Formula 1 CEO Stefano Domenicali recently traveled to St. Petersburg. Background: The modern new Igora Drive circuit will replace the Sochi Autodrome as the venue for the Russian Grand Prix from 2023. Formula 1 confirmed this on the morning of June 26th.
The Igora Drive was supposed to be the scene of a DTM race in 2020, but the event fell victim to the corona crisis. After that, the 4.086 km long, 15-corner track, located 54 km north of the port city of St. Petersburg, was on the calendar as a reserve circuit for the MotoGP World Championship.
When Dorna and the world motorcycle association FIM published the revised 2021 MotoGP calendar in January, attentive observers noticed that the new Igora Drive Circuit near St. Petersburg was not included in the schedule.
According to a ruling by the International Court of Arbitration for Sport CAS, following the doping scandal in Russia, no world championships may be held in sports that are subject to the regulations of the World Anti-Doping Agency until the end of 2022.
This also includes all disciplines of the world motorcycle association FIM and the world automobile association FIA. To make matters worse, Russia closed its borders to contain the Covid 19 epidemic. Getting a visa is currently impossible. And the riots over the imprisonment of opposition politician Navalny created another complication.
Igora Drive was developed by the German company «Tilke Engineers & Architects» planned and built. Former sports car racing driver Hermann Tilke has already planned and designed 21 Formula 1 racetracks and 90 other racetracks and test tracks.
The facility cost around $192 million. It includes different track variants and already has an FIA Grade 1 homologation for Formula 1. There is also a karting circuit, a motocross world championship course, a rally track, a winter driving course and conference Building. One of the main investors is billionaire Yury Kovalchuk, the main owner of Rossiya Bank and a close ally of President Putin, who likes staying at Igora Ski Resort. Igora visitors comment that the circuit has certain similarities to the MotorLand Aragón, also built by Tilke, although the circuit in Russia is comparatively flat with a total elevation gain of 17 meters per lap. FIA President Jean Todt visited the construction site in December 2018, and since then there has been speculation that the Igora Drive Circuit will be the scene of a Russian Formula 1 GP in the foreseeable future. Originally, Igora was not planned as a venue for Formula 1 and MotoGP. But since then Hermann Tilke has been working on extending the track layout so that a Grade A homologation for a Grand Prix can be fulfilled. Due to the "extension", the GP version of the system should extend to approx. 4.6 to 4.8 km. The runway was planned from the outset with a reserve of 850 meters. For Formula 1, the number of boxes would have to be increased from 24 to 30. The Medical Center's equipment already exceeds the requirements of the Formula 1 World Championship. The media center, on the other hand, would have to be enlarged. Some further changes in camber spaces will be required for MotoGP and F1 homologation. This expansion should then also benefit the Superbike World Championship event. In Formula 1, Igora Drive Circuit would be the third shortest circuit at 4km, after the Monte Carlo road circuit and the 4.018km Red Bull Ring. Therefore, the extension is planned. The move of Formula 1 from Sochi to St. Petersburg has another reason. The then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev already declared in 2010 that Russia had to move faster and become a home for innovative companies in the high-tech industry. He was looking for a "showcase", which is why this pilot project was already linked to the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi brought. In the meantime, Putin has long since taken over the helm again, and he has repeatedly announced the modernization of the domestic economy, which has so far been fed primarily from oil and natural gas. Concrete efforts have been underway since April 2016 to turn the Olympic Park in Sochi into a Russian “Silicon Valley”. The ITMO University has long been active with the project "Interregional Network Program Start-Up Accelerator School" with the partner "Storm of Ideas" in Sochi. A lot of brainstorming sessions by IT experts, programmers and start-up specialists took place, and investors were sought. In the meantime, hundreds of potential participants from all over Russia have registered who are taking care of innovative projects and want to transform the derelict Olympic site into a vibrant new Silicon Valley. The plans are well advanced, small and medium-sized companies are to be settled. As soon as new business ideas are implemented in this "innovation cluster", this will have an impact on the Formula 1 race track called "Sochi Autodrom" on the Black Sea, which was the venue for the first F1 GP on October 12, 2014. The Sochi Olympic Park will be redesigned, the area will then contain many new buildings for start-ups and apartments. The 5.848 km long Formula 1 track is therefore to be converted into a non-permanent race track. Parts of the course are then used for daily traffic throughout the year. A 2.5 km long piste for smaller events is only to remain as a permanent course around the pit building. The rest of the track with all the boundary walls will in future be rebuilt for the Grand Prix, as was the case in Valencia, for example.
