Brawn wants return of non-championship F1 race

Ross Brawn wants to see the return of a non-championship race in order to allow Formula 1's new owners Liberty Media to experiment with the race format.

Liberty named Brawn as managing director of motorsports when it completed its takeover of F1 in January, bringing in the former Ferrari and Mercedes technical director due to his extensive experience of the sport. While changes to the race weekend format have been suggested on a number of occasions in the recent past, Brawn says Liberty and the FIA need a safe way of testing any changes.

"I'm a bit nervous about that," Brawn (pictured) told Sky Sports. "When we change format we have to be very sure we have it right. My dream is a non-championship race once a year so that we could try a different format in that race.

"A non-championship race would enable us to vary the format and try something different – and evolve it. You can't take the risk of swapping a format in a championship race and not getting it right."

Speaking to Reuters, Brawn later added: "It might be rather optimistic. But you can imagine if we had a non-championship race there'd be a lot more capacity to look at different formats and approaches and see if the fans take to it with much less risk or exposure than we would if we were doing something in the championship."

Formula 1 has not had a non-championship race was held since 1983, when Keke Rosberg won the final Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, and Brawn is also wary of the challenge of making such a race attractive from a commercial point of view.

"We often had non-championship races in the old days but getting it all to work is another matter. It needs to be commercially viable, of course, and that's the challenge. Again, it couldn't just be 'pick ideas out of a hat.' It needs to be properly thought through – but maybe an opportunity."