Bahrain circuit boss Sheikh Salman bin Isa al-Khalifa has backed Ross Brawn's "interesting" idea of using the 'Outer Circuit' for a Formula 1 race.
As the sport tries to put together a minimum of 15 rounds for this year's championship, several tracks, including Sakhir, have been earmarked to potentially host doubleheaders.
In an effort to try and spice up the action on the second race weekend, alternative formats, tyre allocations and layouts have been suggested.
The first though was blocked by Mercedes when F1 proposed a reverse grid qualifying sprint race, Silverstone had considered the latter but instead, will only see Pirelli bring different compounds to its second race.
Bahrain though is unique as it has six different tracks in one that all hold the required FIA Grade 1 status to hold an F1 race, but it was the 'Outer Circuit' that most caught Brawn's attention.
“There’s a nice sort of almost oval track that would be quite exciting, so that is an option in the pocket," he told Formula1.com last week.
Reaction from fans was largely positive if a little surprised that such a layout was being considered, after all, it would see lap times of under a minute and a whopping 87-lap race, nine more than the Monaco Grand Prix.
“We were surprised as well by Ross’s comments!,” Sheikh Salman told Autosport.com
“They did say a while ago: ‘Would you be open to running more than one race if we had issues in finding alternatives?’ That’s the only thing I’ve had officially from F1.
“That was pretty early on, when they were trying to finalise the European races, so we said we can look into that.”
The Bahrain circuit boss does see potential in Brawn's idea though, as he offered some more insight into the 'Outer Circuit'.
“This idea of a different configuration was new, especially with the details that Ross went in to, but it’s interesting, and it is doable,” he added.
“We’ve never used it for a race. It was mainly designed so that you can run the inner track and the outer track at the same time. That loop, which Ross calls the oval, is a separate track from the inner track which we use for club racing.
“What we’ve done in the past is use it for corporate events, especially Rolls Royce events where they didn’t want hard braking and corners.
“It’s a low downforce track. There’s no way I’m going to compare it to Monza, but it’s a track where you’re going to run the cars on minimum downforce, so there will be slipstreaming. Hopefully, we can have three DRS zones.”
Right now, whether or not it happens largely depend on if F1 can hold races in the Americas, with uncertainty over all three in Austin, Mexico City and Sao Paulo.
If a GP on the Outer Circuit did occur, it would be the third different version of the Bahrain track that F1 had used after the sport tried the 'Endurance' layout in 2010.
