After London, New York

For decades, Bernie Ecclestone has been trying to secure a race in New York in order to establish Formula 1 permanently in the United States. The country’s economic capital also offers the advantage of offsetting the travel costs incurred by the Montreal race.

He thought he would reach his goal in October 2011 when he signed a ten-year contract with New Jersey for a Grand Prix starting from the 2013 season. However, things did not go as planned afterward. As the various deadlines were not met, the FOM decided, a year later, to tear up the existing contract to start fresh negotiations.

The bad news followed one another over the months, with the departures of Trip Wheeler, the organization’s marketing director, and Michael Cummings, then chief financial officer. This led to much speculation in the media that the event was stillborn and would never take place. A first piece of good news was the announcement of Chris Pook’s appointment as special assistant to the event director, Leo Hindery Jr.

Chris Pook is a figure in motorsports in the United States as he has long been the promoter of the Long Beach IndyCar event. This has sparked other rumors suggesting that the Long Beach authorities might decide not to extend their current contract with the American single-seater championship in favor of F1.

Today, Bernie Ecclestone uses one of his media outings that he’s known for to announce that he would be ready to become the promoter of the New York event himself, so that it has a chance to materialize. He responded to the American magazine *Autoweek* when asked if he was indeed referring to the event in question: « I do not rule out buying a race promoter. The answer is yes. We could do something in New York. We don’t need to own the promoter, but we would be happy to do so if necessary. »

One of the main constraints for the event is, of course, the issue of its financing. In these times of federal and state budget freezes, it is very difficult to obtain local grants for such events, even though Austin has managed to do so: « They will not receive any funds from the government for the race but the government should really support them. We are working hard on this. »

This is reminiscent of his statement when he declared that he was ready to finance the 35 million pounds necessary to hold an event in the streets of London and around the Olympic stadium. This project did not go beyond the statement of intent since the committee in charge of repurposing the infrastructures built for the Olympic Games preferred to focus on football rather than such an event.

But above all, this allows him to create a media diversion, which somewhat helps to overshadow the news that emerged last week, stating that the Munich prosecutor’s office had completed its investigation into Gehrard Gribkowsky and decided to have him appear before a judge. However, an indictment is never a good thing when planning to launch an initial public offering…

Regarding the seriousness of his intentions in the case of New York, just read his comments in the same interview about his most recent experience when he bought the promoter of the Istanbul Grand Prix in 2007: « I thought Istanbul was a good place for a race but it turned out to be a bad deal. I will not buy an existing promoter again. »

With the participation of www.Racingbusiness.fr