Race promoter Francois Dumontier admitted he was relieved after the Canadian grand prix was run without incident on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The protesting university students and a heavy police and security presence around Montreal has been obvious this weekend.<\/p>\n
But according to the La Presse newspaper, Dumontier said the ticket sales decline was ultimately lower than expected.<\/p>\n
“I am relieved,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I can’t deny that the last two weeks have been challenging — it’s already hard enough to organise a grand prix!<\/p>\n
“We had a good weekend,” added Dumontier.\u00a0 “Despite the threats, the event was not disrupted.\u00a0 People could get in.<\/p>\n
“I don’t have the latest figures, but it was a good day today because the stands were well filled.”<\/p>\n
He said he hopes next year’s event is less stressful.<\/p>\n
“I hope we can have a grand prix next year under normal conditions,” said Dumontier.<\/p>\n
Although relieved and happy, he admitted the 2012 event will be a financial loss.<\/p>\n
“For sure we will (record a loss) and that’s a shame as we are a private company,” he said.<\/p>\n
But Dumontier also revealed that meetings took place over the weekend between race and government officials and Bernie Ecclestone, regarding the extension of the contract for 2014-2024.<\/p>\n
“We have been talking for several months so it is ongoing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There are no obstacles at the moment.\u00a0 He (Ecclestone) was here and so were some ministers so we took the opportunity to speak together.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Race promoter Francois Dumontier admitted he was relieved after the Canadian grand prix was run without incident on Sunday. The protesting university students and a heavy police and security presence around Montreal has been obvious this weekend. But according to the La Presse newspaper, Dumontier said the ticket sales decline was ultimately lower than expected. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,1317,5262,5340,1302,1299],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16166"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16167,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16166\/revisions\/16167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}