F1i's Justin Hynes and Eric Silbermann look back at a number of lost F1 circuits as Russia tries to cement its place on the calendar
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Whether they’re political playthings, over-reaching vanity projects, failed tourist magnets, collapsed areas of special economic activity or just mysterious and impossible to locate white elephants – F1 is replete with circuits that have (to co-opt the old aphorism about the month of March) arrived on the calendar like a lion and exited it like a particularly shame-faced lamb with its tail lodged firmly between its legs.
Russia’s arrival onto the calendar last year was supposed to be conducted with all the pomp and ceremony of the Winter Olympics that came before it but in the end political upheavals in nearby Ukraine, the lingering shock of Jules Bianchi’s terrible accident in Japan the week before, a track that didn’t live up to expectations and endless complaints from everyone about the lack of anything to eat anywhere turned the whole thing into a bit of a damp squib.
Will year two be any better for the Krasnodar circuit? That remains to be seen but as the Sochi Autodrom buckles under rumours of financial instability and further political wrangling it appears to have a better than average chance of joining the swollen ranks of F1’s fallen facilities.
As such, and to help it beat another old adage that says those who don’t learn the lessons of the past are doomed to repeat them, we present a few salutary failures from recent and not so recent grand prix history.
