Bernie Ecclestone says that this year’s German GP will take place at Hockenheim, rather than at the Nurburgring.
Although the FIA did not specify a venue in the F1 calendar this year should have been the turn of the Nurburgring, which last hosted the race in 2013. However Ecclestone has not concluded a deal with the track, which has changed ownership amid serious financial problems.
“It’s going to be at Hockenheim, we’re in the middle of doing something with them,” he told Reuters. “It can’t be Nurburgring because there’s nobody there. We’ve got a contract in place [with Hockenheim], we just have to amend the years of the contract. It was alternating with Nurburgring so we’ll just take that out. Providing the contract goes through as we expect it to, we’ll be in good shape.”
Ecclestone confirmed that he’d tried to acquire the Nurburgring.
“We wanted to buy the Nurburgring, we made an offer and somebody topped us with a few dollars and bought it. And then they couldn’t pay and it went on sale again. I said I’d be interested and then they found somebody else. So I don’t know what’s happening.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Oh what a lovely turnaround from last June.
Too bad Hockenheim was forced to abandon its iconic, one of a kind track layout for yet another Tilkedrom on the behest of Mr Ecclestone.
While I am not in favour of all of the “Tilkedromes” I think that quite a lot of people hide behind blaming Bernie for everything. I suspect the drivers would not be overly interested in driving around the old Hockenheim, just as they are not in favour of an old Spa, large pay cheques and long life cycles have a way of focusing that throught process. Yes, Bernie is the public face and is the one that gets things done, but he is the last part of the puzzle when all is said and done, hence one of the many reasons why he takes such a big slice.
Not defending Bernie as such, but he’s not all bad.