US GP Site Announcement

There are countless press reports on this press conference.Many of them inaccurate.
I can't summarise it as my summary would be on my interpretation of what he actually said.So that could be inaccurate.
I did watch this live together with flood and several Americans from Austin where we discussed it via Skype.
 
This is a fairly accurate summary

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/cont...ct_needs_to.html?cxntfid=blogs_formula_austin
Promoter Tavo Hellmund today said he was hopeful that Formula One races will be held in Austin but that obligations to management in Europe have not been met.
Speaking at a press conference in downtown Austin this afternoon, Hellmund confirmed that the track partnership has been in breach of contract on several issues for months, including that it has not paid $25 million that had been previously agreed upon to host a race.
“This project needs to meet its obligations to Formula One,” Hellmund said. “I’m hoping we can get this back on the road.”
The future of Circuit of the Americas and races planned there have been in doubt in recent weeks because of a dispute between circuit investors, believed to be led by Austin financier Bobby Epstein, and Formula One, led by Bernie Ecclestone.
“I think somebody needs to jump on a plane and go see (Ecclestone) and make him happy,” Hellmund said
The project has been underfunded, though not intentionally, Hellmund said, and has incurred unforeseen costs such as underground gas lines and shifting soil at the site in southeast Travis County. Hellmund also said several times that he’s heard that funding is now in place, but he did not go into specifics.
Hellmund said that Ecclestone offered circuit organizers several options at a meeting about three weeks ago: continue with a current contract if they paid then, issue a new a new contract or cancel races entirely.
He said he believed another contract was sent that hadn’t been executed.
Although Hellmund was the driving force behind securing the Austin race and putting together circuit officials and investors, he said today that he is negotiating an exit from the partnership and hasn’t been paid in at least a month.
Hellmund said his role was to bring his experience and relationships from a lifetime in the sport but that tensions between him and investors began to arise last spring. He said he hasn’t been paid in a month or two.
“I’ve done everything I’ve promised to do for the partnership,” he said, adding that he did not turn down $39 million to leave the project. “If I’d been offered 10 percent of that, I’d be in Tahiti.”
Click to expand
 
sportsman said:
Video from Statesman of Hellmunds press conference.Sorry cannot embed from this site

http://bcove.me/xn1wls67
Click to expand
Nice to hear Tavo for myself. It's a half hour long video, but here are the main points

In late spring the Austin team started to disagree about "the direction of the project". To resolve this, Tavo tried to put a new group of investors together to buy out Epstein (and McCombs) who "had no interest" in being bought out but instead asked to buy Tavo out. He refutes claims that he refused an offer of $39m saying (twice) that if he had been offered "10% of that" he would now be "sitting on a beach in Tahiti".

Tavo put 6 years of work into getting the race. His company (Full Throttle Promotions) has for the last year been paid a salary/retainer by COTA to be "Chairman of the Grand Prix". This payment has stopped and he hasn't been paid for the last 2 months.

The race was originally going to be combined with Motreal (summer 2012), so the fee was due a year ahead of that. Because construction was "way behind" they requested and were granted the delay to November 2012. The fees though would still be due as originally scheduled (summer 2011).They had been aware of the New Jersey project "gaining some traction" for a few months, so this may well have been yet another factor for at least some of the Austin group. (Tavo wasn't worried but he doesn't say the others shared his views. Also, Motreal are apparently quite concerned about the New Jersey race, especially if they are run on consecutive weekends.)

While all this was going on, no one was paying the F1 sanctioning fee ($25m), which was originally due in May (or July, there are conflicting indicators). He says over and over again that the money part of the project was not his role. There is a suggestion that the original budget was $150m-$200m and they have overshot by at least $100m.

There is an indication that the trust of the Comptroller's was lost a few months ago also (when all these issues started coming out, much earlier than perhaps has been suggested elsewhere) so the access to the major events fund has been seriously in doubt ever since the date change. This $25m was of course originally going to come from the state to pay the sanctioning fee, 1 year before the race. With all the doubts, the state decided instead to hold back the money and ensure it actually goes ahead before releasing the funds.

The investors therefore were sitting on a project with a $100m budget overshoot, a 6 month construction delay, no certainty that they could even make November 2012, a demand for $25m from F1 and the 18 month delay in the payment from the major events fund.

So the months went by and still no one paid F1 and when Bernie's patience ran out, he offered the chance to i) pay up or ii) tear up the contract (and start again), or iii) just to walk away. They didn't pay up (Tavo insists this was Epstein's investment to make) and the investors decided to try and negotiate directly with Bernie.

