Earlier this month there were some news coming out of Hungary which indicated some severe troubles for the future of the new Balatonring MotoGP circuit. A German motorsport magazine worried that there’s again a good chance that the Hungarian MotoGP will again be cancelled like it already was last season.
According to the article there are 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.
Even though they agreed to stand surety of about 75 Mil. Euros last year, none of the contracts had been signed yet because of doubts about the probity of the project.
The study in question 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.
A few days after this article was published however, several English-speaking MotoGP websites wrote that the Hungarian round was still very likely to happen. According to Dorna and IRTA officials the amount of money already spent on the Balatonring project indicates that everything would go ahead as planned as “it would be stupid to stop now”.
But in the meantime, more worrying news emerge from Hungary. This Thursday the government coordinator of the Balatonring project, Tamás Suchmann, receded from his office and yesterday it was made public that the Hungarian development bank will indeed NOT finance the project because of a lack of guarantees. With no secure financing to actually build the circuit which is still practically non-existent, it remains to be seen if there’ll be a Hungarian MotoGP round this year or not.
In any case, to prevent a similar situation as last season with one round cancelled, there’s already been a reserve circuit assigned with the Motorland Aragon. So we will see whether we will have this year’s Round 14 in Hungary or in Spain.
Sources: Motorsport-Magazin.com 1, Motorsport-Magazin.com 2, MCN
