Fast forward, and the latest calendar lists 20 races - 21 if the farcical Korean round is included - an increase of 25 per cent.

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If you were to extrapolate the percentages from the 1996 calendar to 2015, Europe should host 14 races regardless of whether Mokpo's inclusion was taken seriously, regardless of whether the respective home countries of current constructors' champion Mercedes and F1 stalwart Ferrari retained their double dates.

But, reality tells a different story: just eight rounds (40 per cent) are European-based; with Asia (which back then had but a solitary representative in Japan) hosting no fewer than four rounds, 20 per cent of the total.

For many years Italy hosted F1 at both Imola and Monza © LAT

The Middle East - utterly off F1's radar two decades ago - has two races (10 per cent), while North America triples its footprint. South America has, though, lost Argentina; still, with the recent and scheduled returns of the United States and Mexico respectively the Americas are up 33 per cent, or well over the increase during the 18-year period. The other winner is Russia, which, too, was no-go in the nineties, with Australia remaining as-is.

Apart from Argentina, the remaining losers are: the European Grand Prix/Nurburgring (of which more anon), San Marino/Imola (ditto), France and Portugal (pictured top). Of the original list of European venues that leaves just (in 1996 calendar order) Monaco, Spain, Great Britain, Germany, Hungary, Belgium and Italy, so just seven of the original 11...

In December, during the British Racing Drivers' Club's annual awards and Christmas dinner the august club's president Derek Warwick warned that European grands prix were increasingly becoming an endangered species - and that was coming from the owner representative of one of Europe's few surviving venues.

"We need help from Bernie [Ecclestone] now," said the Le Mans winner and former F1 driver just five days after the 2016 calendar was 'confirmed' - which it ultimately was not, given that Korea is now off and Germany's round is highly unlikely to be happen at the Nurburgring, if it happens at all.

"It's not just the teams that require a fairer share of F1's vast revenues," Warwick argued before listing the number of traditional circuits to have gradually dropped off the calendar over two decades. He must, though, have realised the futility of his cry given his final words: "But there's no loyalty from F1," leaving no one, including this columnist, in doubt about who he was referring to...

It was assumed that the German GP would swap back to the Nurburgring on schedule in 2015 © LAT

Usually calendars contain at least one asterisked round that is qualified by 'Subject to contract with Commercial Rights Holder' or similar, but the 2015 calendar published by the governing body late last year showed only a single caveat, namely Korea.

Thus it was assumed the 'Newburgring' - to differentiate the short circuit from the longer, more illustrious 'Green Hell' as Jackie Stewart dubbed the daunting original - was safe, and would honour the rotating deal entered into by its previous owners, one that sees the Eifel circuit - acquired in liquidation by auto parts group Capricorn after Ecclestone's offers were twice rejected - alternate odd/even years with Hockenheim.

Safe, that is, until early January, when Ecclestone indicated the race could well be held at Germany's other venue.

"We've got a contract in place [with Hockenheim], we just have to amend the years of the contract. It was alternating with Nurburgring so we'll just take that out," he told Reuters. "Providing the contract goes through as we expect it to, we'll be in good shape."

Clearly the amendments did not suit Hockenheim's city fathers, for next Ecclestone - in the process admitting that there was no contract with Capricorn in place - threatened that Germany could lose its race for the first time. This despite the country having hosted a round every year since 1961, and being home to home to constructors' champion Mercedes and quadruple champion Sebastian Vettel, now with Ferrari.

In fact, only twice since its first world championship grand prix (in 1951) has Germany sat out a year, with the other seasons being 1955 - in the wake of that year's Le Mans disaster that killed 77 spectators after a Mercedes flew into a crowded grandstand - and 1960, when it was run for Formula 2 cars after drivers decreed the heavily-banked, stretched oval Avus circuit too dangerous.

Now it seems third time unlucky for the country that delivered no fewer than nine drivers' titles in the 18 seasons since that 1996 calendar (and 11 since 1994) and invented the motor car and every form of internal combustion engine, without which F1 as we know it would not exist.

True, despite Vettel's domination (and the simultaneous presence of Michael Schumacher), both circuits recently played to sparse crowds, but that is a global trend given F1's pricing. As AUTOSPORT has previously explained, there are myriad reasons for Germany's dilemma, one of which is the rotation system.

The last time Germany was missing from the F1 schedule was because drivers protested against the Avus track © LAT

The other 'double host' venue to disappear off the calendar, namely Imola, this week came out with guns blazing at F1's treatment of traditional circuits.

