Bob Barnard Track Engineering

So the Mayor of Melbourne thinks the "Times Up" for the F1GP and said "I know of no city that has voluntarily walked away from a grand prix, but could Melbourne be the first?" Well I guess there has to be a first. I'm sure quite a few GP promoters now feel that they have given Bernie and CVC enough. Look at Turkey, Spa, France has actually given up, and at the recent Forum in Cologne the Malaysians said they had achieved what they set out to do, now they need to make some money. We had the recent reports on Valencia perhaps not wanting to go on, and Hockenheim has stopped, so perhaps Melbourne is not the first? Even Singapore, Bernie's jewel, is saying they are going to examine the benefits closely before renewing. Are we going to see some common sense appear? I doubt it, there are always more suckers lining up to donate to the CVC fund.

Melbourne provides an interesting insight into how the costs have escalated. When they started in 1996 the race was underwritten to the tune of $1.7m, and last year cost $50m, with a forecast of $70m in years to come. This cannot all be due to sponsorship dropping. There is a pattern here, Adelaide lost the race to Melbourne when the people and politicians tired of the cost and inconvenience.