26/08/2008
NEWS STORY
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F1 has had its fair share of losses over the past few years. Michelin, Super Aguri and Michael Schumacher to name but three.
Perhaps one of the most significant commercial losses however, has been the US Grand Prix which fell off the calendar this year after a failure to agree financial terms by F1's head honcho Bernie Ecclestone and Tony George, boss of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the last location to host America's round of the World Championship. Teams have lamented this loss over the past year with the US market providing a lucrative pool of sponsors. Their cries may have been heard.
Pitpass hears that over the past month there has been a flurry of interest in F1 by US real estate firms and banks, particularly those based in the New York area. The notion of a US Grand Prix on the streets of the Big Apple has been mooted many times. In its heyday CART looked at it with its then boss Andrew Craig even going as far as meeting the city's bigwigs such as Donald Trump about making the race happen. Alas it was not to be.
So what chance would F1 stand now, particularly after the tyre fiasco at Indianapolis in 2005? For an answer perhaps we could look to another sporting event which has been in the news quite a bit recently.
New York was one of the bidders in the race to host the 2012 Olympics, which was subsequently won by London. And though the city lost the bid, it committed a great deal of resources to allocating prime real estate in the city on which the main arena for the games would be built. To be precise, a tract of land to the west of Manhattan featuring an old rail-yard was the chosen site. This stands derelict to this day but, who knows, perhaps not for much longer.