Oliver WhiteFormula One’s calendar for the 2007 season was published on Tuesday, and a lot of people have been asking questions, and quite rightly so.
The calendar has a few perculiarities about it, most notably the exclusion of San Marino and European Grands Prix, and the Suzuka circuit in Japan. Other strange oddities relating to the calendar are the gaps between some of the races. Between Bahrain (round three) and Spain (round four) there is a month of thumb-twiddling. Is Bernie being kind to the teams, giving them a four week break? This is unlikely. As suspected on various other websites, Suzuka may make a return in the guise of a Pacific Grand Prix, as Aida did in 1994 and 1995, and this early slot could work. San Marino could also be squeezed in somewhere, and ITV-F1 reckon their exclusion is down to Ecclestone turning the screws on the circuit officials to sort out their mandatory updates on time.
The German Grand Prix has faced financial difficulties and this was widely reported earlier in the year. The German event will probably be shared by the two circuits in the future (Nurburgring and Hockenheim), but as of yet, there has been no confirmation on which track the 2007 race will be held.
It seems to me that the release of the provisional calendar, despite being provisional, was too early. I don’t understand why FOM decided to publish it when there are still many question marks. Is Bernie playing a game with the circuit authorities? Or is this really going to be the calendar for next year? I doubt there will be no ammendments, but I am sure that at least one regular circuit will be excluded, and therefore disappointed.
If you controlled the calendar, what would it look like? How many races would you have? Would you stick to the traditional circuits, or would you try and use many of the new Tilke tracks, like Sepang, Sakhir et al?
i’d have less races. i’ve not watched the last 2-3 gp’s, but just checked the results online. i can’t believe how much free time i seem to have over the course of a weekend now.
how about they spread the season over more months but with less races? the winter downtime is a bit long (and dull with all that testing). and the summer break isn’t long enough.
plus if there were more winter races, it might rain more often, and thus jenson might win again.
I think I’d keep roughly the same number of races. I used to like the idea of 20, but now I think that’s just too much.
I think if I was in charge of the calendar I’d change things about every year to give it more variety. At the moment F1 visits the same 18 or 19 circuits all the time when there are surely so many other great tracks in the world that F1 could take a look at.
I don’t have any particular problem with the Tilke tracks, although maybe we could have three of them instead of the four we have now, with some kind of rota system in place.
I would have only one GP each for Italy and Germany, with them alternating between Imola and Monza and Hockenheim and Nürburgring. Perhaps I would do the same for Japan aswell.
There’s talk now of Turkey losing its Grand Prix after the controversy caused by the Turkish Cypriot leader presenting Felipe Massa with the winner’s trophy, against the FIA protocol that presentations are made by dignitaries representing the host nation. If this was to materialise, then there would only be 16 Grands Prix next season.