The organisers of the Hockenheim grand prix in Germany are confident that the race will not make a loss, like it did in 2008.
With the departure of Germany’s star driver, Michael Schumacher in 2006, the countries F1 interests began to diminish. McLaren-Mercedes were the only part German team, whilst Nico Rosberg, Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil were the only German drivers left.
However, the return of Schumacher to an all German team has been good news for the ticket sales at Hockenheim, although organisers don’t expect a return to the glory days of 2000-2002 when sales averaged 100,000 tickets.
An agreement with Bernie Ecclestone and a restructuring of their race contract has helped to relieve some of the tracks financial burden.
“We have the new agreement with Bernie Ecclestone, which relieves us of the burden we had before – where we made a €5.3 million loss from F1 in 2008,” he told Autosport.
“Now, envisaging we will have the same number of spectators as 2008 – about 62,000 – we will break even. That is the number we are expecting as a minimum, but the pre-sale is running well and we are confident we will have more than that.
“Times have changed,” he said. “We would be satisfied if we would have 70-75,000 spectators, and there is no reason we will get back to those numbers of 2000-2002.”
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