Why This Formula 1 Track is Abandoned...

foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] facility that was aiming to host Formula One for years to come to a Barren Wasteland that sits unused decaying slowly it had a seven year contract and approval from City officials and a gun of a HomeTown boy to help keep race fans pouring through the gates so what what in the hell happened to this place [Music] back in 2006 Fernando Alonso was on top of the motor racing world a world champion and looking to be world champion Again Naturally with a rising star on your hands and a depleting list of grotesque Sports to follow in Spain maybe another Grand Prix in the country wouldn't hurt they already had one in Barcelona but we could have another in particular a race held on city streets to help attract more tourists to the region this particular region being Valencia early that year those Keen to have a race held in the city had meetings with F1 Supremo Bernie Eccleston never a dull moment with that dude a Consortium by the name of velma's sport group led the charge for a Formula One Grand Prix to be held in Valencia it was led by Champion motorcycle rider Jorge Martinez espar and Villarreal FC's president Fernando Roy is that he says name I don't know who either of those people are and Bernie probably didn't either but they supposedly came with a lot of money and Bernie was familiar with that so he heard them out the small man paid visit to the region was given the grand tour around what would be the location for the race and eventually once it was proven that they had the wherewithal to actually host the race Bernie relented on June the 1st 2007 a deal was signed between Velma and formula one they would see Valencia play host to the European Grand Prix for seven years starting in 2008. the idea of a Grand Prix being held on the Spanish coast standard nice at least on paper it did it was added incentive for local dignitaries too as it was hoped that the race with its lucrative potential money-wise would transform what was an area full of derelict buildings into a thriving Center filled with departments and Condominiums and a Starbucks on every corner a concrete jungle smeared with capitalism and investors wet dream when it came to designing the racetrack it was given to the one dude who always seemed to pop up across the design landscape in Formula One in this time a name that strikes fear into any formula one fan nowadays the man being Hermann tolki in all honesty Toki did know how to design a race track I mean just look at sapang or the bilsterberg but when it came to formula one he was more often than not muzzled by the constraints of the land and the requirements put forward by the FIA I mean there is only so much you can do with a parking lot with no elevation and creating a track around the harbor front of Valencia probably wasn't going to be the easiest of tasks nonetheless he created a pretty good circuit under the circumstances it had no elevation whatsoever but using existing roads and creating dedicated sections of racetrack he crafted circuit that measured 3.3 miles in length boasted 25 corners and a freaking swing bridge that would retract many of a racing cars weren't crossing over it not quite Too Fast Too Furious but hey what are you gonna do the course was revealed to the public on June 19th and work got underway the main building was a former tinglado which honestly is a pretty crafty way of going about these things rather than you know bulldozing a damn Casino in the desert as a Prelude a sort of warm-up for the inaugural Grand Prix in 2008 the circuit hosted a round of the international GT open and Spanish Formula 3 championships those tracks I could see the potential big braking zones that could provide passing the Yachts MAUD and the harbor gave a nice and glamorous Vibe and since we were in the year 2008 we were still a few years away from Pastor Maldonado eating the grid but for those online A Million Miles Away who still believe that formula one should be held exclusively on British airfields they had only one word to describe this track and hate to be totally fair simulations of the track didn't look totally appealing and by this stage Toki design tracks were gay a reputation and not a good one what's more some of those yachts in the harbor had to be hoisted in there by crane since they were too big to go through that swing bridge but whether people loved it or hated it the reality was the Grand Prix circus would rock up there formula one was headed to Valencia the 2008 season played host to the epic battle between Felipe Massa and Sir Lewis Hamilton so an unknown track with new variables in the middle of the Season should provide an exciting on-track product right well yeah you you would think that but but no it kind of didn't Massa would rock a way to win that weekend whilst Hamilton barely kept up fighting next spasms and the flu in about 27 other unspecified diseases Ferrari did their utmost however to make the race interesting by bungling dead pit stops and it wouldn't be the last time that their faith in electricity would come back to haunt them overall however it was a rather uneventful first year for the Valencia Street circus which you know to be fair that does happen but if you thought that 2008 was uneventful well 2009 was on a whole new level just the lead up to the weekend was interesting this race would see the debut of Roman grosjean and The Return of Luca bad dollar if y'all know the story of these two from back in the day then you know this is some kind of omen when it comes to the actual race though oh boy aside from the very start of the race and the shuffling you would expect in a pit stop on the actual race track the total number of overtakes in that race was Zero there were no recorded on track overtakes for the whole race something about that stat seems a little bit damning already this was a track which fans at the time we're not looking forward to the year 2010 saw a momentous Championship battle that actually had more than two cars vying for the title imagine that like oh it was such a great season and I miss it so much the race that year was a bit more interesting Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton were still at each other's throats Sebastian fatal was showing