Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFormula 1

Wolff wants iconic F1 venues retained

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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says it is important for F1 to retain "iconic" venues on the calendar after a summer without the German Grand Prix.

The Nurburgring was unable to agree a deal with Bernie Ecclestone to host this year's race despite Germany boasting Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg and Nico Hulkenberg on the grid. Though F1 is set to return to Germany in 2016 at Hockenheim, the future of the Italian Grand Prix at Monza has also been in doubt in recent months and Wolff wants to see the core European races protected.

"My personal opinion is that those iconic and historic Grands Prix are important for the sport," Wolff said. "But then it’s a very difficult balance which needs to be achieved and that is securing income for the sport and income for the teams so I guess it’s not always very easy and straightforward in making those decisions.

"Certainly for us, the German Grand Prix is extremely important as is Monza and as is Spa, so from our perspective it would be good if we can keep those Grands Prix."

And Honda's Yasuhisa Arai argues there should be less emphasis on home drivers for each venue and more on an enticing overall package for fans.

"You know that we had a race in Suzuka in the eighties and the most famous drivers were Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost," Arai said. "We had over 200,000 people per day in Suzuka so it means that good drivers, good teams, good machines are very important. I don’t care about the nationality... I want to get a Japanese driver but there isn’t the talent. The fans are most important."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.