In my recent post about the nationality of F1 drivers and national populations, I briefly mentioned the problem facing the Formula 1 race calendar: balancing the history of the sport against truly global representation. I’ve been thinking how one might achieve that balance.

We need to rank countries by their historical importance to F1, and their potential value to F1 commercially. The measures mentioned above – the number of F1 drivers and national population – don’t quite cut it. So I’ll use the number of races a country has hosted, and GDP.

These are the top 20 for those measures, which we can work down to generate a calendar.

Working down those two lists, this is our 19 race calendar:

I wasn’t sure how that would work, but it doesn’t look too bad – and not a million miles from the actual 2014 calendar.

• 2014 GPs missing: Malaysia, Bahrain, Singapore, Abu Dhabi
• Added in their place: France, India, Netherlands, Mexico

It looks like there’s a bit too much prominence given to history: Netherlands in particular probably shouldn’t be there. But it’s interesting to note that the next three countries to come in would be South Korea, South Africa and Indonesia – which would go some way to remedying the under-representation of Asia. And it would add an African country, which are noticeably absent from both this calendar and the actual calendar.

Then there’s the Middle East, absent from this calendar entirely. Being made up of relatively small countries, they’re effectively ignored by this method. It doesn’t seem right to ignore an entire region for that reason. But on the other hand, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea to have fewer races which are there just because a small, rich government is willing to pay for the privilege.

Like everything, there’s a balance to be struck. This isn’t a perfect method, obviously – perhaps consideration needs to be given to regions as well as countries. But in an ideal world, a more sustainable model for the sport would be to hold races where there are populations sufficient to support the sport; the fans essentially owning the sport through their spending power.

Harder than getting governments to pay, and more long term – but it sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?