Vietnam can host F1 race in 2024
F1 Group CEO Stefano Domenicali met with leaders in Hanoi and Vietnam to discuss the possibility of organizing the race next year, according to GrandPrix. This site evaluates Vietnam and South Africa as "good candidates" for hosting the tournament, increasing the number of races to 25 races in 2024.
GrandPrix is an English news site about F1, registered in the US, with more than 220,000 visits in March 2023 according to SimilarWeb's statistics.
Domenicali accompanies Luis Garcia Abad - the former manager of driver Fernando Alonso - to promote F1 worldwide. The two worked with leaders in Hanoi, before flying to Australia.
The F1 Vietnam track has been used for smaller tournaments in 2022, even though only a fixed part of the road has been built. The extension of the F1 track is Le Duc Tho street, which has never been used for a race.
Vietnam has reached an agreement to organize F1 for 10 years in Hanoi, period 2020-2029. The permanent part of the track including the pit house or the grandstand was built and installed before the start of the season. However, because of the outbreak of Covid-19, the race in Hanoi in 2020 was postponed, then stopped indefinitely.
The 2023 F1 season has 23 races, with only one Southeast Asian country hosting it, Singapore on September 17. Malaysia also hosted F1 for the period 1999-2017 in Sepang, but stopped because of funding problems. According to Forbes, the cost of organizing an F1 race and maintaining the track every year can be more than 100 million USD.
According to GrandPrix, South Africa also wants to host F1 for the first time in 31 years, at the Kyalami circuit, near Johannesburg. The leader of this country has agreed to pay 50 million USD for organizing the race in 2024, and the total cost could be up to 250 million USD.
