This article straight from Auto Action No. 1172 January 11 - 17 2006.
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(for those of you playing at home)
Aussie tracks bid for China race
by Mark Fogarty
SNUBBED SUPERCAR circuits, Eastern Creek and Winton, are ready to come to the rescue if the shaky Shanghai event falls over.
Both tracks have affirmed their willingness to replace the Chinese round in June amid growing indications that it is about to collapse.
"We havn't contacted V8 Supercars Australia yet, but they know Easter Creek's here and in converstations we had last year, we made it clear that we'd be happy to have a round," said Geoff Arnold, general manager of track promoter, the Australian Racing Drivers Club.
Winton Raceway promoter Mick Ronke declared, "We're ready, willing and able to do it. The circuit's ready to go - everything's in place. We'll certainly be contacting them next week to see what we can screw together."
Both Eastern Creek in Sydney and Winton, near Banalla in northern Victoria, were victims of V8 Supercars' international expansion. Winton was dropped last year to make way for Shanghai, while the Creek was eliminated this your for Bahrain.
Scepticism is widespread among the V8 Fraternity that there will be an encore to last year's superficially successful inaugural visit to the futuristic Shanghai International Circuit.
Although V8 Supercars Australia is maintaining the official line that the event's scheduling is subject to FIA review, alarm bells are ringing throughout the sport.
While VESA chief executive Wayne Cattach tries to mount a rescue mission, planning an emergency trip to Shanghai at the end of the month or early Gebruary, speculation abounds that the 'China experiment' is a dead duck.
But amid rumours that Shanghai promoter, the Greenland Group, is in financial difficulty and that VESA hasn't been paid much or any of its multi-million dollar sanction fee for last year's event, Cattach continued to put on a brave face.
He maintained that the late objection by Federation of Automobile Sports of China (FASC) to the June 10-12 scheduling of the round - revealed on Boxing Day and regarded, at best, as disingenuous by informed observers - was the sticking point.
"This is a date issue as far as we know," Catach reiterated. "It appears the promoter wants a later date, but that causes difficulties within our 2006 calendar." He said the Shanghai date was marked "to be confirmed" when the calendar was released.
But according to an informed source, the date dispute is a bid to exploit a loophole in the event contract.
"It's not happening," he said. "The date thing is only a smokescreen. They don't want it - it lost millions."
Another souce suggested that VESA, which has four more years to run on its contract with Greenland, was looking for the FASC and Chinese Government to bail out the event.
Even VESA spokesman Cole Hitch**** admitted that it was unlikely the China round would be rescheduled.
"I severely doubt there'll be any significant shuffling of dates," he commented, adding, "We know that Eastern Creek or Winton could and would take us."
Shanghai
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