Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has hit back at criticism of the scheduling of this season’s United States Grand Prix from a local Nascar race organiser, highlighting the difficulties involved in drawing up a calendar for a “world championship” versus that of a “domestic series”.
This year’s US Grand Prix at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas (Cota) is due to take place on November 2 – the same weekend as the Nascar Sprint Cup’s AAA Texas 500 at the Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, which is located only 220 miles away. This has led to Eddie Gossage, the president of Texas Motor Speedway, criticising Ecclestone and Cota officials.
“I absolutely think it's foolish. Nobody wins,” Gossage said, according to the UK’s Press Association news agency. “It's a shot fired by Formula One at Nascar. I can't say I was surprised because Bernie Ecclestone does a lot of foolish things. The thing he unfortunately doesn't recognise is there is an 800-pound gorilla when it comes to major American motor sports. The 800-pound gorilla is Nascar.”
Gossage added: “It's just not smart. There are 52 weeks in the year. But that was the only weekend that Formula One could make it work in Austin, Texas? Give me a break. It wouldn't have happened if they (the Cota officials) had the strength and the fortitude to stand up and say no.”
Formula One Group chief executive Ecclestone responded to Gossage’s comments by highlighting the logistical demands of staging F1, adding that the clash in dates may be made easier by the differing fanbases of the two sports. Ecclestone said: “We've a small problem they (Nascar) don't have – we have six jumbo jets to move around all our equipment, and we have to find the most sensible way to use them to do that. We have to be efficient, and bear in mind we may also encounter problems at an airport. There are issues that can occur, but he and other people do not realise these things. The race prior to the one in the US is in Russia, in Sochi. We've never been before, and we have to get out of there and into Austin. That is probably a lot easier than trying to get into Brazil, and then we have to get out of there (São Paulo) to go to Abu Dhabi. So he is extremely lucky he doesn't have to do what we have to do.”
Ecclestone added: “I've also spoken to the people that run the race at Cota and they believe the Nascar crowd is a different crowd to Formula One, different people, different customers. At the end of the day they run a domestic series in America – we run a world championship.”
source: Sportbusiness
