Rome drops bid for Grand Prix

F1 Fanatic round-up

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Rome will bid for the Olympics instead of courting a place on the F1 calendar.

Links

Top F1 links from the past 24 hours:

Rome Mayor Calls Off GP Bid (Speed)

“Rome has now officially abandoned any plans for hosting a Grand Prix, having previously been given a tentative slot for 2013.”

Australian driver Mark Webber joins in pre-season training with the Bradford Bulls in Spain (The Daily Telegraph)

“He donned a red, amber and black top to join in a series of warm-up drills before taking part in a game of touch rugby.”

Thrilling 2010 season boosts Formula One TV audiences 21 Jan 2011 (F1.com)

“Formula One racing’s global television audience increased to 527 million individuals over the course of the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship.”

Follow F1 news as it breaks using the F1 Fanatic live Twitter app.

Comment of the day

Jordi Mateu, who works for the press team at the Circuit de Catalunya, has been answering questions from F1 Fanatic readers who are planning on going to the 2011 Spanish Grand Prix.

It’s great to see representatives from circuits using F1 Fanatic’s service for fans in this way and I hope more of them will in the future. And if you’re thinking of going to the Circuit de Catalunya for this year’s race head over to the 2011 Spanish Grand Prix discussion page:

I suggest to be in different places each day and moving during the race. You can make a tour by foot round the track. From bend six to seven and eight there on Saturday. For the race bend 15 and 16 or three to five.
Jordi Mateu

From the forum

Prisoner Monkeys has started an interesting topic on driver moves that just didn’t work.

Site updates

Some essential maintenance work will take place on Sunday afternoon and evening. This will involve closing comments on the site and forum for a while. Updates will be posted on Twitter during the interruption.

Happy birthday!

Today’s birthday greetings go to Salut Gilles and Nathan!

On this day in F1

The F1 teams assembled in Argentina for the first race of the 1956 season on this day 55 years ago.

Juan Manuel Fangio suffered engine problems early in the race, so he took over team mate Luigi Musso’s car. Fangio worked his way up the order and took over the lead when Stirling Moss hit trouble.

Fangio won, but after the race Maserati protested, claiming he had been given an illegal push after spinning. Several weeks afterwards, the FIA rejected the appeal and confirmed the original result, affirming Fangio and Musso as joint winners.

Image © Ferrari spa/Ercole Colombo

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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40 comments on “Rome drops bid for Grand Prix”

  1. Just wanted to say good morning :) xxx

    1. hahaha, I find it quite funny that you have a tendency to be the first commenter when I log online.

      1. its because im always about to go to bed when the update comes online. i just get my little f1 hit, then i go to sleep :)

  2. Also the driver moves that didn’t work link…..doesn’t work!! :)

    1. jsw11984 (@jarred-walmsley)
      22nd January 2011, 0:31

      I did find that rather ironic

    2. Take the speech mark away from the end of the link after you’ve clicked it, and it will work! :)

    3. Also the driver moves that didn’t work link…..doesn’t work!!

      Yeah the movies didn’t work for me too, they were totally undriveable, the first movie kept locking up.

      Look at me Mum, I sound like an F1 racer! :D

  3. Rome will bid for the Olympics instead of courting a place on the F1 calendar.

    Thank the stars! About the only person in Rome – and maybe even Italy – who was excited for the race was the guy organising it.

    1. Great news. I know Monza wasn’t going to be under threat (for now at least) but I didn’t see any need for a Rome street race.

      1. Neither did anybody else in Rome – except for the guy promoting it.

    2. Spot on, Bernie wants to move out of Europe, so the axing of this track seems logical. Italy already have Monza anyway, now all Bernie needs to do is ditch one of the Spanish races.

      1. An again, even Valencia don’t really seem to want their race anymore. Seriously, though Spain, Motor Land Aragon is just sitting RIGHT THERE! PUURLEAZE, do the right thing.

        1. It also helps that F1 doesn’t test at Arogon (Unlike every other Spanish circuit). Making it an ideal place to host the Spanish GP.

