France to do everything to relaunch Grand Prix - PM

Posted at 12:00am on 29 May 2009

PARIS, May 29 (Reuters) - France will do everything it can to stage a Formula One race next year or in 2011 after dropping off this season's calendar, Prime Minister Francois Fillon said on Friday.

French Grand Prix organisers announced last October that they had cancelled the race at Magny-Cours for financial reasons.

"The government will do everything so that there can be a Grand Prix in France as soon as possible, that is to say from 2010 (or) 2011," Fillon, a fan of motor racing, told Europe 1 radio.

"We are in the process of looking at which circuit (would be used), if we need to build a new one...this is probable...it would undoubtedly take some time," he said.

Magny-Cours, in the heart of rural France, was disliked by teams and sponsors because of its poor accommodation facilities and difficult access. Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has said he would rather have a track near Paris.

Asked if the existing circuit could be used again before another location was created, Fillon said: "I think this will be necessary because the time it would take to build a circuit would take us up until 2012 and I don't think we can accept that there isn't a Grand Prix in France before (then)."

France, the country that invented Grand Prix racing and whose language permeates the sport from chassis to parc ferme, has only once, in 1955, been absent from the Formula One calendar since the championship started in 1950.

Disneyland Paris had been touted as a favoured option, with plenty of hotel rooms and easy rail access from Paris and the rest of Europe, but that appeared to be ruled out in November.

(Reporting by Tamora Vidaillet; editing by Alan Baldwin)

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