Damon Hill has again expressed his opposition to proposed 'race sharing' options involving the French and British grand prix, despite the future of the Silverstone event 'hanging in the balance' beyond the end of its current contract in 2009.
Asked whether he would consider the plan in order to keep Britain as part of the world championship, the president of the British Racing Drivers' Club - owners of Silverstone - admitted that all options would be kept on the table.
But Hill also insisted that his ideal was to have the race as a regular feature on the calendar, and not a bit-part player.
"We should remain open to all sorts of plans, although I feel that that should be a last resort, because we'd like to keep Britain in the frame every year," he told journalists at Silverstone.
"[The race] has had a presence in the championship since 1950, since it began, so we'd like to keep that going. You could argue that [sharing] could be the thin end of the wedge, that every other year could become every other other year."
Questioned as to whether he had softened his stance, following what had been a pretty robust rebuttal of similar plans late last year, Hill admitted that the future was too unpredictable to dismiss out of hand.
"I think the question before was 'can you share with Magny-Cours until the end of the current contract'," he pointed out. "I don't think it was looked at as a share into the future, so it didn't make any sense at all financially, for the infrastructure and the amount of investment that we've put in, to do that between now and the end of the contract.
"Maybe it is something that can be discussed for the next phase, but I would still feel very strongly that we ought to push to have a regular British Grand Prix and find a solution to make it a viable thing for us to do."
The 1996 world champion admitted that keeping Silverstone on the schedule in the face of growing international opposition was going to be a difficult job, but Hill also pointed out that, with attendances falling in Malaysia and problems also besetting the Shanghai race, some newer events were struggling.
"A grand prix is a mark of a country's arrival on the economic stage if you like, a way of countries showing that they are going ahead economically," he explained. "There are more and more countries like that wanting traditionally western emblems and status symbols, so we are in competition now with countries that we would never have considered being in competition with before.
"But there is another side to the story, as some of those countries have over-invested in having a grand prix and, a bit further down the line, there is a hangover after the party. It has to make economic sense to hold a grand prix."
While still hoping that the British government could be enticed to bolster Silverstone's bargaining power in order to retain its place on the F1 calendar, Hill admitted that it was also up to the race itself to prove its worth to the country as a whole.
"One of the difficulties here is that we are restricted in the ways we can make revenue and that is a matter of negotiation," he said. "We're not like Wimbledon, we're not like a football team, because we don't have certain rights because, over time, they have been negotiated away.
"I wouldn't go as far as insisting that this country should pay for a grand prix, because I can understand that there are many more people ahead of us in the queue for government money.
"I think that our job is to try and explain the value of having a grand prix in this country, because it is very easy to just look at it as a cost, rather than how much value it gives to the UK to have a televised event like the British Grand Prix beamed to around 350m people in 50 countries around the world. It is very valuable.
"The government is paying for good news stories to go out about Britain but, you know what, this is a big news story that goes around [the world] and, in the back of people's minds, they think this is a good place to come, so it's good to put on a good show.
"I think [the race] does have a value and will pay for itself. And I think it would certainly be very difficult to get it back if we lost it."
The Stig
Welcome
Guests: 559
Hidden: 0
Users: 0
