The Azerbaijan GP seems to be secure for the next two years despite speculations of the newly proposed Miami street race set to replace the race in Baku.
Azerbaijan promoters aren’t ready to give up on their contract with F1 and have revealed that the only case in which Baku will not hold a race next year would be if both parties decide to part ways.
And it has been made clear by Arif Rahimov, the Baku F1 promoter has confirmed that Baku are already looking forward to hosting the Azerbaijan GP in 2019.
“We have a contract that is a binding contract for five years, five races, starting in 2016. Neither of us can break it unless we both agree to break it,” Arif Rahimov said
“If Miami comes in, it can just come in and all the other races can stay there. It’s up to 22 races anyway. I think it was just a rumour. I don’t know how this rumour got spread, because it made no sense from the beginning.
“I guess they’re going to release the draft calendar this month or next month. We’re going to be in this calendar and it’s going to sort out most of the questions.” he added.
Rahimov has revealed that all this talk about Miami replacing Baku next year sprung up because Baku was going to provide its pit and paddock equipment for the second US round.
“I’ve never held this conversation about Miami. We had a brief chat with Chase, and it wasn’t about Miami,” Rahimov said.
“It was just in general, we were trying to figure out if there’s a way to share the facilities on temporary circuits. But then we figured that if you’re going to fly them or ship them anywhere as far as Miami or the Far East, it’s not going to make any commercial sense because you’ve got to pay a lot for the logistics.
“It wasn’t in a way that we were going to sell it to someone or rent it to someone. Just trying to understand the feasibility of sharing facilities.” he added.
Azerbaijan is also looking for an improved deal, one that would bring about more commercial value to the circuit and also reduce its risk factor.
“We might postpone the deadline for the negotiations. You can call it triggering a break clause too,” Rahimov said.
“There’s no format of a letter. You can write a letter saying that you want to renegotiate and you want to do it later. We’re trying to get it sorted before the end of June. I think we’ll come to some agreement.” he concluded.
