During the off-season we read about the financial problems that Estoril, Jerez, and Sachsenring had to find the budget to host MotoGP racing, but Dorna has already in place several other venues to take their places in 2013, like Argentina and Austin, Texas, that were announced with a big hullabaloo.
The Circuit of the Americas, in the person of Tavo Hellmund had signed a 10-year agreement to host MotoGP back in April 2011, but the track has been having several problems in completing construction, with money availability being the usual issue, but Hellmund has been ousted from the COTA project after a controversial taxpayer subsidy failed to come through and he is currently suing his ex-partners on buyout claims.
How is the Austin GP involved in all this? As mentioned before, the MotoGP contract was signed between Dorna and Hellmund and his Full Throttle Productions with the help of Kevin Schwantz’ and his company 3FourTexas MGP and not COTA.
The situation has become so delicate that according to Austin newspaper The Statesman, Schwantz has personally decided to step in and has asked that the president of COTA Steve Sexton to contact Hellmund and try to obtain the MotoGP rights – with COTA seemingly having offered something between $4 million to $17 million for these rights, but that Hellmund had declined.
Schwantz wrote: “I urge you one final time to contact Mr.
(Tavo) Hellmund about obtaining the rights to host a MotoGP race in Texas, after which I would be glad to open discussions with you as the new promoter.
If you have not obtained such rights from Full Throttle, then unfortunately Circuit of the Americas will not be included as a round of the FIM Grand Prix Road Racing World Championship.
”It also seems that MotoGP is no longer high on the priority list for the Circuit of the Americas as Sexton reported that they are in negotiations with numerous other motorsport classes, “”We are in discussions with several major race series who have reached out to us, and our confidence is high that three to five major world-class events, including a two-wheel championship, will be on the 2013 schedule — and that these races will take place under terms favorable to the Circuit and the series owners.
”A year is a long time, so this legal mess could be eventually cleared, but at the moment we’re not holding our breathe.