Vegas F1 night race on Liberty's radar

©David Vasquez/Wikimedia Commons

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Liberty Media is interested in hosting a night race in Las Vegas as it looks for opportunities to expand the current F1 calendar.

This year's calendar sees a record 21 races, the first time the sport has exceeded 20 rounds in a season. However, with Liberty Media currently in the process of a takeover - which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2017 - chief executive Greg Maffei says adding more races to the calendar is likely to be a priority.

"Obviously there is a limit on how much you can do," Maffei is quoted as saying by Reuters. "Just getting the cars around the world, but I think we can expect to grow the amount of races to a mild degree."

With Maffei acknowledging F1's heartland is in Europe, he added that there were opportunities to expand in Latin America, Asia and the United States.

"I particularly like the idea of a night race in Las Vegas ... But new entrants tend to pay more."

And Maffei says more races are beneficial to all stakeholders in the sport, despite apparent opposition from the teams.

"There is a general line of interest if you increase the number of races to a point. The FIA makes more money, the teams make more money, we make more money."

Las Vegas has previously been on Bernie Ecclestone's radar, having held two races under the title of the Caesars Palace Grand Prix in 1981 and 1982.

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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.