“I really feel that we were not as supported as I had hoped. Having consulted all the stakeholders, I have decided, in agreement with the Conseil, to abandon construction of a Formula One circuit,” said Schmidt yesterday.
On the one hand, we have the French ecology minister Chantal Jouanno, who was simply delighted when hearing the news, especially since she and the majority of the politicians were against the project from its very beginning due to environmental grounds.
“I am delighted that the General Council took this decision responsibly. This shows that today, in arbitration government, the environment is not the last variable to be taken into account; on the contrary,” said Jouanno, according top French newspaper Le Parisien.
In addition, she insisted that building a new circuit from scratch is always a tough project to sustain and the French motor racing enthusiasts should instead consider restoring the already existing circuit at Paul Ricard (constant base for the GP2 Series testing sessions).
However, talking to the media about the failure of the Flins F1 project in recent days, the president of the French motor racing federation FFSA, Nicolas Deschaux, blamed the politicians for denigrating France's chances of returning to the map of international sporting events.
“Although South Korea has mobilized to host a grand prix in 2010, we can be surprised that the world's third largest media spectacle after the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup is so denigrated in France by politicians,” said Deschaux, referring to South Korea's already confirmed entry in the F1 calendar next year.
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