10/05/2016
NEWS STORY
With monotonous regularity certain stories relating to the sport are discovered in the back of the filing cabinet, or hard drive, dusted off and re-presented.
Be it one of the current stars heading to Ferrari, the return of a legendary marque or a Grand Prix on the streets of London, you can almost set your clock...
Yesterday, in the wake of the recent election which saw a new Mayor of London voted in, Bernie Ecclestone was asked if the new regime might be more open to the prospect of a Grand Prix on the streets of the capital than the last.
Asked about the prospects of a race through the streets of the historic city, Bernie Ecclestone told ITV News: "The answer is that if it can be done, then yes, we'd love to do it.
"There is a small technical issue," he added, "who is going to pay for it, but apart from that I can't see any dramas."
And that is just one of the reasons why a Grand Prix in London will never happen.
Ignoring the environmental issues, the lack of a sufficient infrastructure, the lack of a realistic circuit layout, the fact that most politicians regard F1 as toxic, the hard-pressed taxpayers of London won't pay for it.
Still paying for the London Olympics of 2012, and obliged to continue paying for many more years to come, the legacy of those games is hard to find indeed, Stratford, the part of east London that hosted the event and, we were told, would be totally regenerated, remains the dump it always was.
Just as the New Jersey event came to nothing, so talk of a London Grand Prix will fizzle out until someone digs it up again.
Back in the 1970s when a race in London was first mooted, it might have been possible, today, it is virtually impossible for a whole raft of reasons... not least the money.
So, pending Mick Schumacher partnering Sebastian Vettel at Ferrari, Alfa-Romeo returning to the grid in partnership with Brabham, let's dismiss all this London GP nonsense and focus on realty… such as a European Grand Prix in Azerbaijan.