Martin Brundle interviews F1 chief Ross Brawn in the wake of the sport's crucial 2021 rules meeting this week
Monday 1 April 2019 16:54, UK
Ross Brawn has given a boost to the British GP by saying he would be "surprised" if F1 lost any of its current races.
The British GP is one five events on this year's 21-race calendar holding a contract which expires at the end of 2019, two years after Silverstone exercised a break clause in its deal owing to spiralling hosting costs.
But in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports F1, Brawn said: "Despite the pessimism, I'd be surprised if we lose any of the races we have."
Spain, Germany, Italy and Mexico are the four other races in the final years of their current deals.
F1's managing director of motorsport was speaking to Sky F1's Martin Brundle in a wide-ranging interview discussing the sport's future direction just days after a big 2021 rules meeting with the teams.
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Among the many topics discussed in the interview, were:
F1's big 2021 meeting…
"It was a step along the way. A year ago we spoke about these topics and I think we had a vision of where we wanted to be and Tuesday was a really good step in the right direction to get us to where we want to be."
What F1 wants to achieve...
"We have to have a competitive field. We don't want an artificial environment where we force the order, we want the best to still succeed. But we just don't want them to be dominant - we want to close the field up and we want as fair a contest as we can."
The Haas model
"The Haas model is interesting and it has been very successful. It's something we have to maintain for the future, for a small team to come in and be pretty respectable. There's some trimming we need to do about what they've been able to do. All credit to them, they took a model that was there which nobody had exploited as much as they did, and it's a great story. The fans like seeing Haas up there beating up some of the big teams. We are finding the best solution where we have the right balance of manufacturers, the teams like Renault, McLaren and Williams that they can hold their place, but give that opportunity for Haas.
Future races…
"We've got some exciting races coming up. Vietnam I'm really excited about because we've been much more involved with the circuit design there. Incredibly enthusiastic, new culture and new place for people to visit. There are some other races on the horizon.
"We want to have two or three more races in a season and we believe we can do that without over-stressing the teams, by refining their weekends."
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