F1: Ecclestone - Austin Race Set To Be Called Off

Formula 1

F1: Ecclestone - Austin Race Set To Be Called Off

F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone says the Austin GP, scheduled for next November, is on the verge of being cancelled...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted November 16, 2011 Balen (BEL)

F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone says that no one holds a contract to run the Austin GP. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Bernie Ecclestone has confirmed that the US GP is on the verge of disappearing from the 2012 calendar – and that nobody holds a contract to run the race.

In essence, the final deadline for any kind of resolution is the FIA World Motor Sport Council meeting in India on Dec. 7.

Speaking to Ian Parkes of the UK’s Press Association, Ecclestone admitted that the race would be dropped if there was no solution in the coming days: “Yes, it will be, for sure, 100 percent.”

Ecclestone also confirmed that Tavo Hellmund’s Full Throttle Productions no longer holds a contract to run the race, because it has been cancelled. Circuit of the Americas' Bobby Epstein has thus been in negotiation over a totally new contract, rather than an acquisition of the one held by Hellmund.

“We had an agreement with Full Throttle Productions,” Ecclestone told Parkes. “Everything was signed and sealed, but we kept putting things off like the dates, various letters of credit and things that should have been sent, but nothing ever happened.

“Then these other people [Epstein and COTA] came on the scene, saying that they wanted to do things, but that they had problems with Tavo.

“They said they had the circuit, and that they wanted an agreement with me. I told them they had to sort out the contract with Tavo, which they said they would. But that has gone away now because we’ve cancelled Tavo’s contract as he was in breach.

“We’ve waited six months for him to remedy the breach. He knows full well why we’ve cancelled. He’s happy. But these other people haven’t got a contract. All we’ve asked them to do is get us a letter of credit.

“We are looking for security for money they are going to have to pay us. That is via a letter of credit, normally from a bank. If people don’t have the money, they find it difficult to get the letter of credit, and so we don’t issue a contract.”

The big problem is that the race no longer has any guarantee of receiving $25 million from the Texas Major Events Trust Fund, which was to have funded the sanctioning fee due to Ecclestone and the Formula One organization.

Adam Cooper notched up his 26th season as a racing journalist in 2010. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.