Formula 1 is celebrating its 1000th championship race at the Shanghai International Circuit and the Rosland Capital took the opportunity to unveil a limited edition of a celebratory coin. The company’s founder and CEO Marin Aleksov spoke with ŚwiatWyścigów.pl’s Roksana Ćwik in the Chinese circuit’s paddock.
First of all, I would like to ask how does it feel to be a part of Formula 1 and the 1000th championship race?
It’s a big honour. We’ve been with Formula 1 for a few years and when this came up, we were really excited. A thousand race is a big milestone in any sport, when you thing about how long time it actually took. So, we’re very happy to be able to do this and the response has been huge, the support from Formula 1 has been great and we couldn’t have been happier.
You have unveiled a celebratory coin, could you explain the idea behind it?
The coin has all the 64 destinations around the main symbol, which is the Shanghai’s skyline and the 1000th race logo. It’s a very limited production. The coin is beautiful, made by PAMP. There are two versions – the ten 1kg gold coins were sold out in 48 hours, while the silver 1kg coin has an initial run of 50, with the possibility of another 50 [2000 units of 2.5 oz silver coins are also planned].
Tell us more about the previous projects you did with F1.
We have done a few – we did Silverstone, we made big coins for Abu Dhabi, last year we did one for the 30th anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s lap in Monaco. We also do annual coins with the current car and all the tracks, so it’s been an ongoing project for years now.
We’ve heard there will be a special coin dedicated to Sir Jackie Stewart.
You know, I like to keep cards close to my chest, but it’s going to be two coins – one is going to be auctioned out and it’s going to be very exclusive. You will need to wait and see but it’s going to be very beautiful.
You’re an American company. Do you think there will be more races in the US?
This is one thing I’m really hoping for because we did very well in Austin. We did coins for the Austin track and the awareness in US… is there. We have noticed the more people invest in coins, they get more and more interested. So, if we can get a couple more races in the US, I think there’s a market for it. It’s a huge market and people there love motorsports, as you can see in Daytona and all of that. Formula 1 is sexy, is fast and I think it’s going to do really well and I hope that they get together and do this.
Have you thought about working with other series, like IndyCar or NASCAR?
We can only do so much. Right now we do have other licences with PGA, ITF, museums and so on, but Formula 1 is my primary focus for now.
