Mexico gets five-year deal

The proposed event will take place on a new US$70 million 3.1-mile circuit and will be designed by veteran track designer Hermann Tilke, the man responsible for the new circuits in Bahrain and Shanghai.

"This track offers some very, very high speeds with sharp curves that make cars brake at speed," Tilke's representative Dirk Schneider said.

Mexico last held a Grand Prix at the Hermanos Rodriguez Autodrome in Mexico City in 1992. It was revived in 2002 for Champ Car racing.

The announcement will almost certainly put further doubt on the British Grand Prix, which has made an appearance on the provisional 2005 calendar, but faces a bleak future after talks broke down between the owners of the Silverstone circuit, the BRDC, and Bernie Ecclestone.

But Luis Silveira, whose company Grupo Promotor Inversiones Caribenos is involved in the Cancun deal, said Mexico was not being viewed as a replacement of the British Grand Prix.

"That is not the intention," he said. "The issue was not even raised of taking the place of existing dates. What was discussed and what came out was a new date, a new commitment, not a substitution."