        2. Seriously, though Spain, Motor Land Aragon is just sitting RIGHT THERE! PUURLEAZE, do the right thing.

          You’ll have to convince the owners first, and they’re not interested. Bernie approached them to be a replacement if the Korean Grand Prix did not go ahead and they said no straight away. They didn’t even enter into any kind of formal talks.

  4. so 55 years ago and my grandpa almost won a F1 race (working as mechanic for Carlos Menditeguy)!!!

    1. Really? Fantastic snippet, what was his F1 career like apart from that?

  5. Yessss!!! And I was scared of another street track. :D

  6. Keith,

    The driver moves forum link is broken, it has an extra quote at the end. e.g.

    https://www.racefans.net/forum/topic.php?id=1107

    Cheers!

    1. Fixed it, thanks lightsout.

      1. Yeah thanks Keith.

        I told you within 3 minutes of you posting it. :/

  7. Charles Carroll
    22nd January 2011, 1:30

    Instead of this, they should just do two races at Monza, with the second race using the old banking. I don’t even care if they repave it, just do it anyway.

  8. Nice to hear that there won’t be any GP Rome, first Monza is great you can’t replace wit, second there shouldn’t be any two GP in the same country.

  9. “Rome drops bid for Grand Prix”

    I actually threw my arms in the air and cheered.

    Thanks, Rome!

    1. Agreed! If it was even a slight threat to Monza – then i’m glad they’ve given up! We really, really don’t need another street race!

  10. Salut Gilles and Nathan, have a nice birthday the both of you.

    1. Bon anniversaire Salut Gilles and Nathan! ;-)

  11. I have the feeling that Rome GP was just used as a “political weapon” to stop Venice as candidate city for 2020 olympic games. You know, the same old North vs Rome italian saga: we save Monza but the italian candidate city for OG will be Rome…

    Anyway, that’s good for F1, Monza is far better than a street race in Rome.

  12. I’d like to give a big hand to Jordi Mateu, instead of making the fans search for the info online you’ve come to the best F1 site around and helped out the F1fanatics.

    My feelings of the Circuit de Catalunya has risen because of you, job well done.

  13. So all we need now is for Valencia to sod off and then the ‘European’ race to be held at other tracks, maybe if Spa cannot afford to race every year they can share that slot with someone else?

    1. This option has been lingering for quite some time now (mainly a combination Spa – Nurburgring, because of they aren’t that far apart).

      1. dont forget imola, I think that deserves a race.

        1. They could do the Belgian GP at Nurburgring and Spa and European GP at Imola.

          1. HounslowBusGarage
            22nd January 2011, 12:47

            How could you have a Belgian GP in Germany?

          2. The same way that there was a luxembourg gp in germany.

          3. Considering the history between Germany and Belgium, that’s probably not a good idea…

          4. HounslowBusGarage
            22nd January 2011, 21:09

            @ Newhamlea1. That was only because the Germans were prepared to pay for a second GP which suited Bernie perfectly and there wasn’t a suitable track in Lux.
            Belgium, however has rather a good one . . .

        2. dont forget imola, I think that deserves a race.

          Imola has a lot of problems that cannot easily be solved. There’s a high-speed kink on the main straight just after the actual start line that has caused a lot of accidents of late, many of which end with a roll-over. They cannot iron it out, because to do so would require moving either the pits or the main grandstand back. They can’t move the pits back because of a creek that runs behind it (building over a creek is about one of the most difficult and expensive things you can do), and they can’t move the grandstand back because of the sheer hill behind it. To make matters worse, they’ve taken out the Variante Bassa chicane, so now it’s flat out from Rivazza to Tamburello, making that kink all the more dangerous.

  14. From ‘The Register’, a website aimed at highly cynical IT proffesionals:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/21/dell_team_lotus/

    May be of interest to some.

  15. “Australian driver Mark Webber joins in pre-season training with the Bradford Bulls in Spain”

    Mr Webber never learns, does he? First mountain biking, now rugby. If I was Christian Horner, I’d get it into his contract that the only training he’s allowed to do is a nice walk in the country, well away from any nasty cars, or big burly men bent on snapping your collarbone.

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