Durban GT1 race postponed

The new sportscar series had been set to use the former A1GP Durban street track on the first weekend of November, but series chief Stephane Ratel said the project had been delayed.

"Durban has been more complicated than forecast," he admitted. "Initially we had a deal with the municipality of Durban to use the circuit previously used by A1GP. We had the walls, the bridge and the fence, so they only had to put the circuit back in place.

"The first complication came from the fact that they destroyed part of the circuit to construct a World Cup football stadium. So a new design was done and then the FIA became much more careful on the street circuit design and after various communications it needed a complete re-design of the circuit to make it happen.

"So even if the municipality agreed to do the work, it couldn't be done in the requested remaining time, so the event has been postponed till 2011."

The replacement Navarra round will take place two weeks before Durban was scheduled.

Ratel also announced that as well as making it to Africa in '11, GT1 could have new rounds in North America and China.

"Our main objective is to continue the globalisation of the championship," he said. "As a world championship we want to visit the world. We want to bring the championship in to the biggest markets, the fastest expanding markets and all of the main markets such as the US.

"Next year we have worked as a priority to take GT1 to the North America, we have ongoing contacts in the US and in Canada.

"Our second market, the fastest growing market on the planet is China. We have had extremely good contact with China and we are working hard to take the championship there.

We believe that most of our existing events will continue, but in the future it is no secret that we will reduce the number of events in Europe in order to have more events overseas."