Dubrovnik, Croatia: New Jersey and Mexico were included on a 22-race Formula One world championship calendar for 2014 on Friday but will need to be confirmed.
But the street race in New Jersey, the return of F1 to Mexico as well as the South Korean Grand Prix are listed as provisional pending agreements with promoters said the sport’s governing body, the FIA, at a World Council meeting in Dubrovnik.
The event in New Jersey, with the New York skyline providing a spectacular backdrop, will be a completely new event, as will the Russian Grand Prix, which will run around the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
F1, meanwhile, secured its future with the agreement of two men whose own individual futures are the subject of intense debate and speculation.
Both Frenchman Jean Todt and Briton Bernie Ecclestone may not be in office when the latest ‘Concorde Agreement’, supported by them, ends in seven years’ time.
Todt is the president of the FIA and Ecclestone is the chief of the commercial rights holding organisation and heads Formula One Management (FOM).
Between them, they have great influence over the shape, operation and future of Formula One, but question marks hang over them.
Todt faces a challenge for his post in the FIA presidential elections in December from Briton David Ward while Ecclestone, at 82, has long been expected to announce his retirement following more than 40 years in F1.
In essence, this all means that the latest binding agreement — for seven years — between the sport’s ruling body and commercial operation could be their last, and that F1 has that period of time in which to create a new structure and a secure transfer of power.
News of the long-awaited confirmation of the new Concorde Agreement came in a statement on the FIA website. It said that both the FIA and Ecclestone’s FOM organisation had given it their ‘approval’.
It now remains for F1’s 11 teams to add their signatures to the agreement, which sets out the commercial terms of F1.
No comments:
Post a Comment