{"id":18880,"date":"2013-07-26T07:19:54","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=18880"},"modified":"2013-07-26T07:19:54","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T11:19:54","slug":"austria-gp-return-only-a-rumour-alonso","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/austria-gp-return-only-a-rumour-alonso\/","title":{"rendered":"Austria GP return ‘only a rumour’ – Alonso"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fernando Alonso has only cautiously welcomed news Austria will be on the 2014 calendar.<\/p>\n

\"Fernando-Alonso-2\"It was announced this week that Red Bull Ring owner Dietrich Mateschitz has agreed a deal with Bernie Ecclestone for the Austrian grand prix to return in 2014.<\/p>\n

“If you look at the calendar,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, “it is extremely important that we’re still (racing) in Europe.”<\/p>\n

Also speaking to Austria’s Laola1, Mark Webber agreed: “It’s a great traditional track, and we’ve lost quite a lot of those.”<\/p>\n

The deal, however, is conditional on certain local permissions, including noise and environmental plans, and a raising of the Red Bull Ring’s allowed spectator limit from 40,000.<\/p>\n

So it is apparently for that reason, rather than the fact Red Bull is Ferrari driver Alonso’s arch rival, that the Spaniard welcomed the news only cautiously.<\/p>\n

“The people of Austria have a lot of support for formula one,” said Alonso, “but at the moment there is only the hope — only the rumour.”<\/p>\n

Told, however, that even a date for the former A1-Ring’s return in 2014 has been set, Alonso insisted: “We shouldn’t forget that the federation hasn’t ruled on this yet.”<\/p>\n

The Ferrari driver even had little to say about the actual circuit layout, which despite being rebuilt by Red Bull is still essentially the same as always.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know much about the track, so I don’t have a strong opinion about it,” said Alonso.<\/p>\n

“We’ve been there, but that was some time ago.”<\/p>\n

Then driving for Renault in 2003, Alonso retired from the last Austrian grand prix with engine failure.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fernando Alonso has only cautiously welcomed news Austria will be on the 2014 calendar. It was announced this week that Red Bull Ring owner Dietrich Mateschitz has agreed a deal with Bernie Ecclestone for the Austrian grand prix to return in 2014. “If you look at the calendar,” said Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, …<\/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":[1848,3082,59,128,262,5262,149,93,5340,165,4171],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18880"}],"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=18880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18881,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18880\/revisions\/18881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}