WTCR's Jeddah swansong shows Saudi's powerful motor sport pull

The WTCR will race one last time on a modified Jeddah circuit – but with F1, Dakar and Formula E already visiting, Saudi Arabia isn't in short supply of motor sport

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Saudi says it wants to do more than just host events

Grand Prix Photo

A beginning… and an end. Saudi Arabia hosts international touring car racing for the first time this weekend, on a shortened version of the Jeddah Corniche Formula 1 track. But while the event heralds a further expansion of motor sport in the kingdom, sadly the night-race finale of the 2022 World Touring Car Cup will also close the curtain on a series that has its roots in the old European and World Touring Car Championships. What a shame.

Talented Spaniard Mikel Azcona is all but certain to be crowned the last king of WTCR. All the BRC Hyundai driver needs is the third-fastest time in qualifying to score enough points to put the title out of reach of Münnich Motorsport Honda’s Néstor Girolami. We’ll hear more from Azcona despite the demise of the WTCR, which has run out of steam after five years. At just 26, he has it all ahead of him and harbours ambitions to race at Le Mans.

The revised circuit by the Red Sea remains smooth and fast, but after the grand prix layout’s Turn 4 left-hander it keeps sweeping round to link up with the return leg, shortening the length from 3.8 miles to a 12-turn 2.1-mile course. From what we can see and already know from F1, it should inspire some intense doorhandle to doorhandle tin-top action.

Hyundai WTCR driver Mikel Azcona

Mikel Azcona has dominated this season and could wrap up title simply with qualifying points

Hyundai

“It’s extraordinary to think a year ago we still didn’t have the grand prix circuit finished,” says Martin Whitaker, the track’s British boss who started out many years ago as a junior staffer on Motor Sport’s former sister paper Motoring News. He’s since logged experience of Formula 1 and the World Rally Championship with Ford and managed Bahrain’s Sakhir F1 track between 2004 and 2010. His amazement at the rate of build in Jeddah is shared by this writer. When I was quarantined in Jeddah in March 2021 ahead of the inaugural round of Extreme E, the Covid testing centre I attended was on the site of the circuit. It was a desolate wasteland. I couldn’t believe the place would be anywhere ready to host F1 nine months later, yet on December 5 2021 the first Saudi GP took place under floodlights on a striking new venue that on TV looked complete (even if in reality the paint was not yet fully dry). A few months later the circuit hosted its second highly eventful grand prix and now appears to be established as a popular venue with drivers.

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It remains controversial, of course. In the week football’s World Cup has kicked off in neighbouring Qatar, unease over international sport’s embrace of a region with an atrocious record on human rights is once again at the top of the news agenda. LIV Golf, ownership of Newcastle United… Saudi’s eye-watering global investment is impossible to ignore, and for event promoters and sanctioning bodies equally impossible to turn down, it seems.

Whitaker accepts ‘sportswashing’ as a concept and understands why so many of us are reticent. How can he not? But he only speaks for motor sport, insists Saudi society is changing and that racing can play its part in a positive cultural revolution. Still, the awkward caveat of what organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International continue to report – and the state killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 – lingers over everything that follows. As it always does when we write about motor sport’s new romance with exotic Saudi Arabia.

Jeddah Corniche WTCR track map

New shortened version of Jeddah for touring car visit

WTRC

Whitaker says people can be “better informed”. “I think motor sport does allow us the opportunity to change perceptions,” he states. “We’ve been speaking to the F1 drivers. It’s helpful to give them more information about Saudi. Let’s be honest, they don’t know much about the country. If they can be better informed, go away and say it’s not the place you think it is, that’s one good thing the sport can do.

“A lot of people who write what they write have never been to Saudi. It will have changed even since you came. I’m keen on making sure we develop a platform that focuses on young people and the opportunities they have.

“There’s a lot of work to do here. But motor sport has the opportunity to be a great leveller and a tool for changing some of those perceptions.”

His perspective echoes others Motor Sport has reported in the past year, most notably from pioneering Saudi GT racer Reema Juffali, who grew up in Jeddah and experienced first-hand the lifting of the ban on women even driving on the road, never mind on race tracks. The caveats still apply – but progress does appear to be real.

So far, Whitaker’s team has succeeded in their bit by putting the kingdom, and Jeddah in particular, on the motor sport map. Built on a narrow parcel of land, the circuit and its new alternative layout is designed to look like a street track, but it’s very much a permanent facility. The F1 story is only the beginning for the venue, especially as the grand prix will eventually switch to another, Qiddiya, which is situated near capital city Riyadh.

“That’s a completely different facility all together, it’s a hub for motor sport entertainment, like a theme park which has got a grand prix circuit within it,” Whitaker explains. “That will be the home for F1 when it’s constructed. The view is that F1 will probably remain in Jeddah certainly for another three years, maybe four. Both the authorities here and in F1 want to make sure that track is absolutely ready so it doesn’t look like a building site when they are racing there. Jeddah will remain in place because it is still a phenomenal venue and I’d like to see many more events here, along with track days and owners’ club events, all year.”

3 Hyundai WTCR driver Mikel Azcona

WTCR having two Middle East events this year (last round at Bahrain) yet another example of region’s influence

He reveals talks are ongoing with other race promoters, beyond WTCR. “One of our primary objectives is to get GT racing here and there are a number of options and series open to us.” Whitaker’s team also manages the Dakar Rally and the Extreme E events, and he has a personal affinity with off-road motor sport. “It would be fantastic to get the WRC here, certainly from my perspective. A lot of my roots are in rallying. It just works here. Also it shows off the diverse landscape. The only sad thing about the F1 night race is you just don’t see the Red Sea. It is not even a stone’s throw, it’s an underhand lob from the circuit.”

Whitaker sees obvious parallels from his experience in another part of the region. “It’s no different to what it was in Bahrain 17 or 18 years ago. There’s a huge enthusiasm for motor sport here. Along with F1, Dakar and Extreme E, we have more in the pipeline. We’re doing the Saudi motor sport awards and we’re looking at a speed week, for example. We are also looking at the potential running of a motor show.

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“Most of my team are under the age of 30 and 40% of them are women, which is an interesting story. It’s been great to guide and mentor them. I like to run a ship where people are happy coming into work and I would suggest they are. Don’t forget, this is completely new for them. There has been very little motor sport here. We are right at the start of something new. We are keen to build more tracks and establish academies. We are building a new kart track and a bike track, for example, at the King Abdullah City Sports Stadium, which is about 10 miles from here. Yes, you want to find Saudi champions of the future, but to me the most important thing is to allow the development of a motor sport culture.

“In the UK we talk about nearly 50,000 people working in the UK industry. We’re not going to get there overnight, but there’s nothing to stop us aiming for that. For me, that’s almost more exciting.”

The WTCR might be taking its final chequered flag on Sunday. But for Jeddah and Saudi Arabia the race has only just begun – whether we like it or not.

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