Motor racing-F1 talks up Silverstone's 'forever' future before Starmer meeting

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) -Silverstone circuit could stay on the Formula One calendar forever with no real rival to host the British Grand Prix, the sport's chief executive Stefano Domenicali said on Tuesday ahead of this weekend's race.

The Italian told reporters he could not imagine a championship without Britain, home to seven of the 10 teams, but there was also no chance of the country having more than one race.

"I do believe that... Silverstone has the right characteristics to stay forever in the calendar," said Domenicali, who will visit Downing Street on Wednesday with some drivers and team bosses to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

"There's no other places where you can develop such a huge event in the UK. I don't see any other places, to be honest."

Silverstone hosted the first world championship race in 1950 and has a contract until 2034. Last year it hosted the biggest crowd of any event on the calendar with 480,000 spectators.

Miami and Austria's Red Bull Ring have the longest deals, both running to 2041, and Domenicali saw no reason why Silverstone could not join them although the circuit management had yet to seek an extension.

The meeting at Downing Street is billed as an informal celebration of the 75th anniversary of the first F1 championship race at Silverstone, but it is also a chance to raise issues the sport wants addressed.

Domenicali said he would highlight how much the "F1 ecosystem" contributes to Britain as the beating heart of a global sport, and the risk of losing that primacy due to restrictions on staff and movement.

Formula One figures calculate the sport brings 12 billion pounds ($16.48 billion) annually to the UK economy with 6,000 people directly employed and a further 41,000 working in a supply chain of 4,500 companies.

The Italian said visa issues post-Brexit had affected the deployment of staff from race to race around Europe, while costly and time-consuming paperwork had complicated logistics and made it harder to draw up the race calendar.

"It is impossible to think in the short term that the teams will move out from the UK because of this limitation but the teams will organise themselves maybe in a different way," he warned.

"What we are asking is not to change the decision that your country has taken, because it's not our mandate and our role, but to facilitate things that are having a burden on the economical side.

"And also in terms of possibility to be, as a country, more attractive for keeping the central part of F1 in this country."

($1 = 0.7281 pounds)

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Clare Fallon)