South Africa bids for first African Formula One grand prix in 30 years

MIDRAND – Over three decades after Formula One engines last roared on African tarmac, South Africa is mounting a bid to organise a new Grand Prix and bring the world championship back to the continent.

Competition to host the high-octane spectacle is between two tracks – a street circuit in Cape Town and the less picturesque but historic Kyalami racetrack outside of Johannesburg.

A committee set up by sports minister Gayton McKenzie will choose the winning bid in the third quarter of 2025, committee member Mlimandlela Ndamase said.

McKenzie is confident about South Africa’s chances.

“The grand prix is definitely coming in 2027, no doubt about that,” he said. “Whether it is Cape Town or Joburg, we do not care, as long as the grand prix is coming to South Africa.”

The challenging Kyalami circuit – which zigzags about 30km outside Johannesburg and where the track is painted with a huge, colourful South African flag – once hosted nail-biting races and legendary drivers.

But the last Grand Prix on African soil was held in 1993, the year before South Africa’s first democratic elections that ended apartheid. It was won by Alain Prost in a Williams.

South Africa’s bid to host an F1 race can count on the support of seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who has long advocated for an African grand prix.

“We can’t be adding races in other locations and continuing to ignore Africa,” he said last August.

Under the leadership of Liberty Media, the sport wants to “go to every continent”, said sport and media researcher Samuel Tickell of the University of Munster in Germany.

Returning to South Africa would be “something very important for Formula One, which has not raced there since the end of the apartheid era”, he added.

South Africa also boasts the continent’s only world champion, Ferrari’s Jody Scheckter in 1979.

The Kyalami racetrack is certified as Grade 2, just a level below that needed for a F1 race and it will require some work to host an event.

An alternative circuit vying to hold the prestigious race would snake through the streets of Cape Town, recently ranked “best city in the world” by Time Out magazine.

Winding its way around the stadium built for football’s 2010 World Cup, the route has already hosted a Formula E race in 2023.

Yet the real battle may be less between the two rival cities than against Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame was at the Singapore Grand Prix last September to meet the sport’s governing body FIA and Liberty Media.

The East African country already sponsors Arsenal and Paris Saint-Germain and is a partner of the National Basketball Association.

Morocco has also long had ambitions of hosting a F1 race.

Still, nothing prevents two grands prix being held on the continent.

Creating an additional would not require excluding other venues, as the F1 calendar is always expanding. The upcoming season counts seven more Grands Prix than in 2009, for example.

McKenzie said: “Why is it that when it comes to Africa, we are treated like we can only get one?”

Meanwhile, F1 pre-season testing is taking place this week.

Williams’ Carlos Sainz pushed Hamilton, who took his Ferrari seat, off the top of the timesheets in Bahrain on Feb 27.

Hamilton was fastest in a wet and windy morning session but Sainz, doing a full day with a massive 127 laps, lapped the desert Sakhir circuit in 1min 29.348sec for the team who finished ninth of 10 last season.

Only Sauber, who registered just four points, finished below the nine-time former constructors’ champions. AFP, REUTERS