The Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari—better known as Imola—is getting a makeover with its sights set on an F1 return. In hopes of securing the track’s future, management is giving up a piece of the past.
The old house located inside the Tosa hairpin has been demolished to make way for a hospitality space dubbed “Casa degli Eventi,” reports Motorsport.com. This will be a “multipurpose structure” that will take full advantage of its location with a large semi-circular window that should offer amazing views of cars going around the hairpin. The house was charming, but it’s not surprising that Imola’s management wants to make better use of the space.
Casa degli Eventi is just one part of a large-scale modernization of this classic circuit. The road network around Tosa is also being modified, with two new roundabouts and a widened bridge (expanding from one lane to two, with a bike lane) for easier access. The waterproof area of the paddock is being expanded, the pit terrace is getting a cover, and the area near the medical center is being repaved to meet FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) regulations.
None of these updates guarantees an F1 return, but they at least mean the track will be better able to host a Grand Prix if F1 comes back. Imola was a fixture on the F1 calendar for decades, becoming infamous as the site of Ayrton Senna’s death in 1994. It was dropped in 2006 but returned in 2020 amid a pandemic-induced reshuffle aimed at clustering more races in a given area to reduce travel.
During a podcast appearance last October, F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali said the small venue (by modern standards) was only able to get back on the calendar because of the pandemic, adding that Imola’s size, infrastructure, and small-town location made it unsuitable given F1’s growth over the past few years. Domenicali went further, saying that the new fans F1 managed to attract don’t care about historic tracks.
“If you look at the data, the ability to [scroll through media] fast and forget who even won last year is very high,” Domenicali explained. “So for many young people who follow F1 today, racing in Monte Carlo compared to a new circuit in Las Vegas makes no difference to them. So this [historic] element and heritage of a race should be supported, but with a structure that looks to the future.”
That’s not encouraging for the future of F1 at Imola, but the circuit will continue to host the WEC and European Le Mans Series, as well as vintage racing. It also has a new concert venue that management reportedly hopes to use as a fan zone for races. Whether these events can meet a goal of repeating the track’s 2025 attendance figure of around a million fans—212,000 of which attended the final Emilia Romagna Grand Prix—remains to be seen.