Next year the calendar is already set at 21 races, with Malaysia leaving and France and Germany returning in deals that were concluded by Bernie Ecclestone.

Beyond next season, Carey is keen to expand further, but he acknowledges that the F1 teams will have to agree to such a move, given the obvious logistical issues.

"Our first focus is making our 21 races [in 2018] as strong as they can be," he said. "We've talked about them being bigger events and maximising things like hospitality – clearly the high-end customer is important at these live events, and we are focussed on that.

"We have not really targeted a number of races. We know there's an opportunity to add them, but we want to engage more with teams before we get into the specifics.

"On the one hand probably the area of our business which is a bit more mature today is the promoter side.

"But the breadth of interest from players, from locations that know what it takes to host an F1 race, I could fill a page with the number of locations that have asked to meet and discuss the opportunity to host an F1 race.

"I think it speaks well to our ability to continue to take advantage of the global appetite for this sport and the excitement for the event. As we make the event better and improve the sport on the track we think all those things just add fuel to each of those initiatives."

Carey made it clear that potential new races have to make sense for F1, perhaps mindful of the recent controversy when his Liberty colleague Greg Maffei questioned the value of Azerbaijan.

"We are trying to engage with as many of them as possible, and evaluate them. Both in markets like Europe, which are obviously much more historical markets, as well as opportunities in the Americas and Asia.

"We want to make sure we understand what each of those opportunities mean to us as we go forward, although in many ways priority one is to make sure the 21 races that we'll have next year as successful as possible."

Carey was keen to stress that while this year's Malaysian GP will be the last, he expects Singapore – which had been in doubt some months ago – to remain on the schedule.

"We are actively engaged on renewing Singapore, so we don't expect Singapore to go away. We've got to reach a deal, but we are actively engaged there, and our goal is to continue the race.

"Asia is like the Americas, they are important growth markets for us. The Singapore race has been a very successful race for us. We started off in Asia this year, and really we had crowds that were up significantly in China and Australia.

"I think we've got some momentum, and Asia is clearly a market in general that we expect to grow significantly over time as we go forward."