Champ Car to return to Germany
According to the paper, Jakub Andreas Grajewski (remember, he contemplated fielding a Champ Car team at one time) and the City of Hannover will be the co-promoters of the race. Grajewski was quoted as saying that he was really looking forward to the race and that it would be a great opportunity for the City of Hannover. The major of Hannover, Herbert Schmalstieg, was stressing the economic benefits for Hannover that would come with a race.
The title sponsors would be German brewery Hasseröder and energy giant E-on/Ruhrgas. The city is expected to cover the remaining expenses. The paper provided no graphical track layout, but said that the race would take place at the EXPO 2000 exhibition place. The paper is usually very reliable and given the details on this race and the quotes of various key persons, I rate the possibility of a street race in Hannover as very probable. Rolf Meier, Hannover, Germany
05/20/03 This rumor is downgraded to 'false.' After an inspection of the course submitted by the organizer Andreas Grajewski, Mayor Herbert decided the city could do without the disputed event and killed it. The course would have required too much resurfacing, drainage improvements and the relocation of trees. It was decided to keep the Expo area strictly for what it was originally intended – Expos. 5/20/03 – This Hanover.de article says that the long rumored race in Hanover Germany around the Expo area is proposed for September, 2004. This would mean CART would be making a 2nd trip to Europe each year, one in May and one in September. We could see May being Brands/EuroSpeedway/Estoril and the September trip being Hanover and Imola (yes, F1 will drop Imola soon). The organizer, Andreas Grajewski, wants to deliver a Champ Car race. The town councilors want to know about traffic congestion and logistics. The roadways must get a larger angle of inclination and other improvements. Klaus Timaeus sees the meeting as a chance to promote Hanover's image as a sport city country wide. Grajewski speaks of a good business for the region, if hotels were occupied and restaurants were full. However, others are against the race. A decision is expected in a few weeks. Mark C. 11/30/02 According to AutoRacing1.com sources, next week when Chris Pook travels to Europe, one stop on his agenda will be to meet Andreas Grajewski in Hannover to talk about his CART team and his proposed race around the Expo area for 2004. On his last visit to Europe Pook already toured the Expo area and, with Grajewski, had a meeting with the mayor of Hannover, Dr. Herbert Schmalstieg (pictured right). Schmalstieg, during a visit to Shanghai's Tongji University recently, predicted that Shanghai, with its vitality and economic opportunities, would possibly win its bid to host the 2010 World Expo. Dr. Schmalstieg emphasized the opportunities presented by the expo, noting that Hannover has greatly benefited from hosting the 2000 World Expo. According to the mayor, the 2000 expo created about 40,000 jobs, placed Hannover on the worldwide stage, and helped it to forge closer ties with other parts of the world. Now he wants to take it one step further and hold a race that is televised worldwide. We will keep this rumor as 'speculation' for now because it is still a far way from reality. 11/27/02 – We did a little research on Hannover, Germany. Basically, it would be a decent place for the race because they need far less preparations there in comparison to a street race somewhere downtown. No major traffic detours necessary, and some of the streets in the expo area are pretty wide. You must know, everything there was planned and built too big even for the expo, so it would be oversized for the CART Race. But that can be an advantage, the concrete barriers in most of the turns could be placed up to 50 feet away from the racing groove, that's good for safety and for driver sight lines. And if you think the corners there are simply 90 degree corners, they are not, some streets have wide sweeping fast turns. With an intelligent layout they can build a track that's partly fast, partly slow and very, very physical. Could be a successful race. Hannover is in the center of the northern half of Germany, you can reach it on the "autobahn" from any region easily. However, now the bad news – the financial problems in Hannover. Many of the German cities comparable to Hannover or bigger are close to filing bankruptcy and the German government filed bankruptcy some weeks ago, no money at all, the socialists and the green party did not say anything before the election, but two weeks after their win they did, and economy in Germany will go further down. Some years ago the government gave money to Lausitzring, but financial help for anybody to set up a race is near impossible now and may be impossible in the future. Same thing with industry, remember Telekom or Deutsche Post F1 pullout some days ago, unexpected. Many German companies are cutting down their sports sponsorship programs, some are planning to cancel everything, because they expect lower costs from breaking contracts than from continuing the sponsorship. We also learned that one of the sponsors Grajewski wants to bring to CART is a manufacturer of heating plants for houses. They sell in Germany and in Europe, but nobody can buy the stuff in the USA we hear. Remember "Hasseröder" some years ago (Arndt Meyer)…… You can buy "Tecate" everywhere in the states, but "Hasseröder"? The weather in may in that region can be very good, warm around 20 degrees Celsius and dry, but in some years they have very unstable weather conditions. Sometimes weather patterns in April can extend to the first half of May, with rainy days and temperatures around 10 degrees Celsius. Mark C.