In modern F1, race circuits are glamourous venues that are held to the most rigorous standards by the FIA, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Some, however, lie in disrepair, abandoned.
Typically, abandoned F1 circuits tend to be old venues way past their sell-by date. Ghost tracks are nothing new in motorsport, and in some rare circumstances – such as with NASCAR’s legendary North Wilkesboro Speedway – they can even be restored and brought back to life.
However, a few miles outside the bustling city of Hanoi lies one of F1’s most curious abandoned venues – the remains of the Hanoi Circuit. The track was supposed to be a part-street, part-permanent venue that would host the Vietnam Grand Prix in the 2020 campaign.
Construction was completed in February of that year with the inaugural running of the event held in April. However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced organisers to cancel the race with plans for it to be run in 2021 instead. This date also passed with no Vietnam Grand Prix.
Plans were scuppered further when in November 2020, Nguyen Duc Chung – the city mayor who pushed hard for F1 to come to Hanoi – was sentenced to five years in prison for corruption charges. He pled guilty at the start of the trial, and in 2022 he was convicted for two further charges, bumping his total sentence up to 10 years.
Bizarrely, it is technically possible for fans to experience the £540 million ($600m), 5.6 kilometre Hanoi Circuit, providing they have a copy of the F1 2020 video game.
Developers Codemasters scanned a version of Herman Tilke’s design into the game as the real circuit wasn’t complete at the time of production. This gave fans the chance to battle around the winding 23-corner circuit, which evokes a similar flow to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit that joined the calendar the following year.
After Chung’s arrest, Hanoi’s chances of hosting a Grand Prix at their multi-million dollar facility were dashed. A BBC Sport report explained that the Vietnamese government considered the country’s recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and the elections approaching the main priority.
As for the circuit, the purpose-built segment is still standing on the outskirts of Hanoi. It lies abandoned with no motorsport activity and foliage on the premises already overgrown. With South Africa, Thailand, Rwanda and Argentina among the countries vying for a spot on the calendar in the near future, it doesn’t look like we will see F1 in the Vietnamese capital soon.
