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A consortium chaired by Neal Froneman, the former chief executive of Sibanye-Stillwater, has hired Rothschild & Co. to advise on a bid to bring Formula One back to Africa, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, Sept. 22.
The group, called Blue Mountain Racing, plans to build a 6.7 billion rand motorsport complex, about $410 million, in the Swartland region of the Western Cape north of Cape Town, and to host a grand prix there by 2031.
Froneman is joined by the mining veteran Srinivasan Venkatakrishnan, a former chief executive of AngloGold Ashanti, and Robert Appelbaum of the law firm Webber Wentzel. The project is to be privately funded, with Rothschild acting as financial adviser.
The consortium confirmed its plans at the annual Swartland Mayoral Breakfast, attended by acting Western Cape premier Tertius Simmers, provincial minister Anton Bredell and Swartland mayor Harold Cleophas. The provincial government and South Africa's sports minister, Gayton McKenzie, have said they support it, and the consortium has approached both Formula One and MotoGP.
Africa has hosted Formula One before. South Africa held 23 world championship races, three at East London in the 1960s and the rest at Kyalami near Johannesburg, the last in 1993, and Morocco held one in Casablanca in 1958. It is now the only inhabited continent without a grand prix, and a race in 2031 would come 38 years after the last one.
The Swartland bid has competition. Kyalami won approval from the sport's governing body, the FIA, in June 2025 for plans to upgrade to Grade 1, the standard a circuit needs to host Formula One. Rwanda and Morocco are also pursuing races, and South Africa was left off the calendar for 2027.
Formula One has been cautious. Its chief executive, Stefano Domenicali, said in May 2025 that a deal in Africa was still a long way off, and has said the sport wants to race on the continent but needs the right investment and a clear strategic plan behind any bid.
Races have become valuable to win. Liberty Media bought the Formula One Group for $4.4 billion in 2017, and the sport's revenue passed $3.4 billion in 2024, with races watched by 1.6 billion television viewers.
Froneman built Sibanye-Stillwater from gold mines spun out of Gold Fields in 2013 into one of the world's largest producers of platinum-group metals, including the $2.2 billion purchase of the American miner Stillwater Mining in 2017.
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