Speaking to Italian journalists, Dr Pietro Benvenuti, general manager of the quaint circuit that last hosted a grand prix in 2006, was adamant that Imola complies with all F1 requirements, yet des not come into consideration for a grand prix.

In fact, he says, last June FIA safety delegate and race director Charlie Whiting inspected the circuit that is forever linked with the tragedy that befell Ayrton Senna in 1994. He gave Imola a clean bill of health, says Benvenuti, adding that Whiting "reconfirmed a Grade 1 licence for the circuit, which expires in June 2017.

"Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrari has all technical requirements to host any FIA race, even Formula 1."

So why no San Marino Grand Prix on the horizon? The reason is, he says, simple: "It's not a facilities issue, but rather one of costs incurred in order to host a grand prix.

"In the current context, no structure is able to support them without the support of political institutions or generous sponsors."

Any wonder that the only European circuit to make a return is Austria's Red Bull Ring, situated in the region from which the drinks company's owner harks? Not only has 'King Dietrich' [Mateschitz], as he is fondly dubbed by local folk, hosted a race there at an estimated annual cost of £20million, but he has invested massively in local projects - including upgrading the local (military) airport, where his flying toys land.

Can the town of Imola or hamlet of Nurburg compete with such largesse?

Imola hosted European F3 last year but its chiefs say it's ready to have F1 back © XPB

Of course not - but at least a race returned to Europe. Fighting oil-rich sheiks, or Singaporean billionaires who enjoy total support from the glitzy city-state, is another matter, for in real terms they have simply bought tradition by throwing hundreds of millions at the Formula One Group, with the largest benefactor being FOG's ultimate owner, venture house CVC Capital Partners.

Neither is this unsentimental rout of those traditional venues that added much richness to the tapestry of the sport likely to end any time soon. Speaking exclusively to this column at Monza last year, the introspective Ivan Capelli - profiled here in an interview with AUTOSPORT's sister magazine F1 Racing - expressed fears that the Lombardy circuit will eventually go the same way as Imola.

The world's oldest surviving grand prix circuit, Monza opened in 1922, and thus hits its centenary in just seven years' time. But the burning question troubling the former Ferrari F1 driver-turned-president of Monza's promotions committee, who works closely with SIAS SpA (Monza's holding company), is whether celebrations will be headlined by a grand prix, or simply take the form of a hollow party.

During the interview Capelli confirmed talks had taken place with Ecclestone, and that the circuit has a contract in place for the next two years, but thereafter Monza's future as a grand prix venue is shaky.

"Obviously [the] numbers are not lying to us and not lying to him, and we understood that, as I said, '15 and '16 are secure for the future. We need to work hard for 2017, and to open the possibility from '17 to 2020, four years of contract. But I said even more to Mr Ecclestone...

"I said: 'Look, in 2022 here we will have the centenary', so we are actually already thinking there. We don't want to have a short-term deal. We want to go really further."

Capelli has gone from racing a Ferrari at Monza to trying to save the circuit's F1 place © LAT

Would Monza's centenary be unthinkable without a grand prix? "Absolutely, there is no other answer!" And, therein lies Capelli's challenge: to balance Monza's books against the odds to ensure the race survives for at least seven years.

"It's very challenging for promoters," he acknowledges, "but we are starting a strategy, a scenario, where we already met the mayor of Monza, the mayor of Milan, and the president of the Lombardy region that are physically the first ones that can be involved with this project.

"We have to create a team. This is what we are aiming, to create the team and to create the possibility to put on the table to Mr Ecclestone the best offer that we can. Because the deal is not just one direction, it's in two directions. We have to find a good situation for everybody, for both of us."

All well and good, but on the one side fan revenue is dropping as promoter fees head in a diagonally opposite direction. How to beat that?

"[By] having financial support from the government for the region. What Monza missed a lot in the last three years are events that are not connected to motorsport during the year.

"This place is empty, completely empty, and [Monza] can give you the opportunity to do what you want [in terms of non-sporting events to generate cash]. This is what we are going to create in two years, to have the possibility to face the asking price."

And, if Capelli and Co do not succeed, then the unthinkable could happen: Monza joins a list of F1 rejects that includes Imola, France's seven venues to have staged a grand prix, Estoril, Jerez, Zandvoort, Anderstorp, and, on current evidence, the Nurburgring - and instead F1 fans will increasingly be forced to worship at the likes of Sepang and Shanghai.