Indian motorsport fans hoping for F1’s return in 2015 will have to wait a bit longer
Formula 1?s promoter Bernie Ecclestone told Reuters in an interview that the Indian Grand Prix will not return to the F1 calendar until at least 2016.
The race, held at the Buddh International Circuit near Greater Noida was staged from 2011 to 2013 before issues involving a taxation of the participating teams, drivers – and reportedly the revenue of Formula One Management (FOM), which is headed by Ecclestone – forced its exclusion from the F1 calendar for the 2014 season.
Head of the Jaypee Group – who built the circuit at a reported cost of 400 million dollars – Jaiprakash Gaur had stated during the 2013 Indian GP that the intention of the Group was to bring back the race in 2015.
However, Ecclestone was quoted in the interview as saying that issues with, ‘all the bureaucracy with the tax position inside the country and the general finance,’ were preventing a return in 2015.
The struggling South Korean venue was also dropped from the 2014 F1 calendar in order to make room for the inaugural Russian Grand Prix.
Ecclestone has also stated that an F1 race in the oil-rich Caucasus republic of Azerbaijan will debut on the 2016 calendar with the possibility of being included in 2015 itself.
Both Russia and Azerbaijan have governments that are controlled by a highly centralized power structure; with Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev wielding sweeping and largely unopposed sway over the two nations’ coffers, respectively.
It is a similar case with dictatorial regimes in cash-rich China and Bahrain that have been on the F1 calendar since 2004 – with the exception of Bahrain that was dropped due to civil unrest in 2011 – despite doggedly poor attendance.
With race hosting fees being the chief source of income for the sport, Ecclestone has not shied away from taking races to countries where little or no questions can be asked by the state sponsored organizers when it comes to paying as much as 35 million dollars a year to be able to hold an F1 race.
In the case of India, the high levels of interest in the inaugural round was countered by infrastructural hassles for fans at the circuit, government refusal to accept motorsport as a sport (making it subject to an entertainment tax) and an import policy that made transporting cars and other racing paraphernalia in and out of the country a logistical nightmare for the F1 teams.
The trade policy was amended only this January in order to make it less of a hassle to transport cars, bikes and equipment meant solely for the purpose of circuit racing.
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