Hong Kong ‘perfect for F1’, resident involved in successful bid for Bangkok race says
Hongkonger Frank Yu led technical team that worked on bringing sport to Bangkok, and says his hometown could do it too
The city would be “a perfect venue for Formula One” and should campaign to stage a race or risk being left behind by its neighbours, a Hongkonger who worked on the successful bid to bring the elite motorsport to Thailand has said.
Bangkok is expected to be part of the F1 schedule from 2028, joining Japan, Singapore and Shanghai as Asian stops on an increasingly congested calendar that now has 24 events on it.
With South Africa and Rwanda among other places also aggressively bidding to join the circuit, Hong Kong could leverage F1’s booming popularity in China to become “a serious player in international sport”.
According to data released last week, the high-speed bonanza added almost 90 million new fans last year, with a 39 per cent increase registered on the mainland in the past 12 months.
And with Las Vegas reporting a race-week economic impact of US$934 million from staging a grand prix in 2024, when the gambling hub said visitors spent an average of US$2,400 on “non-race-related expenditures”, Hongkonger Frank Yu Siu-fung called making a bid “a no-brainer”.
“Hong Kong is due to have a major international event,” said Yu, who was appointed to lead the technical team to work with F1 and the Thai government as part of its successful bid. “The Sevens is great, we had Formula E, but other than World Cups, there is nothing like Formula One. And the amount of traction you get from it, is unbelievable.”