Lewis Hamilton has claimed that he won’t call time on his F1 career until he helps get the South African Grand Prix back on the calendar. The sport had considered a return to Kyalami as early as next season but these plans have yet to materialise.
F1 is marketed as and presented as a ‘World Championship’, but the 2023 and 2024 calendars both fail to reach across all of the inhabited continents. The glaring omission is Africa – the sport hasn’t raced there since Alain Prost claimed victory for Williams at Kyalami in 1993.
Hamilton has been pushing to get the Kyalami circuit back on the F1 calendar for over eight years now. In 2015 he told the BBC: “I would love for it to be in South Africa. They are great sporting fans and are just petrolheads who love cars. I would love to go there, it would be absolutely insane.
“There is a huge following there and it is one of the most important Grands Prix we need to get on the calendar. This is the first time that black South Africans have had someone to relate to in this sport. I feel incredibly privileged to be at the front of that.”
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Despite the massive success that he has enjoyed in his career since those comments, Hamilton remains committed to the vision of returning F1 to the African continent, and he reiterated his desire to race in South Africa ahead of this weekend’s season finale.
Hamilton was addressing supporters in the fan zone ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix when he said: “I’m working in the background to get South Africa on the race. That’s like such a dream for me. I’ve gotta stay until they get that race…”
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The seven-time world champion has support from F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali too. Earlier this year he stated: “There are areas of the world that wants to have Formula One, and I think that one area that we want to develop is the African area. We are a world championship, and that’s an area where we are not there.”
However, the country’s political climate is providing an obstacle to F1’s return. Particularly troublesome has been the government’s ties to Russia, who themselves lost their place on the calendar off the back of the invasion of Ukraine. Until these ties are severed it remains a complicated deal to restore Grand Prix racing to Kyalami.
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