Formula 1 News: F1 could add second race in China – Wolff (Update)

According to the South China Morning Post, Hainan China’s local government has signaled its intention to bring a Formula 1 race to the southern island, after it unveiled development plans aimed at securing motorsport’s premier event for the province.

Announcing a partnership with Dingji Automotive Culture Co, the Hainan Provincial International Cultural Exchange Centre said the cooperation would focus on “bringing Formula 1 racing events to Hainan, planning and building professional circuits, developing commercial race operations, creating an integrated automotive culture complex and promoting deep integration of sports, culture and tourism”.

According to the center, a department of the province’s tourism, culture and sports bureau, the F1 project would “take Formula One’s top-tier international races as its core engine” and include facilities such as “a circuit, car modification plants, racing training schools, comprehensive medical services and five-star hotels”.

However, Hainan faces significant hurdles to hosting the highest class of worldwide racing in the near term.

Shanghai currently holds the exclusive rights to the Chinese Grand Prix until at least 2030, after Formula 1 announced a five-year extension with the Shanghai International Circuit in late 2024, following the event’s successful return after a five-year pandemic suspension.

While F1 had expressed interest in adding a second Chinese race to grow the sport in one of its most important markets as far back as 2019, with Beijing then considered a potential host, current CEO Stefano Domenicali said there were no plans to stage more than one grand prix in China.

“We already have 24 races, which is a big number because there is the demand. [Having] two Chinese grands prix in the same championship, I don’t think it is possible,” Domenicali told state-owned Xinhua News Agency in 2024. [Editor’s Note: If they cough up enough money, Domenicali will change his tune].

Hainan is not the only contender eyeing the world’s most popular motor-racing event.

Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province and a key Greater Bay Area city, launched the “F1 Guangzhou International Circuit Project” in 2024, aiming to complete an FIA grade one circuit by 2028.

The facility is billed as “the first circuit in the Greater Bay Area built to meet the highest FIA standards, capable of hosting world-class Formula One events, international endurance races and a wide range of automotive culture activities”.

(GMM) Formula 1 could add a second grand prix in China, according to Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff.

It emerges that, after the opening Australia-Shanghai double header, Wolff has elected to sit out the forthcoming long haul to Japan – the first of a triple-header.

The Austrian has been sitting out the odd race in recent years amid the sport’s hectic calendar, which currently stands at a bustling 24 grands prix.

But Wolff thinks F1 could add a second China race.

“I was on the grid and I looked at the packed grandstands along the main straight and into the first corner,” he told journalists in Shanghai last Sunday.

“The knowledge they have here about Formula 1 is also impressive. I mean, could there be a second race? I think ‘why not?'” Wolff continued. “It is one of the biggest economies in the world.

“So, yes, if we can keep the enthusiasm high.”

F1’s sole Chinese driver Guanyu Zhou now serves as Ferrari reserve after losing his Sauber seat – but he is being strongly linked with Cadillac for 2026.

Helpfully, Cadillac F1 boss Graeme Lowdon is the 25-year-old’s manager.

“I will certainly wait for any opportunity,” Zhou said as he attended the Chinese GP at Shanghai, China. “And I am very happy, of course, that Graeme is the team principal of Cadillac, but that does not mean anything else.

“At the end of the day, the decision will be made by multiple people.”