Tavo repeatedly offers to try and help resolve the situation (even now) but COTA obviously want nothing more to do with him. They clearly saw Bernie's option ii) as a way to cut Tavo out and save buying him out. My guess is that they also saw this as the only way to change the rates and payment schedule with F1, which in light of the $125m hole, they might have had to do.

Tavo thinks they can still salvage the race and he is very keep for it to happen as he is clearly (still) very emotionally attached to the project. He wants a Grand Prix in his home town of Austin, even if he has nothing to do with it.

For me though, unfortunately, Tavo is now irrelevant. His story is enlightening, but it doesn't change the simple fact: COTA needs to be able to pay its bills, including the sanctioning fee, before any race takes place. More than anything else, it might be the inability to do this that has caused the whole thing to fall apart.
 
sportsman said:
There are countless press reports on this press conference.Many of them inaccurate.
I can't summarise it as my summary would be on my interpretation of what he actually said.So that could be inaccurate.
I did watch this live together with flood and several Americans from Austin where we discussed it via Skype.
Click to expand
How did I do?
 
Thats pretty good.Couple of points.Firstly why did Tavo take his lawyer with him.
And it was Tavo's lawyer who said that he had not turned down the offer to buy him out.His lawyer said that had not been decided yet.
I pesonally found Tavo's body language rather odd as he seemed to keep looking at his lawyer as if he should a say something.

For what its worth my opinion of this whole farce still has some way to go before it is finalised.
By the time they have all finished suing each other, including that rattlesnake they found dozing peacefully in the sunshine on the site.(trespass) :snigger: 2013 is the earliest possible date.
We shall see.
 
sportsman said:
why did Tavo take his lawyer with him.
Click to expand

I think you answered your own question...

sportsman said:
By the time they have all finished suing each other
Click to expand

I thought he came across as a well meaning, massively over-optimistic but sadly powerless man who wanted the public to know that it wasn't his fault that the whole thing had gone wrong.
 
My line of work is in social and environmental regeneration. One of the most disturbing things to come out of this debacle is the 20th century approach of the developers to the natural environment. It is understandable that there will always be an environmental impact from large scale developments such as this and to some extent that it is "acceptable". What is not acceptable is the apparent total disregard of basic procedures for mitigating environmental and social impacts as a fundamental part of the development.

It appears from what I have been reading and from this item I found by following Sportsman's link that the development has steamed ahead without even a precursory environmental mitigation programme. The evidence for this is I admit anecdotal ...

http://www.statesman.com/sports/for...-track-fear-encroaching-wildlife-1951878.html

... but I'm sure that if residents collect the bodies and the data the hard evidence will be there.

What I mean by an environmental mitigation programme is best illustrated by an example. One of my projects was to engage and involve the local community in a project to create a country park using an old landfill site. In order to construct the park the site had to be capped, first with coarse materials, then a membrane followed by graded earth and clay materials imported from other construction sites and earthworks. Prior to and throughout the construction of the park a team of ecologists, often accompanied by volunteers, carried out a relocation programme involving the capture of various animals (particularly creatures such as snakes, lizards, frogs, toads and newts, etc.) and their relocation to designated "safe" zones on and adjacent to the site. The principle being to protect and to manage the redistribution of as much of the wildlife as possible.

Obviously the scale of the Austin track project would have required a seriously expensive and difficult mitigation programme and that should have been factored in from the start. From what the neighbours are reporting it seems that no programme has been factored in or implemented at all.

We are talking about a project in what is purported to be one of the most technologically and socially advanced nations on Earth. I am not impressed. If anything this debacle serves to show just how impressive was India's achievement in giving us a Grand Prix this year.

There is a "can do" attitude in US culture. Somehow it's gone missing from the blokes inside the Austin GP organisation and they appear to be losing their most important friends ... the local community. If they can't get those ingredients back then the Austin GP project is dead.
 
Bernie and a permanent US GP are just not cut out for each other. Especially when other countries have bent over backwards for the last 3 decades to bring a proper circuit and Grand Prix to their nation. Some things will NEVER change with Bernie. Check out these comments about the US at Hungary 86.

 
I wonder what they were expecting interviewing Johnny Dumfries...
Well, apart from attempting to redistribute my vast hereditary wealth everyone has been very friendly.
Click to expand
KekeTheKing said:
Brundle didn't even realize they had restaurants behind the Iron Curtain! :thinking:
Click to expand

"Have you seen this menu, Martin, its all goulash!"
"Look, but never stare..."
Click to expand
 

Similar threads

cider_and_toast
Pre-GP Quiz 2015 United States Grand Prix
    • Like
Replies
15
Views
2K
teabagyokel
teabagyokel
Back
Top Bottom