A month ago McLaren sponsor Santander invited the media to an event in London today with the premise “Ever imagined what a London Grand Prix might look like? Jenson and Lewis have.”
The company followed up with the promise of a CGI video, with the explanation: “This summer, London is undeniably the focus of the world’s attention. During the preamble to July’s British Grand Prix, Santander, the title sponsor of the UK’s legendary race at Silverstone, has prompted consideration of how this season of international events in London might be augmented by a Formula 1 race – and how a spectacular metropolitan street race past London’s iconic landmarks, might look.”
It seemed like a clever PR stunt – hook up F1 with a bit of Olympic 2012 fervour and some harmless speculation about how a race in London might look like – but on the very day of the event Bernie Ecclestone is claiming that there are serious plans in place.
Bernie’s desire for a GP in the city is no secret, and he was hugely encouraged by the interest in the Regent Street demonstration of 2004. The successful London Olympic bid and the long term deal with Silverstone appeared to put a stop to any plans, with the likelihood of the UK ever getting a second race receding as more and more countries applied for races.
However with economic problems making some current events less than viable it seems that Bernie has revived the idea of London as a second UK event, and reportedly he is prepared to promote it himself, to the tune of £35m.
He told The Times: “With the way things are, maybe we would front it and put the money up for it. If we got the OK and everything was fine, I think we could do that. Think what it would do for tourism. It would be fantastic, good for London, good for England – a lot better than the Olympics.”
The logistical problems of closing a large part of central London for several days would seem to be insurmountable, never mind any consideration of noise. Anyone who has been woken up in Melbourne by the early morning activities of the Minardi two-seater will know just how far it can travel across a city…
Bernie claims no connection with proposals for a race at the Olympic site, although that would seem to be a rather more realistic option that a route involving The Mall, Piccadilly Circus, et al. Perhaps that is Ecclestone’s end game, having drummed up some initial interest.
A similar thing happened with Valencia, where Bernie backed the street demo for the 2007 McLaren launch (backed by Santander), and we ended up with a track around the rundown old dock area.
It remains to be seen how serious he really is and whether this is really just a clever bit of PR kite flying drummed up by Bernie and Santander, a regular F1 race sponsor and thus in effect a partner of FOM.
We shall know more later today…
Adam Cooper F1 
Real PR by a clever stunt…
Smoke and mirrors? Perhaps it keeps the press diverted from le affaire Gribkowsky; after all it’s far easier to lightly re-word a press release than to do some real investigative journalism…
Come on Adam, is this not just Bernie’s usual “look over here” trick whenever a negative story is printed (in this case, Gribkowsky)?
I’m sure that’s part of it, but tell The Times, Guardian, Independet, PA and everyone else who has taken it at face value…
That’s the part that surprises me the most…
Bernie willing to dip into his own pocket? I don’t think so !
Didn’t Bernard have some old friends in the East End that would have made this happen in their day?
Reports also mention that Silverstone has a long term deal.
“Kansas City shuffle” springs to mind. Bernie never misses an opportunity to have a go at Silverstone and their gents in blazers.
I can’t really see it happening, not in central London. The route hinted at takes in a pitlane on Park Lane (lots of posh high rise hotels), Oxford Street (lots of shitty shops) down Regent Street (lots of rather nicer shops) (where I saw the 2004 demo 🙂 ) up Shaftesbury Avenue (lots of theatres) down Charing Cross road (lots of bookshops) round Trafalgar Square (lots of tourists and pigeons) down the Mall past Buckingham Palace (lots of rich people that look slightly like horses) and up Constitutional Hill to Hyde Park Corner and back onto Park Lane.
It’s a good route. However the disruption to business and the ability to move around, particularly on a Saturday afternoon for qualifying would be mind boggling. They would probably have to move it to the Friday. How they would manage Tube stations poses more questions, and how to restrict access over such a huge area (would they just close the whole of Mayfair???) doesn’t bear thinking about. It would work better if, like Monaco, it were to fold back on itself and only ring a relatively small area. You could do it, say, by going up one side of the Thames and back down the other, or perhaps just around Hyde Park – or around the Government buildings clustered in Whitehall, but those’d be a bit boring.
I prefer Mr Cooper’s theory that it’s Bernie PR stunting and it’ll end up somewhere rubbish.
how will bernie be able to organize it from a cold, damp german prison cell?
He’ll build a big paper aeroplane and escape!