F1 feeling the heat over tobacco ads

IS Formula One ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone about to discover that he has too many lions to fit into his cage for the show?

The 2004 campaign may be another 10 months away, but already Ecclestone will be working on the calendar for next season.

There could be problems ahead for the grands prix chief with new countries clamouring to join the show and older European venues just as desperate not to join any cull of circuits.

This season's schedule was reduced to 16 races after Belgium was kicked off the calendar in a row over a local ban on tobacco advertising which was due to come into force before the grand prix.

Ecclestone has said that the race at Spa-Francorchamps, a circuit steeped in Formula One history and one of the most demanding tracks on the calendar, could yet return in 2004.

That would all be very well, but Ecclestone already has to find slots for Bahrain and China which are scheduled to join next year.

Turkey is due to enter the championship the following year while Russia, Egypt, the Lebanon, Dubai and India have all been mentioned as possible future venues and talk continues of a possible second race in the United States, most likely on the west coast.

Teams have been unable unanimously to agree on extending the championship to 18 races though if the costs of attending a race, put at around £650,000, were met by Ecclestone's Formula One Management company then an extension is possible.

There are some in F1 who would prefer 20 races, but with the grand prix weekend cut from three days to two or the first day possibly used for testing purposes only with reduced testing at other times.

The likelihood is that next season will be 17 races and if space is to be found for Belgium's return as well as Bahrain and China then two current venues will have to be jettisoned.

Austria has already been told that next month's race will be its last as a fall-out of the European Union's plans to bring in a ban on tobacco sponsorship from July, 2005, instead of a previously agreed date with FIA, motor sport's world governing body, of October, 2006.

If Italy is to lose one of its two races then Imola, which staged the San Marino Grand Prix last weekend, is favourite for the chop, if not next year then longer term, with Monza another venue with a F1 history that stretches over half a century.

Germany also has the luxury of two races, but both the Nurburgring and Hockenheim have spent millions upgrading facilities or making changes to the track to improve the racing in recent years.

That could leave Silverstone, subject of strong criticism from both Ecclestone and FIA president Max Mosley, at risk though again Britain's historical link to F1 it staged the first race in championship history in 1950 could be its saviour.

Whatever race makes way, it will almost certainly come from the sport's traditional European heartland as F1 moves to more tobacco-friendly countries whatever the outcome of its legal challenge to the earlier EU ban date.

That has led to concerns that the five teams still dependent on tobacco (which pumps around £200m into the sport each year) could lose sponsors. It is a fear dismissed by Mosley.

"The people who would be put in breach of contract would be the tobacco-sponsored teams but we are bringing legal proceedings against the (European) Commission to get that date changed and everything sorted out," said Mosley.

"But, in the end, I think this is more apparent than real. The audience at a race is less than a tenth of one per cent of the total audience 99.9 something per cent is all on television.

Whether the television comes from inside or outside the EU doesn't make much difference.

"So, I don't think there will be an issue with the sponsors in that sense at all. Whatever happens there will always be a certain number of venues in the EU.

"We've always had currently two but traditionally three races without tobacco since time immemorial, so we are going to have a very minimum of three."