F1 make decision on replacing cancelled races with new Grand Prix at last minute | F1 | Sport

Formula One bosses have made a decision on replacing the cancelled races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia after receiving a pitch from another venue. Both events in the Middle East were scrubbed from the calendar due to the ongoing military situation involving Iran. As a result, there is a lengthy break until the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May.

Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were among the nations affected by Iran’s retaliatory strikes on American military bases in the Gulf region The cancellations had been expected for weeks, but F1 bosses held out until the last possible moment to see if hostilities would cease. It later emerged that Peter Malinauskas, the state premier of South Australia, had pitched Adelaide as a potential replacement.

The city is home to the Adelaide Parklands Circuit, a temporary street circuit which hosted the Australian Grand Prix between 1985 and 1995.

Speaking to Triple M, Malinauskas revealed that he asked about the possibility of F1 returning to Adelaide, but it was later decided that the cancelled races wouldn’t be replaced.

“I reached out to Stefano Domenicali, who is the CEO of F1,” he 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].”

McGuire, a renowned TV presenter and Australian Football League commentator, corroborated Malinauskas’s version of events in an interview with FIVEaa.

“I’m walking around with Stefano Domenicali, and the issues start to happen in Iran,” he recalled. “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 One about the opportunity to bring the Bahrain GP to Adelaide. It turned out Formula One believes it’s just too expensive to do it, et cetera.

“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 One Grand Prix to Adelaide this month.

“It was a near thing. He did everything right. It’s only that, in the end, Formula One said no.”

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