South Australia pitched Adelaide to Formula 1 as a replacement for the cancelled Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grand prix, says state Premier Peter Malinauskas.
Formula 1 confirmed at the weekend that both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia would not take place as planned in April owing to the war in the Middle East. The news had been expected for weeks, but the sport waited until the last possible moment to call off the races to see if hostilities would cease.
Though neither race will be replaced owing logistic and financial considerations, several alterative venues were canvassed, including back-to-back rounds in Japan and new races in Europe.
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But speaking to Triple M ahead of this weekend’s South Australian election, Malinauskas said he had put Adelaide in the mix to replace one of the Middle Eastern rounds in what would have been a sensational return for Formula 1 to its former Australian home.
“I reached out to Stefano Domenicali, who is the CEO of F1,” Malinauskas said.
“I’ve been working on this a little bit for a while, and when the events got cancelled because of the Iran war, I was straight on the phone to them.
“As soon as it became obvious that they were not going to be racing in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, I was like, ‘Hello, is this an opportunity?’. So I hit the phone and asked.
“I put it out to them. I said, ‘Listen, I’ve got the team, they’ve worked the numbers. We can set the track up on these timelines’. They said, ‘Look, leave it with us’, but they’ve decided to cancel those races and not replace them.
“You’ve got to be in it to win it, but I wasn’t putting it out there publicly because it was an initial reach-out. I rang them directly.
“I just happened to land at a time he was with [Eddie McGuire].”
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McGuire corroborated Malinauskas’s story in an interview with FIVEaa.
“I’m walking around with Stefano Domenicali, and the issues start to happen in Iran,” he said.
“You know who was on the phone when I’m walking with Stefano? His phone rings, up it comes, and I notice Peter Malinauskas’s name comes up.
“I thought this was genius. He actually started negotiating with Formula 1 about the opportunity to bring the Bahrain GP to Adelaide.
“It turned out Formula 1 believes it’s just too expensive to do it et cetera.”
In a remarkable coincidence, McGuire claimed he had been attempting to woo Formula 1 to consider a second grand prix in Melbourne.
“I did doff my cap, because I was trying to do exactly the same thing at the same time, and your bloke Peter Malinauskas was all over it trying to get the Formula 1 grand prix this month to Adelaide,” he said.
“It was a near thing. He did everything right. It’s only that in the end Formula 1 said no.”
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The South Australian government entered its caretaker period in February ahead of this weekend’s election, during which time entering into major contracts or undertakings are avoided by convention.
A second race in Australia in either Adelaide or Melbourne was always going to be highly unlikely given Formula 1’s intricate logistics as well as the lead time required to set up a world championship grand prix.
Diverting air and sea freight — some of which exists in multiple copies so it can travel by sea many months in advance of races held outside Europe — would be complex and costly, particularly given any race in southeast Australia would be the most geographically isolated on the calendar after Brazil’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
Setting up a temporary street circuit is also a lengthy and costly process.
In Melbourne’s case the time Albert Park can be closed to the public is dictated by legislation, which would make a second race in April, more than a month after the first, unlikely. The Albert Park garage building is also set to be demolished and rebuilt from the end of this month.
Even if the Adelaide infrastructure could be set up quickly, the circuit is no longer approved to host Formula 1, and any changes required by the homologation process could blow out the already improbable timeline.
Adelaide hosted the Australian Grand Prix between 1985 and 1995 before the race switched to Melbourne’s Albert Park.
Part of Adelaide’s F1 circuit was retained for the Supercars, with the city now hosting the sport’s annual grand final round.
Most of the original track will be revived, albeit with key modifications, next year when the city will host its first motorcycle grand prix after drawing MotoGP away from Phillip Island on a six-year contract.
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