The FIA have confirmed that the German Grand Prix has been taken off the 2015 calendar, reducing the races in this season’s Championship to 19.
The event was to take place in Hockenheim again after the deal to split the German round between them and the Nurburgring fell through, due to financial difficulties. However now there is set to be no German Grand Prix for the first time since 1955.
Reports emerged in Germany at the weekend that the German round of the calendar wouldn’t happen. Hockenheim boss Georg Seiler said: we have no more hope that the Formula One takes place here. We have done everything in the last few years everything to make the fans happy,” he was quoted as saying to German newspaper Bild.
Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone weighed in on the matter at last weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, saying: “The German Grand Prix is dead at the moment. “It won’t get replaced if it doesn’t happen. As with any race if it’s cancelled it is cancelled. There’s not much we can do.”
With the Nurburgring not able to host the race either, the German Grand Prix will drop off the calendar for the first time since 1955, with the race first being hosted in 1926. 2014’s event saw Nico Rosberg win in a Mercedes, a real German success, with a German driver winning in a German car. The event had a poor turnout and this was when doubts started to arise over the future of the race, one of the oldest on the calendar.
Plus with so many German drivers on the grid, as many as three, Nico Rosberg, Sebastian Vettel and Nico Hulkenberg, it’s a shock to see it go. German drivers have dominated Formula One in recent years, with two drivers achieving a whopping 11 titles between them, Michael Schumacher (7) and Vettel’s four.
The absence of Germany means we will have a three week gap in-between Britain and Hungary, an agonising wait for Formula One fans, on what is a sad day for the sport, to see such a historic event taken off the calendar, with nothing being said about a possible return in 2016.