Six of the Best...Possible new F1 races

The calendar is already full-to-bursting, with the 20-race-per-season ideal already looking like a complicated balancing act. But with New Jersey and Russia already on the way, Patty looks at six more countries gunning for an F1 race.

It now seems to be accepted wisdom that twenty races per season is as much as Formula One's teams can manage. Martin Whitmarsh shrieked as much earlier this week. Which is all well and good, but as things stand the 2012 schedule will already be at capacity, and New Jersey and Russia are already queued up waiting to be slotted in somewhere over the next two years.

And Bernie Ecclestone's far-reaching desires for new races mean that the new swarm of events might not be over any time soon. Any number of countries have announced plans for F1 races, or at least F1-standard racetracks, in the future. And here are six of the most likely F1 events to return in the near future. Somehow. Don't ask us how.

1) South African Grand Prix

A South African race featured on the Formula One calendar 23 times between 1962 and 1993, a sequence which included one of F1's most controversial races ever, when the sport raced in the country in 1985 despite most other sports having boycotted the country due to their system of apartheid. F1 did leave South Africa after that race, only returning in 1992 and 1993 for further races.

But there have been plenty of moves towards bringing South Africa back into the fray in the near future, and Bernie Ecclestone (possibly mindful that - Antarctica aside - Africa is the only missing continent from his 'world championship') has backed the plan, even saying a deal was "weeks away" back in July. Though in fairness, he didn't say how many weeks.

After a random press release from a group backed by Abu Dhabi investors apparently planning to fund a new Tilkedrome near Durban was followed by no real news from that plan at all, and the frontrunning proposal now is a street race around Cape Town. Watch this space, it's almost certain to happen soon.

2) French Grand Prix

No matter how little the F1 paddock ever really gelled with Magny-Cours during its 18-year stint on the schedule, it still feels odd that France, the country where grand prix racing was awkwardly born back in 1906 when Ferenc Szisz won the two-day long inaugural GP - is missing from the Formula One schedule.

Since Magny Cours vanished from the schedule after the 2008 event, there have been a while list of non-starting projects to bring F1 back to the country. Street races at Disneyland Paris and Versailles didn't really get past the planning stage, plans for a new track at Flins-Les Mureaux were abandoned in late 2009, and Magny-Cours itself had a go at winning the slot back, without any success.

But, in an odd departure from French norms, the country doesn't know when it is beaten, and earlier this year the French prime minister Francois Fillon launched a new 'taskforce' designed to eventually bring Formula One back to the country. The only bad news being that if the sport returns to the country in the short-term, it will probably be at the hideous Circuit Paul Ricard, which has been redecorated to look like a giant liquorice allsort in its new role as a dedicated test track.

3) Mexican Grand Prix

The second of the two countries specifically namedropped by Bernie Ecclestone as being targets for F1 in the future (along with South Africa), Mexico is another good bet for a return to the F1 schedule for the first time since 1992. Partly because F1 seems to be making a renewed push to expand west into the Americas having so comprehensively covered the East, and partly because there is a boatload of cash behind the plans.

The latest Mexican GP mutterings are not the first time the race's return has been mooted. In 2006, plans for a new racetrack in Cancun, which looked disturbingly like a mushroom cloud were revealed, but despite the sensationally demented layout, the project never came to fruition. A return to F1's former Mexican home, the Hermanos Rodríguez circuit, has also been considered.

And it is that track that the latest push for a Mexican return is focused on. FIA president Jean Todt has said that he is "convinced" Mexico can return to the sehedule (albeit that comment coming during a series of populist soundbites during a visit to, erm, Mexico), and F1-philic Mexican Billionaire Carlos Slim has said that a return is being "studied". Since then, everything has gone silent, so it seems plans have reached a bit of a Mexican standoff. Arf, and so on.

4) Qatar Grand Prix

Formula One doesn't strictly need another Emirate on the schedule, to be perfectly fair. Two dull races in Bahrain (fair enough, that's a kingdom nowadays) and Abu Dhabi is more than enough for one sport to be going along with. But the fact that there are existing races there could be to Qatar's benefit, with the race easily forming a double-header with either other round to cut on travel costs.

The organisers at the Losail International Circuit are certainly interested in the sport. "Hosting a Formula One race is definitely in the strategic plan for Qatar," the country's motorsport chief said last August, "We have a great track and we are currently working on upgrading it to official specifications...and we are three quarters through the project. We just have some minor changes and modifications to make."

Qatar's track already hosts an annual MotoGP race, and has hosted a GP2 Asia round in the past, and also counting in its favour is the fact that the track comes complete with floodlights, allowing for a Europe-pleasing time slot and potentially a second F1 night race. The layout itself is not exactly the stuff of legend, but then Bahrain and Abu Dhabi didn't let a trifling matter like that stop them, did they?

5) Bulgarian Grand Prix

Throughout the last few years it seems like every country in the entire world has announced plans to host a Formula One race, with Mallorca and Romania among the highest pies in the sky. But of all of the almost certain to never happen races, Bulgaria are at least putting some effort in to pretending like they have a chance.

Back in 2009, Bulgarian Motorcycling Federation president Bogdan Nikolov bellowed that plans for a new track in Pleven were already with Formula One chiefs. "Bulgaria could sign a contract to host a Formula 1 race between 2011 and 2015 and there's an option for a contract extension until 2020," he bragged. And after that, he claimed that the proposed new circuit would feature under-track heating. Because, erm, night races had already been done.

Since then, the whole project has gone a bit quiet. Maybe they're just locating some funding? Maybe they've realised the logistic futility of a heated race track? Maybe the whole thing has been canned? Possibly, but it's still more likely to happen than the Mallorca GP.

6) Austrian Grand Prix

The Austrian Grand Prix disappeared from the F1 schedule way back in 2003, when the often-entertaining A1-Ring was bumped off the schedule and fell into a state of tragic disrepair. But that was before Red Bull oligarch Dietrich Mateschitz sprinkled his fairy dust over the place. By which we mean he paid a large amount of money to renovate the place and bring racing back to Spielberg.

In 2011, the track was re-opened with a full-on Red Bull love-in in May, and later on in the year both the DTM and Formula Two visited the track for a race or two. However, the chances of Formula One returning any time soon appear to be slim. "If you look at the new Formula 1 circuits...one has to say the probability of F1` returning to Spielberg is more than minor," was how mateschitz put it.

Still, where there's a will and all that. And when Bernie Ecclestone was asked whether there was any way that Austria could make a return to the schedule, he cheerily answered "Why not?". It would be a slight change in F1's outlook to actually add a European event to the schedule (at least, one that isn't a godawful street circuit), but with events like Spa-Francorchamps open to the idea of a slot-share with another event, might not be completely out of the question. The Red Bull Grand Prix might well be a goer.

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