MELBOURNE – It’s a sign of how seriously Australian fans take the Formula One race in Melbourne that even my shuttle driver there knew about Bernie Ecclestone visiting New York this weekend to talk about the possibility of a Grand Prix race on Staten Island.
Melbourne has been threatened with losing the race after the city’s lord mayor said that it costs taxpayers too much. Ecclestone, the commercial promoter, shot back that the race in Melbourne was as important to the sport as the one in Monaco. But he nevertheless also played another card: foregoing his visit to the Melbourne race this weekend in order to talk about one in New York.
There are not many Grand Prix venues where the fans love the race as much as in Melbourne. I get the vibe all over the place. It is only Thursday and the Albert Park circuit is already full of fans coming to see the drivers, even though there is no Formula One track action until Friday.
In the meantime, however, Ron Walker, the chairman of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, the organization that deals with the taxpayers’ funding for the race, has also been talking about moving the race from Albert Park to a permanent circuit outside the city, in Avalon. This, of course, would require spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build a new track. But in an interview with Autosport magazine, Walker pointed to the amount the city invested for another sports venue:
“It is a lot of money to build it,” he said, “but then again, the government has $1 billion invested in the Tennis Centre.”
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