Politicians! Don’t you love them? The Austrians would not help with the funding to save the Osterreichring, which used to be a regular stopping off point for F1 until 2003. The old facilities were demolished in June 2004, with Red Bull, Magna, Volkswagen and KTM planning a fancy new facility. The other partners fell out of the project and all that was left was the track itself, although parts of it had been dug up. Red Bull wanted to push on but planning permission was a problem, but Mateschitz ploughed on regardless and reached agreement with the troublesome local government to do his own thing. Work began in 2009 and things are now well-advanced and if all goes well the new track will open next spring, although Mateschitz says that it is not intended for F1 but will be used for races up to DTM level. There might be F1 testing, but with an in-season ban and Austrian winter weather, there is little potential for that.Now that Mateschitz has made all his efforts, the local politicians are becoming interested again and are saying that the Red Bull magnate should really locate his F1 team in Austria…

One can imagine that Mateschitz would be only too keen to do that.