why he was becoming the man at the time and Mark Webber was flying literally these are perhaps the most iconic images of the Valencia Street circuit when it wasn't in Ruins thankfully both he and the other car of hiki kovalignan the eighth fastest driver of all time were unharmed from the incident the only other highlight from that race being the stunning drive from kamoi Kobayashi come to think of it there have been a lot more boring races in f1's history than this was but irrespective of the potential the track Still Remains tricky to pass on and in 2011 this would come to a hit because my God that race sucked it's often mentioned that there were two highlights of that race when it started and when it ended with the ladder being much more exciting and that it put us all out of our misery Martin brundle mentioned that despite having commentated on this race for the last four years a lot of the time he still couldn't identify most of the track this did nothing to help sway the opinion of fans and drivers that this was one of the worst Formula One tracks on the calendar and perhaps of all time unimaginative and throws up some mud racing and then 2012 happened this was a fantastic year for Formula One great drivers and Great Cars and Cars that could if they wanted to provide some great racing we might not have thought that at the time but we looked back on these races with affinity in late June it was time for the European Grand Prix and every fan collectively thought oh no no no please not Valencia that it was on pole Hamilton's second and then third was the legend himself Pastor Maldonado Hometown hero Fernando Alonso was down in 11th the Ferrari that year really was no bueno but still Fernando being Fernando he could still make it look like a million bucks throughout that race there were battles throughout the field and believe it or not actual passing Rojan around the outside of Hamilton Alonso around the outside of Rojan there was jockeying for position everywhere and yes it was a good watch from P11 on the grid Alonso started to climb up through the field as the crowd roared in the background they went even more ballistic when fettle's alternator packed up and handed Alonso the lead a league that he would keep until the very end behind him though there was other things going on Hamilton was beginning to fall to the clutches of those behind him Kimi raikkonen and the Lotus passed them for second and with a couple laps to go his rear view mirrors showed him a truly horrifying sight Maldonado was right behind him at the end of the back straight Maldonado had DRS and Hamilton had run out of curse Pastor went to the outside and what happened next was predictable this ruined Hamilton's race but the lack of a front wing also ruined maldonado's but what it did mean was that the floodgates opened for those behind them 57 laps done and Alonso would take a popular home win raikkonen was in second and in third place was the one and only Michael Schumacher his first Podium since China 2006 his first Podium since his return to the sport in 2010 but it would also be his last podium in his last year of Formula One racing it's a little poignant thinking about it now but it's still such a great sense of Joy watching shimmy climb onto the podium once again and the race as a whole perhaps gave hope that maybe this track could throw up something good and that it might have a good future perhaps for Valencia this could be the beginning of something good [Music] despite having a seven year contract to host the European Grand Prix there was something that hadn't figured into everyone's plans when said contract was signed back in 2007. so I think this is the most the world was in financial crisis come next year and Spain was hit particularly hard Valencia was in tremendous debt and was on the brink of being bailed out by the central government and it made the ultra expensive race a huge liability there were plans to alternate the Spanish Grand Prix between the countries two F1 tracks 2013 will be held in Barcelona and 2014 would be held in Valencia but this never happened when political leadership changed hands the race was culled altogether with the cost of the Grand Prix being quite apparent it was estimated that construction work and other costs attached to the circus amounted to 100 million euros and as of 2023 60 million of those Euros still needed to be paid by the valencian government there was such widespread corruption involved in this project and then president of the Valencia region Francisco camps was under investigation for allegedly handing out illegal contracts misappropriation of public funds and accepting bribes foreign if there was any consolation Bernie Eccleston would not penalize them for breaking the contract early even he could see that this city was in grave danger of being the setting for the next snake pluskin movie since that last race in 2012 the track was never used again has been left to rot as the years Drew on only ever coming up as a warning from history and content for F1 YouTubers and now we look back on this track with a Sentimental mindset we look at that 2012 race and then we look at the junior series races there they're absolutely slapped and we ask ourselves was it really such a bad track well yeah it was bad because one good race doesn't account for the other four bad ones even with DRS and a close grid it couldn't produce good racing to save its life and was generally characterized as being as Bland as the food in a Scottish restaurant and ultimately it did leave a lot of people out of pocket for no good reason but so searching for a silver lining here it does leave us with an abandoned F1 track that you can visit to this day whilst you be on your way to the city's local race track the circuit Ricardo Tomo which continues to see Formula One cars test there to this very day which seems a bit ironic darn it thank you [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Josh Revell

Views: 418,996

Keywords: f1, formula 1, european grand prix, valencia, valencia f1, valencia formula 1, valencia f1 track, valencia track, valencia street circuit, abandoned, valencia abandoned, abandoned f1 track, 2012 european grand prix, 2012 european gp

Id: Rw3IFH8sZOk

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023