Wolff urges return to South Korea

After 12 years away, Toto Wolff believes that South Korea remains an “untapped market” for the sport.

The Korea International Circuit in Yeongam hosted rounds of the world championship between 2010 and 2013, with Fernando Alonso (Ferrari) winning once and Sebastian Vettel (Red Bull) three times.

Provisionally on the calendar for 2014 the event was omitted from the final version, and though appearing once again in the draft calendar for 2015 – albeit at a different point in the season – the FIA subsequently claimed that the organisers had opted not to host it.

The event was one of many in far-flung nations that struggled to attract the crowds, but much has changed since then with F1 now enjoying a global boom.

While Drive to Survive got the job underway during the pandemic, initiatives like heavy social media promotion and the F1 movie have encouraged a whole new demographic to the sport’s fan-base.

Wolff believes that now the time is right to return.

“It has been a little bit of an untapped market for a while now,” he told Bloomberg. “Considering that Formula 1 has grown very strong over the last few years, particularly in the younger target group.

“You know, our strongest growing demographic is young females from 15 to 24,” he added. “They are very active on social media.

“South Korea is an extremely social-media-connected country. So it would be great if we could come back and show how Formula One has changed over the last ten years.

F1 CEO, Stefano Domenicali claims that the current schedule of 24 races is the limit, however in a bid to open the sport to new territories existing events, such as Barcelona and Spa, are being put on a rotating basis.

With Malaysia looking likely to join the schedule, rotating events might be the only way to go.

At present there are three races in Asia, while there are six in the Americas and four in the Middle East.