Baku will be a big hit with F1 when oil-rich Azerbaijan hosts a grand prix for the first time next year, according to Italian Flavio Briatore.

The controversial and colourful former Benetton and Renault team boss, who has business interests in the Azeri capital and is close to Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone, helped make the deal happen.

“I have had a lot of friends there (in Baku) and we hope it happens in 2015,” said Briatore.

“It’s very close to Europe, the city is amazing – it’s like a little Dubai. And more importantly, everything is new,” added Briatore, who left F1 under a cloud in 2009 after a race-fixing scandal involving the previous year’s Singapore GP.

Ecclestone confirmed separately that an agreement had been signed for a street race in Baku next year.

The grand prix, in a city on the shores of the Caspian sea, will be the second in the former Soviet Union with Russia due to host its first this year in Winter Olympics venue Sochi.

There is space on the calendar, with South Korea and India already dumped for this season and ruled out for 2015 while Mexico and a proposed New Jersey race look uncertain.