Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, Hockenheimring, 2016

No German Grand Prix on 2019 F1 calendar

2019 F1 season

Posted on

| Written by and

The German Grand Prix will not appear on the 2019 F1 calendar at either of the two venues capable of holding the race.

According to a report in German newspaper Bild neither the Hockenheimring nor Nurburgring will hold the country’s round of the Formula 1 world championship next year.

The two circuits shared the race on an alternating basis from 2007 until 2013, when the Nurburgring’s financial problems forced it to pull out of the arrangement. Since then the Hockenheimring has continued to hold races in even-numbered years but its current deal expires after next month’s race.

Hockenheim marketing director Jorn Teske told Bild: “Obviously we are currently working on proposals for a return in 2020. During our negotiations to date we have been unable to agree a sustainable model, which means we are particularly excited about our race this year.”

F1 commercial rights holder Liberty Media has also been in discussions with the Nurburgring about a return to the circuit. The track’s CEO Mirco Markfort told Bild: “Since early 2017 we have had proactive negotiations with Liberty Media and in March 2018 when we discussed further opportunities for co-operation.”

“Our proposals are on the the table, now it’s up to Liberty Media to decide.”

The German Grand Prix’s place on the calendar could be taken by the planned Miami Grand Prix, which Liberty hopes to stage in October next year.

Tickets are still available for this year’s German Grand Prix, which takes place on July 22nd.

Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free

2019 F1 season

Browse all 2019 F1 season articles

30 comments on “No German Grand Prix on 2019 F1 calendar”

  1. Shame, as both Hockenheim and Nurburgring were two circuits that I enjoyed. Hockenheim may wasn’t the most exciting layout, but it generally produced really good wheel-to-wheel racing, and the Nurburgring had a good mix of slow, medium and fast speed turns, but still produced decent racing.

    1. Robert McKay
      27th June 2018, 16:52

      I agree. Nurburgring is the more interesting circuit layout to me, and I even grew to appreciate the loop they added in the first sector, but neo-Hockenheim isn’t too bad for providing a decent race with overtaking.

      Funny how in both circumstances they represent circuits that are “neutered” versions of their longer original layouts and took a lot of stick for that, yet because circuits in the modern (Sepang onwards) era are generally so crap we’ve moved back to a certain fondness for these German venues again.

      I would like to see old Hockenheim return (although I appreciate that’s almost impossible now) or even a new venue that was similarly configured for long blasts of high speed, but mainly because ultra-low downforce races are so rare now and I do think we need a couple more on the calendar for a bit of balance. I want to see a couple more races with really skinny rear wings.

      1. I would love to see a track like that again, where cars run really skinny wings and the track is dominated by straights. However, due to safety reasons, I doubt they would ever do that. Just look at Paul Ricard.

        1. Well that, and it would be a boring, Mercedes dominated race

        2. JungleMartin
          2nd July 2018, 17:48

          Monza

      2. I loved the old Hockenheim layout. It always resulted an atypical grid, and generally good racing.
        What I would really love to see is a return to the old Nürburgring (the Nordschleife). They do hold races on it, including a 24-hours.
        I would suggest a double-qualifying weekend, with no race but a distribution of points; such a program would allow all stakeholders to dip their toes in the water, before committing to an actual race.

  2. Bring back the old Hockenheim

    1. I’m not sure if that would be a good idea. The biggest flaw of that track is that it wasn’t entertaining for visitors, as most of the action happened in the forest. And since the track was almost 7 km long, the GP was only 45 laps ‘short’. Yes, this is also the case at Spa-Franchorchamps, but that track has action at almost every corner, plus a great challenge for drivers.

      I remember that the drivers hated the old Hockenheimring. Long boring straights, and thanks to very low downforce, awfully performing cars in the stadium area.

      1. @montalvo, as you say, quite a few races at Hockenheim were pretty boring for the drivers, since it was a circuit that was entirely dominated by the quality of the car and the skill of the driver made next to no impact, hence why most drivers actively disliked the old circuit.

        Most of those who were present for the races held at Hockenheim usually wrote about how bored they were at a drab, listless and dull venue where, most of the time, the fans saw very little “racing” – since usually the cars would be too strung out to have any real battles on track – and the venue as a whole was described as having a pretty poor atmosphere, leading to contemporary descriptions of Hockenheim as “dull at ditchwater” and the races there “lifeless”.

        When you mention the old circuit, very rarely do fans seem to mention the quality of the racing there – usually the comments are about the randomness of whether somebody’s engine would blow up or not. Take the random engine failures of of the equation, and there are really not that many memorable races at Hockenheim to list – most of the events that people tend to remember are events that were kind of secondary to the race itself.

        For example, there will be a number of people who remember the Piquet-Salazar clash during the 1982 race, where Piquet started punching Salazar. However, the rest of the race was pretty forgettable and I expect most fans probably wouldn’t know who actually won – it was, incidentally, Tambay, with only Arnoux, who finished second, still being on the lead lap (everybody from third place back was lapped at least once by the leader).

