There are some news coming out of Hungary at the moment which apparently don't indicate a good future for the track. A German motorsport magazine writes that there's again a good chance that the track will be cancelled for this season as well.

According to the article there are now a lot of doubts voiced by experts and government representatives, mainly about the question whether the financing by the government is profitable and legal. The investors even believe mafia-like powers to be at work and accused one company and a party of corruption.
The newspaper Pester Lloyd wrote that Gordon Bajnai, the Hungarian prime minister, has instructed the minister of finance to make an in-house study on benefit and risk of financing the circuit public immediately.
Even though they agreed to stand surety of about 75 Mil. Euros last year, none of the contracts have been signed yet because of doubts about the probity of the project.

The study that is about to be made public apparently shows that the government financing of the track would be uneconomic, too risky and illegal. There are no guarantees of tax paybacks and the maintenance and usage of the track will need more subventions than make profit in the long run.

Bence Janos Kovacs, who is the boss of the investor group, believes in a plot which involves political and mafia-like blackmail. At a press conference he presumed that local estate companies and a company that is involved in motorsport are responsible for this. They allegedly have demanded a payment over 100.000 Euros from him.

We'll see if these financial and legal troubles will indeed keep the track from this year's calendar again (and then probably for good I'd believe). In any case, at least we'll have this round covered this way or another with the reserve track named before the start of the year already.

Source: http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/motor ... ungen.html

did anyone actually expect balatonring to hold the race?

Well, they did get every chance in the world to get this thing done in time and after the government OK to give them some funding, it looked positive. I'd love to have a new track in the calendar and would be pleased if this all worked out in the end, but if they can't do it at least we'll have an awesome reserve track in Spain to look forward to.

I don't know whether to feel happy at this news. Alcañiz is 3 or 4 hours from where I live ...
Anyway, I find it shameful that, after giving his approval to a project, and after two years, no contracts are signed and are now wondering whether or not to continue with what we planned ... smells bad.

More news from Hungary seem to support the previous doubts. There've been some follow-up reports in the English-speaking media after the first report which indicated that everything's just peachy anyway, mostly following the statements of some Dorna officials.

Now the word is different I'd say. On Thursday the government coordinator of the Balatonring project, Tamás Suchmann, receded from his office and just a day later it was made public that the Hungarian development bank will indeed NOT finance the project because of a lack of guarantees.

Seeing that there's now no money to build the thing in the first place, I'm pretty much looking for the flight costs to Motorland Aragon already...

Source: http://www.motorsport-magazin.com/motor ... nicht.html

Just heard from our erstwhile Eurosport commentator Julian Ryder that the Hungarian GP is cancelled again!!

Seems like the Balatonring was having their own version of the Donington calamity

Yep, they made it official now: http://www.motogp.com/en/news/2010/Repl ... and+Prix+0

I think I can be glad for this ...


(now only know if I can take vacation at work)