Talks over a new contract to keep the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas are progressing, and COTA chairman Bobby Epstein says he is \u201coptimistic\u201d about an agreement.<\/p>\n
This season\u2019s edition is the penultimate race on the current contract, and RACER understands discussions could be finalized prior to next month\u2019s race but have yet to conclude.<\/p>\n
\u201cConversations are ongoing and I think we’re optimistic,\u201d Epstein said.\u00a0\u201cI have\u00a0little doubt that\u00a0they want to do anything but continue and\u00a0likewise do we, so that is a pretty good\u00a0starting point for conversation.\u00a0But there hasn’t been a sense of urgency on either one of our ends, I\u00a0don’t think and\u00a0when it’s time we’ll come to an agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Epstein says there have been no major changes requested by F1 when it comes to the next agreement, although hospitality options are likely to expand as a result of a longer-term commitment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0don’t think there’s many big differences really for us,” he said. “I\u00a0think that they would like to see an\u00a0expanded Paddock Club\u00a0because they continue\u2026 our clubs\u00a0this year are all sold out. The Paddock Club, the trackside, Club SI\u00a0– it\u2019s been incredible, the demand for\u00a0the hospitality.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think what they would like to see is a bigger Paddock Club and we’re looking at creating something incredibly special\u00a0that I hope we unveil along with\u00a0a contract extension.\u00a0So it’d be a\u00a0Paddock Club unlike any Paddock Club\u00a0that\u00a0anyone has currently.\u00a0So that’s what we’re looking at and we’re talking about, and we’re very excited about it \u2013 both of us.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s race will be held across the weekend of October 17-19 and demand remains high. Epstein said it could prove to be the best-attended USGP at the circuit, citing the F1 movie as a potential driver of greater interest.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might get close [to a new record] \u2013 it’s early still,” he said. “I just know we’re already in the top three.\u00a0I\u00a0don’t know that anything’s missing [to beat it], but just after the pandemic there was such a build-up of demand\u00a0between Netflix and people had received\u00a0checks from the government here and had some more money to spend. I think that’s the biggest difference.\u00a0It’s not the love for the sport or the demand for the sport, I’d say it’s the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talks over a new contract to keep the United States Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":419045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-419044","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115192631522977775","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}