The inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix is set to take place in early December of this year around the streets of Jeddah.
However, in a recent interview, Prince Khalid bin Sultan Al-Abdullah Al-Faisal confirmed that the grand prix will only temporarily take place on a Jeddah street circuit.
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Specifically, he said they are aiming for the event to take place on a new, permanent circuit from 2024 onwards.
Speaking this week, Prince Khalid, who serves as the president of the Kingdom’s motorsport federation, said Saudi Arabia is “working with [circuit designer] Hermann Tilke and Formula 1 to design the fastest city circuit” and promised that “the street racing in Saudi Arabia will not be standard.”
Continuing, he said: “Some city tracks are not very exciting. There is no great overtaking opportunity and it can be boring. So our idea is to build a big project, a big city for motorsport.
“We plan to complete it by the end of 2023, with everything ready in 2024.
“But the crown prince thought that 2024 is too far away, so we thought the street track would be an option until we complete the circuit. It will be exciting and there will be a lot of overtaking,” Prince Khalid explained.
“We are big fans of motorsport and we think in Saudi Arabia we have all it takes and needs to organise events such as the Dakar Rally, Formula E and Formula 1.
“I think we have proved it with Formula E and Dakar and especially with the current global situation, we want to deliver to our people what they want.
“We don’t want to be [just] another city, so our goal is to deliver something new. We know street circuits are not really exciting for motorsport because they are limited with the place they are, so sometimes overtaking is very difficult which makes the race somehow boring.
“Our idea for Formula 1 is to host it in Riyadh. We are building a very big motorsport city which will be finished at the end of 2023/beginning of 2024 and will have rally cross, karting, drag, circuit, so it will be for all types of motorsport.”
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