Canadian Grand Prix boss Francois Dumontier admits disappointment at failing to reschedule this year’s race, saying it would have “put Montreal back on the map”.
Last week, Formula 1 confirmed all four races across the Atlantic will not take place in 2020 and have been replaced with rounds at Portimao, Nurburgring and Imola.
This was after reports had emerged in Canada that the GP, which had its traditional June date postponed, was eyeing a possible October race for the second time in its history.
Something Dumontier feels was more than feasible for the capital city of Quebec.
“People are talking about the difficulties of downtown Montreal. Here [there] are no activities, the hotels are practically empty – and I believe that a race in October could have put Montreal back on the map,” he told La Presse.
“F1 still travels with 2,000-2,200 people every race weekend, so 2,200 hotel rooms could have been rented during that time.
“It would have been a great opportunity to promote Montreal.”
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Another GP unhappy at F1’s decision is Brazil, which has slammed the move to cancel this year’s race at Interlagos despite the country seeing the second-highest total of Covid-19 cases behind the United States.
“First of all, this cancellation caught us not by surprise, but I must say the justification, the reasoning behind it, we cannot accept,” promoter Tamas Rohonyi told Motorsport.com.
“They talk about the virus infection rate in Brazil, which is a bit like comparing California to Florida in a country like Brazil, which is of continental dimensions.
“We have all the numbers for the state and the city of Sao Paulo. This data has been submitted to the FIA Medical Commission by our own medical officer, who is by the way, its vice president.
“And they are very good figures. In fact, if you look at the figures of Sao Paulo, even Brazil, in a proportional base, compared to England, it’s much better.
“So when you read this cancellation notice we got from the FOM yesterday, it just doesn’t stand up. It’s clearly sort of an almost invented reasoning to cancel the race.”
It’s also not implausible that Interlagos could have hosted F1 for the final time, at least in the short-term, with its contract expiring and a new racetrack in Rio rumoured to be taking over hosting duties of the Brazilian race.
So with the impact potentially so great, that is leading organisers to consider suing F1.
“What I found really strange is that the whole approach is sort of rather simplistic,” Rohonyi added. “‘Oh, it’s the pandemic, we’re terribly sorry, we don’t want to go, we cannot go’.
“One of the reasons presented is that five teams expressed concern. Well, none of the F1 contracts say that we’ll go and race in your country if the teams feel like it.
“F1 promoter agreements have only one clause which would allow any of the two parties to break off the contract, and none of this is force majeure.
“We are taking legal advice because there are massive losses by the municipality, and by my company.
“When you are a government official, and you spend public funds on whatever, if the justification for it is not rock solid, you can be sued by the public prosecutor, as it’s a breach in your official obligations.
“The government said to me, ‘Mate, you have a contract to run. So you’d better run.’ I’ll run if I can, but if I’m not allowed to run because F1 claims we cannot run, then it’s not my fault.
“So quite rightly, although they’re good friends of mine, the governor and mayor said, ‘Well, will this stand up in court?'”