After hosting two Grands Prix per season in Germany since 1995, the future looks bleak as the financial situation at Hockenheim, home of the German Formula 1 Grand Prix since 1977, appears to have run into trouble.
Accountants at the Grand Prix venue which once boasted dramatic long straights heading out into the forest, and which saw epic slipstreaming battles with low downforce spec cars, have felt the repercussions of the decline of enthusiasm for the event over the past few seasons.
Hockenheim was redesigned, losing its long straights and much of its character, in 2001 at the cost of some 65 million Euros, and it is said to currently have an operating loss of some 1.5 million Euros.
The Hockenheim mayor, Dieter Gummer, told the German SID sports news agency that he hopes the Baden Wuerttemberg state would get involved. Although the situation as it exists at the moment could mean insolvency problems as soon as April, restructuring of the circuit's debt is expected.
"I expect that that the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Grands Prix will take place as planned," Gummer is reported by
Reuters as saying.
Germany is the only country other than Italy to have two Grands Prix in a season as the European Grand Prix has been held at the Nurburgring, since 1995, although it was briefly christened the Luxembourg Grand Prix, the Grand Dutchy EEC founder country getting its name above the door in 1997-98.
The Nurburgring event is not boasting vast profits either, and discussions of there just being one event in Germany, with it even alternating between the two venues have come into play.
Of the two German locations the Nurburgring has a history stretching further back into Grand Prix history, with the German Grand Prix being held there from 1951 to 1976 on the glorious Nordschleife, with only the interruption of Avus holding the event in 1959 and Hockenheim in 1970.
The new Nurburgring first held the European Grand Prix in 1984 and in 1985 it held the German Grand Prix for the first time in ten years, but the circuit was never seen as challenging by drivers and the next season F1 returned to Hockenheim and would not return to the Nurburgring until 1995.
