New Jersey Grand America F1 Contract Not Vaild says Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone has casted serious doubt over the Grand Prix of America in New Jersey after suggesting the race no longer has a valid contract.

The New Jersey race is scheduled to join the F1 calendar next year and construction of a pit and paddock complex on the banks of the Hudson River is already quite advanced. But Ecclestone has now told the Guardian that the organisers of the race “have not complied with the terms and conditions of the contract which is now gone anyway. They don’t have a contract.”

A draft 2013 calendar emerged in the paddock over the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, with the Grand Prix of America marked as “subject to confirmation”. Ecclestone says the New Jersey organisers don’t have long to meet the terms of the deal with the calender expected to be approved at Friday’s World Motor Sport Council meeting.

“We are pretty close to the final deadline,” he added. “We have got a world council meeting coming up. I think if somebody got behind them it could happen in 2013 because they have come a long way with the circuit.”

Ecclestone reached a similar impasse with the separate US Grand Prix in Austin last year before a deal was finally struck in December 2011. The Austin race is set to go ahead on November 18 this year.