        1. There were a number of good races there (’70, ’80, ’81, ’87, ’89, ’91, ’93, ’98, ’00); and the drivers may not have liked the old Hockenheim but it was a unique track, and F1 does not have many of those today.

          1. Were there not quite a few contemporary reports that suggested that some of those races weren’t all that great? After all, Forghieri has suggested that Ickx threw away his chance of winning in 1970 because, for reasons that he never adequately explained to the team, he chose to lift off out of the final corners and basically coasted across the line, allowing Rindt to sweep past him to take victory.

            Some of the others, such as the 1980 race, were described at the time as being more of an average race rather than a great race, especially since that race was heavily overshadowed by Patrick Depailler’s death at Hockenheim about a week earlier and the fact that, at least according to some sources, the Arrows team were facing a criminal investigation for smuggling drugs and arms.

            For 1987, there were also contemporary complaints about the race being overly dominated by concerns over fuel consumption and engine failures, with one report sarcastically noting that the normally aspirated Tyrrell cars were “the only ones actually racing” and bemoaning how the front runners were comfortably pulling away from the midfield and tail end of the grid.

    2. I disagree as I really like the new circuit.
      If you sit in the MB stand you see the cars appear from your left, scream down the straight into the tight hairpin and then come towards you into the left hander (not sure of the name) before you.
      I think it’s pretty exciting, even if you are just watching club or national racing – and it’s definitely better than sitting the old stadium, watching the cars disappear off into the forest and then twiddling one’s fingers before they return about a minute later!

      1. I meant to add that I think it will be a great pity if Germany does not host a Grand Prix next year. In all likelihood, the WCC holding team will be German and the 2nd place driver in the WDC will be German.
        Lausitzring?

  3. Darran Donald
    27th June 2018, 15:45

    The German GP died with the old Hochenheim

    1. Some people used to say that the German GP died with the old Nurburgring.

  4. Entirely unsurprising. In the end, it was next to guaranteed this whole time that there wouldn’t be a German GP in 2019, so, therefore, not really news as this was 100% expectable. Not that I hate Hockenheim, but I’m not too sad about losing it once again as I’ve never really had any feelings towards it either way.

  5. That’s what they get for being eliminated from the World Cup.

    1. ‘Not much fun in Tatarstan, no.’

  6. Next stop, Korean GP reinstated for next year!

    1. LOL, i know what you mean :p

    2. @fer-no65 inb4 Kim Jong-Un presents the winner’s trophy.

  7. Norisring !!!

    1. That would be awesome.

  8. Why can’t they organise next year’s German GP in Zandvoort;. I understand that during the summer months it’s as German as it gets ;-)

    PS next British GP close to the Costa del Sol – Jerez.

    1. Technically we could do a street track on Gibraltar. They may have to wave double yellows when planes come in to land though…..

    2. Zandvoort would be a great location for a revived Dutch GP (first since ’85) but its facilities compared to Spa’s are crap and need upgrading.

  9. With Mercedes as a full works effort in F1, the bi-annual nature of the German GP is just not okay. I guess having Austria is alright but it’s just too historic a race to not have on the calendar.

  10. Unfortunately I think we’ll see more of this as time goes on.

    The fee structures have been preventing many/most venues from being able to make a profit (or even break even) for hosting a F1 race.

    Unless Liberty address this and find a way to work wth them, it’s quite possible that we’ll lose the German, British and other key Grand Prix’s.

    I’m really not sure what due diligence Liberty did when they bought F1 but surely they must have recognised that the financial models for both promoters and teams themselves were pretty much unsustainable.

    They have the ability to turn all of that around but not without sacrificing some of their share of the current income generation to lower hosting fees an make the team distributions more equitable.

    Problem is no company will willingly give up profit these days even if it’s to secure a longer term future. They’ll chant the mantra “maximise returns for shareholders” all the way to their demise instead of giving some up to ensure that they can remain a viable entity into the longer term future.

    1. @dbradock, the thing is, there is still an underlying trend of the German GP having a major problem with pretty poor attendance figures ever since Michael Schumacher retired from the sport that hasn’t yet been solved.

      Figures such as Vettel or Hulkenberg just don’t have the same sort of mass appeal that Schumacher had and, when coupled with the long term declining popularity of motorsport amongst the wider public, both Hockenheim and the Nurburgring have recorded pretty weak attendance figures ever since then.

      In recent years, a good race day crowd might be 60,000, although a number of years have seen figures closer to 50,000 to 55,000. In some years, their attendance figures would make them one of the worst attended races on the calendar – people take aim at Bahrain for having low attendance figures, for example, but in 2014 the German GP’s attendance figures of 94,000 over the whole weekend were barely any better.

      Whilst there are questions over the fees, there is also a wider social shift as well that means that the race, and motorsport as a whole, just isn’t that popular any more.

      1. Not all motorsports…
        Motogp at Sachsenring 2015 – 211558 total, 92122 on race day.
        Motogp at Sachsenring 2016 – 212411 total, 93213 on race day

Comments are closed.