Plans are racing ahead for a grand prix in Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet state at the crossroads of Asia and Europe.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Bernie Ecclestone stunned F1’s headline writers when he first mentioned the capital Baku as a potential host for the sport.<\/p>\n
“They are talking about 2015,” he said in March of this year.\u00a0 “That is a possibility but 2016 is more likely.”<\/p>\n
Indeed, the olympic games-themed website ‘insidethegames.biz’ claims a deal for 2016, with the race to be called the European grand prix, has now been reached.<\/p>\n
Azerbaijan will also host the inaugural European Games next year.<\/p>\n
The report said the F1 race will take place on a city street circuit, such as the 4.4 kilometre layout that already hosts an event around Baku for GT3 cars.<\/p>\n
“We have signed the deal with Bernie Ecclestone and will announce it officially with an event in Baku shortly,” Azerbaijan sports minister Azad Rahimov is quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
And a spokeswoman for the sports ministry, Samaya Mammadova, confirmed the news to the Azerbaijan news agency Trend.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ecclestone has flagged the possibility of a return to India, after the Delhi round was axed for 2014 over bureaucratic, tax and financial hurdles.<\/p>\n
“They (race organisers) just need to come here (London) and sort out the existing contract,” the F1 chief executive told the Indian news agency PTI.<\/p>\n
“Though the race promoters have not said when they will come over, we are constantly talking and they look very eager to get the race back.\u00a0 I am also confident that all financial issues will be sorted out and India will be back on the calendar,” Ecclestone added.<\/p>\n
“As I have said in the past, India is an important market for formula one.\u00a0 I really want to see the race return.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Plans are racing ahead for a grand prix in Azerbaijan, an oil-rich former Soviet state at the crossroads of Asia and Europe. A year ago, Bernie Ecclestone stunned F1’s headline writers when he first mentioned the capital Baku as a potential host for the sport. “They are talking about 2015,” he said in March of …<\/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":[4886,59,5262,5340],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778"}],"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=21778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21779,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21778\/revisions\/21779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}