[Purist]

The funny thing is, we can already see the wavering in this house of cards.

Taxpayers have clearly voted that, to them, the Olympics mean exponentially more to them than does a Grand Prix, and the difference in the amount of TV coverage between the two bears this out as well. Here in the US, the difference between the Olympics and one GP in terms of TV coverage is something like 325 to 1. Even compared to two full season of F1, the ratio is still 8.4 to 1 in favor of the Olympics. And as I understand it, the world feed has VASTLY more Olympic coverage than the NBC affiliates show here, so in a country like the UK, the ratio of coverage for just one Olympic Games to two full seasons of F1 may well be 10 to 1 or more.

Beyond that though, China and Turkey WANT out, as they aren't willing to make a loss on their GPs. I could certainly see Australia being gone after 2015 (when its current contract runs out). From all the crap going on over here, there's hardly a guarantee that F1 will make a return to the US in 2012, or ever again. Russia has nearly a decade of failed attempts to garner a GP, and I'm not convinced that the latest venture has any more promise than previous ones. I have my doubts about Rome happening at all. Valencia will fall by the wayside as soon a Alonso loses popularity. I don't know if Malaysia will get the backing it needs for the upgrades Bernie is demanding from them, so Sepang may be gone in the not-too-distant future. The Indian government doesn't even consider F1 a sport, so that event WILL be relatively short-lived, and I wouldn't be surprised in the least if the same applies to Korea when the true costs are weighed and the current contract is up.

Mexico ain't gonna happen anytime soon. They have their hands full with the world's largest city sinking, and trying to keep some semblance of law and order in the midst of the drug war. Singapore may not last past 2012 given some recent rumblings. Abu Dhabi has to watch that they don't throw too much currency at bailing out Dubai, and I'm sure their boom has slowed down anyway with the global economic state.

About the only country we KNOW can, and likely will, have an F1 circuit ready to go in the near future is Qatar. And of course, once the oil barons get tired of this hobby, all that government backing for a lot of these new races will simply dry up. I'd have to say that for Malaysia and Bahrain at least, the sheen of having a shiny new Grand Prix has very much worn off.

And once this crop of countries bails, I don't see many, if any, new ones to take their places. In Asia, perhaps Indonesia. In Africa, South Africa, and maybe Nigeria, could have the ability to put something together. In Latin America, apart from Brazil, it's just Argentina and Mexico.

The trouble is, we're getting toward the bottom of the barrel in terms of countries of sufficient magnitude to even put together a Grand Prix in this day and age. You either have to have a VERY large country in size and/or population, or have gotten filthy rich off of some natural resource that is highly in demand. Well, we've covered an awful lot of the biggest countries and the most oil rich ones. Most of the rest are simply to impoverished, and as a result, too unstable, to be able to set up a Grand Prix within their borders. And for those nations, those conditions are NOT likely to change dramatically for decades to come.