Baku benefits from no date clash with Le Mans

Baku City Circuit executive director Arif Rahimov believes that by not clashing with Le Mans the sport’s newest Grand Prix venue will benefit by an influx of more fans and media to cover the race on 30 June.

Last year the inaugural Formula 1 race through Baku City – run as the European Grand Prix – clashed with Le Mans, this year it does not and Rahimov says already the difference is evident, “Obviously it is good to have more media and spectators in Azerbaijan for the race.”

“Last year, a lot of people got a chance to see what the race looks like and it attracted a lot of international spectators, and we are happy that those spectators won’t have to choose between the two races. On the press side, Le Mans is a big event and a lot of media had to choose between the races and they won’t have to do that this year.

“Another thing is that our race isn’t back-to-back with any other race so we have more time to prepare ourselves together with Formula 1 Management and their technical teams to make sure that the track is right because last year was quite a bit of a logistical nightmare to organize everything in such a short period of time.”

Rahimov is also upbeat about ticket sales which are already better than they were for last year’s race, “They are definitely up – from the trend that we see right now, in the same period of time it was last year, we have sold five times as many tickets as were sold in the same period last year so we see a big change – which was probably influenced by the fact we had the television viewers last year which persuaded people to go and buy a ticket.”

“A lot of the locals got educated on what the race is so they know exactly what they are buying now and they just want to go and get there – they want to see the race, they want to be part of the excitement, they want to attend the F1 Village and other roaming areas to see all the entertainment we have in place. So it is going up,” added Rahimov whose race this year will run as the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

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