Saturday, July 03, 2010

F1: A new Grand Prix for Mallorca?

It seems that there are moves afoot to create a new F1 circuit on the holiday island of Mallorca, in the plains in the centre of the island, in the municipality of Llucmayor. This would make me very happy as Mallorca is one of my favourite places on earth and I'd be first in the queue for a ticket.

According to Autosport, the people behind the project met with F1 commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone at Valencia last weekend.

I think that there are few fans who would fight to save the Valencia grand prix. It's not the most exciting track in the world and despite the fact that Rubens won there last year, I'd happily see it ditched as a venue.

Mallorca has been on a bit of a strategy in recent years to up the quality of its resorts. It wants to see less of the concrete jungles like Magaluf and more sophisticated marinas like the one at Puerto Portals. We always spend some time there on our holidays to ogle all the posh yachts. I expect if F1 came calling, there would barely be enough room in the Bay of Palma for all the opulent boats which tend to tag along. This could only be good for an island that's been struggling a wee bit as it's losing out to places like Croatia.

The area where the new track is planned is pretty much a hop, skip and jump from the airport, the island has plenty places for workers, fans and the F1 glitterati to stay. I can see absolutely nothing wrong with this plan at all.

I would suggest that either May or September would be a good time for a Mallorquin race. It's probably not a good idea to have it at the height of the tourist season, but also these months have the added bonus of unpredictable weather. It could easily tip it down - and we know from this season how unpredictable and exciting a bit of rain makes F1.

The more I think about it, the more I like it and I for one would be happy to be there for the first race.

1 comment:

Oldrightie said...

Might make the westerly runway approach even more interesting!

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