Russia hopes for Grand Prix boost

• 9 October 2015
• From the section Business

Russia will be at the centre of the Formula 1 stage this weekend, as the second Sochi Grand Prix is held on the streets around the complex where the 2014 Winter Olympics was held.

As well as continuing to drive tourism to the city of Sochi, on the Black Sea coast in southern Russia, race organisers also hope the race will fuel interest in motorsport in the country.

“Our task is to make motorsport one of the leading sports in Russia,” says Sergey Vorobyev.

“Within five years we want to create a global, recognisable product that will become the hallmark of the country, and bring fans of all ages to the Sochi Autodrom grandstands every year,” adds Mr Vorobyev, deputy general director of the race organising company OJSC Center Omega.

Night drive

One of his proposed strategies towards this goal is to copy the example set by Singapore, and in future stage the Russian Grand Prix under cover of darkness.

“We want to hold a night race, and it has already been discussed with [F1’s chief executive] Bernie Ecclestone,” says Mr Vorobyev.

“In Sochi, the incredible sunsets and the stunning artificial lighting of the circuit will ensure any night or twilight race will look great.”

Starting the race at dusk would put it on prime-time television in Europe, and should boost viewing figures, so for those reasons it has Mr Ecclestone’s seal of approval.

Singapore’s night-time race hosting has garnered worldwide attention, something Mr Vorobyev hopes to emulate as a means of promoting the Sochi facilities.

“The Sochi Autodrom, built in the Olympic Park, is an important part of the sporting heritage of Russia,” he says. “Together, these facilities are the pride of the whole country and are an attractive tourist destination.”

Olympic infrastructure

The bill for hosting the Winter Olympics came to more than £30bn. Despite concerns, including over the event’s budget, worries about the environment, and whether athlete accommodation would be ready in time, those Games have left a facilities legacy ideal for accommodating the F1 race.

There are 47,000 hotel rooms and an airport capable of handling up to 3,800 passengers per hour.

With the race being held on the site of the former Winter Olympics park, the 2014 Games’ administration centre has become the pit and paddock complex.

However, Grands Prix in emerging racing nations, such as Russia, are often held on city streets, and these don’t make for the best racing as they tend to be too narrow for frequent overtaking.

They also have right-angled corners which are slower than the large sweeping turns of permanent tracks. In addition, it also requires a lot of effort to transform public roads into a race track.

Why is there an F1 race in Russia?

F1 is the world’s most-watched annual sports series and last year had 425 million television viewers. Over the past decade this has brought the sport to the attention of emerging economic markets looking to increase their global profile.

Hosting an F1 race puts such nations on the sporting map alongside developed countries such as the US and UK. Widespread visibility on TV also drives tourism, so governments of emerging markets directly fund the hosting fees for their races.

This has fuelled an arms race between them which has boosted the highest hosting fees to nearly $80m (£52m) annually. In turn, many races in F1’s European heartland have been priced out of the market leaving fans up in arms. European countries don’t need to use F1 to promote tourism so their governments tend not to fund the hosting fees.

Accordingly, in the past decade F1 has lost races in France and Turkey whilst Germany is missing from this year’s calendar for the first time in 55 years. In contrast, next year F1 will host its inaugural race on the streets of Baku, capital of the oil-rich country of Azerbaijan, which is hardly motorsport’s heartland.

Street racing

“The preparation [for the race] begins within two to three months before the arrival of the teams,” says Mr Vorobyev. “Last year our main task was to establish proper connections between the various departments and synchronising many different services.”

Formula One Management awarded the Russian Grand Prix the 2014 trophy for the best-arranged race of the year, which was a sell-out, with a ticketed crowd of 65,000 on race day watching Lewis Hamilton win.

That was a far cry from the 120,000 attendance at Northamptonshire’s Silverstone track for the British Grand Prix, but street races tend to attract lower crowds due to the difficulty of locating large grandstands in the middle of a city.

Mr Vorobyev says that although spectators come from all over the world, “the Scandinavian peninsula and other northern countries have seen some of our best international ticket sales”.

He adds that locally, “for the most part, fans come to the race from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the largest cities in Russia”.

Family tickets

Mr Vorobyev admits that one of the biggest challenges has been “opening the new world of Formula 1 to Russians”, and work on that continues.

A key focus is on ticketing as F1 is out of the price range of many Russians.

To bridge the gap, Mr Vorobyev has created tickets valid for two days, rather than three as usual, which appeal to people who work on Fridays and can’t afford to waste one of the days they have paid for in advance.

“We also offered more-affordable children’s tickets to fans to come to the track with the whole family,” he says.

Previous attempts to take F1 to new markets have not always been a success.

Races in India and South Korea hit the buffers after only a few years, and motorsport has failed to get momentum there. Poor choices in the location of the tracks were believed the reason for this, and it remains to be seen whether the Sochi race will gain traction.

Hosting a night race there could be just what is needed to boost the profile of the Russian Grand Prix and rev up interest in motorsport too.