Formula 1 CEO Chase Carey expects the Singapore Grand Prix to remain on the calendar beyond this season.
Following the announcement earlier this year that the nearby Sepang Circuit will end its stint on the schedule after 18 years this Autumn, the future of the street race at Marina Bay has also been called into question.
Organisers, much like those in Malaysia, are weighing up whether the value meets the cost of hosting the race, which has been a major success since becoming the first night race in 2008.
“We are actively engaged on redoing Singapore, so we don’t expect Singapore to go away,” Carey was quoted by Crash.net as saying. “We’ve got to reach a deal, but we are actively engaged there and our goal is to continue the race in Singapore.”
Should the city-state race remain it would be part of a 21-race schedule in 2018, which will see Germany and, notably, France return for the first time in 10 years. However, as Carey continued, expanding the calendar globally remains a key priority.
“We have a lot of interest you know, beyond Singapore, Malaysia you know, really across the world, it’s not just Asia,” he explained. “We have a list of locations that want to add races and in many ways were trying to engage with as many of them as possible, evaluate there in both in markets like Europe that obviously are much more historical markets, as well as opportunities in the Americas and Asia.
“You know, we want to make sure we understand what each of those opportunities means to us as we go forward. Although in many ways priority one is to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make the 21 races we’ll have next year as successful as possible.”
The CEO concluded by highlighting the impact Singapore has had on the development of F1 in the Far East and the importance of maintaining a strong presence in the region.
“Asia is, like the Americas, there are important growth markets for us,” he said. “We’ve got in Singapore a race that has been a very successful race for us.
“We started off in Asia this year and really had crowds that were up significantly in China and Australia.”