Formula 1 Files For Dutch and Danish Grands Prix Trademarks
Liberty Media is narrowing its search for the next Grand Prix venues, and with two European destinations identified by trademark filings.
Liberty Media believes Formula 1's lengthy calendar has space for more racing, and it's interested in as many as 25 Grands Prix per year. The 2018 season will feature 21 races, with France and Germany holding the door for Malaysia on their way back in from the cold. The remaining few slots are hotly contested, with one reserved for the United States, and the others bid for by countries around the globe, such as Portugal, Argentina, and Vietnam.
Denmark, too, has served up its capital city of Copenhagen as a potential street circuit, and Liberty Media responded by ordering up a three-course meal of variations upon the name "Grand Prix of Denmark" from the Danish Patent and Trademark Office in November.
We speculate that Denmark has an untapped motorsport fanbase, centered around homeland heroes, father-and-son Formula 1 drivers Jan and Kevin Magnussen. The former drove for McLaren in the mid-1990s, and now campaigns Corvettes for GM, and the latter drives for Haas F1. A race through Copenhagen could give Danish fans a driver to rally around, cementing the country's long-term interest in the sport.
Elsewhere, the Netherlands are the subject of another Grand Prix trademark filing, as reported by Kompas Advocatuur. The sport applied for the trademark on Jan. 30 of this year with the Benelux Office for Intellectual property.
The venue for the Dutch Grand Prix, last held in 1985, is considered to be a tossup between Circuit Zandvoort, the race's historical site, and TT Circuit Assen, in use today by MotoGP and others. Assen was inspected in January by the FIA's Charlie Whiting, who deemed it near the safety standards of FIA Grade 1 according to Motorsport.
Like Denmark, the Netherlands have their own father-son hero duo, in the form of Jos and Max Verstappen. Jos raced for a variety of F1 teams between 1994 and 2003, scoring two podiums, and Max drives for Red Bull Racing today, with whom he has achieved three Grand Prix wins, stirring up a feverish fanbase of orange-clad Dutch fans that swarm Spa-Francorchamps each year.
Both are near-ideal candidates for Grand Prix venues, but take these trademark filings with a grain of salt, as three U.S. cities—NYC, Vegas, and Miami—have their own associated Grand Prix Of trademarks, despite the limited remaining space on the calendar. As neither Dane nor Dutchman Connor MacLeod said, there can be only one.
