First sponsorships in F1 and appointment on the calendar then with the Jeddah circuit built in record time, home of the Dakar for several editions and with the World Rally ready to land in 2024: theSaudi Arabia put motorsport at the top of the list of disciplines to ‘attack’ in terms of image and beyond, and the agenda of Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Al Faisal – president of the Saudi Automobile and Motorcycle Federation who grew up in Europe and graduated from the University of London political science – has a decidedly ambitious agenda to start grounding F1 in the Kingdom.
“We want to create a hub, we have big companies that can help the future of motor sport – the words of Prince Khalid interviewed by the newspaper motorsport magazine – with all the investments we are making in the automotive sector we hope to be able to open and bring the headquarters to Saudi Arabia or hire people who can help us produce cars or technology, to create our brands and have our patents”. Khalid’s dream is to replicate the British Motor Valley which in the Midlands and Oxfordshire regions is home to seven out of ten teams as well as 4300 suppliers.
The Saudi Arabian Kingdom already has equity-level holdings of McLaren And Aston Martin and the goal is to convince these two teams to move to Arabia, perhaps to the new futuristic city Neom which should be built in 2025. The Woking team, however, is completing the work on the new wind tunnel which will be fully operational in 2025 and as far as Aston Martin is concerned, Lawrence Stroll has recently inaugurated the new factory at Silverstone.
It is therefore difficult to imagine an ‘escape’ to Arabia for these two teams, while there is absolutely no doubt that the Saudi Kingdom will begin to set up infrastructures and circuits to start breeding drivers with whom to assault the title one day world championship in F1. “Our goal is not only to host international events, but we want to be more involved. We want to have engineers, mechanics, build cars, be creative Khalid added. we really want to have a champion, a driver who can compete in the Formula 1 championship, who can compete in the MotoGP. We are investing heavily in infrastructure, in building runways in Saudi Arabia. We want to build academies to be more involved: Saudi teams with Saudi riders or other riders racing in Saudi teams. There is still a long way to go, but we hope to be able to achieve our goals by 2030, 2035, 2040″.
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