Australian Grand Prix boss Ron Walker has said that he is prepared to offer
Bernie Ecclestone a 'halfway house' arrangement if it means keeping the Albert Park event on the
Formula One calendar.
Ecclestone raised the stakes regarding the future of the Melbourne race - which opens the 2008 season this weekend - when he claimed over the weekend that it had to become a night race in order to secure its slot in future years. Walker, however, said that, while becoming a fully floodlit race just to satisfy television audiences in Europe was not an option, he was prepared to meet Ecclestone halfway in an effort to appease the situation.
"We've got 300 hectares of land [in Albert Park]," he told
The Australian newspaper, "It's not just lighting of the track, it's lighting the whole park to protect our patrons. [Singapore] is different because they are doing a night race in the city of Singapore itself."
Walker said that the best the race could do was to push its start time back to accommodate television demands, with this year's race already set for a 1530hrs and future races possibly moving to a 1700hrs local time slot. Races usually start at 1400hrs local time at most venues around the globe.
"Let's clear the air and say that compromise is the art of good business - and we have made a huge compromise in terms of what Mr Ecclestone wants," Walker insisted, "I think Mr Ecclestone is actually a very fair person, and probably one of the greatest sports promoters in the world today. He understands how we run the sport, [but] I believe we've gone a long way to appeasing Mr Ecclestone's aims to increase the TV audiences worldwide and I believe we will achieve that by the 5pm start.
"It will mean a 7am start time for the television coverage in Europe, finishing at about 8.40am, and an afternoon start and finish across the Asian continent, where there are potentially hundreds of millions of extra viewers."
