Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton says that he felt conflicted when he visited India for the Indian Grand Prix because the country is so poor and the F1 track was built in the middle of nowhere.
His comments come on the back of F1’s decision to hold its first Vietnam Grand Prix on a street circuit in Hanoi in 2020 after signing a 10-year deal as part of its plan to spread the sports to other countries.
But the five-time champion questioned F1’s policy of organizing races in countries with no racing culture or with no genuine racing tradition. He felt that the federation should target countries that have a proper racing tradition rather than experimenting in other countries to just expand the market.
The Britton was quoted by BBC as saying that India is a “poor place”. “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.
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“On the racing side, I don’t know how important it is to go to new countries as such. If you had the Silverstone Grand Prix and a London Grand Prix, it would be pretty cool.”
He also added that “We’ve got a lot of real racing history in England, Germany, Italy and now in the States, it is starting to grow.”
In recent times Formula One has steadily expanded the sports beyond the traditional racing tracks moving the game further to China, India, South Korea, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Russia, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.
“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,” he further stated.
“We had a Grand Prix in Turkey and hardly anyone came. Cool track, cool weekend but poor audience.”
Despite introducing the game in several other countries, F1 has only survived in Singapore, while it couldn’t last long in India and South Korea. France a past racing traditional has also stopped hosting the sport on its soil.
“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 One.”