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I would imagine that all contracts have a termination right with little to no termination fee payable. I suspect that's how Eccleston Ran his contracts too, as he seemed to hire and fire tracks on a whim (e.g. India, Korea, etc).
Even if it is a breach of contract, it might be hard to prove a loss. We have been led to believe that most circuits do not make money from events anymore due to high fees payable to IMG. We've been told that this is the reason many old tracks backed out back in 2013 as thought it wasn't financially viable. Maybe Montalegre is an exception and maybe it makes a profit. The real shame is where a circuit pumps in hundreds of thousands of pounds in infrastructure on the basis of a 5 year contract, only to get canned the next year. That's where it starts looking like misrepresentation (subject, as Chunder says, to whatever rights are in the contract - there's no accounting for making a bad bargain).
I thought they'd drop Canada this year. Abu Dhabi, USA and South Africa gives you 4 continents (with Europe) so it thought that would be enough. Canada is a cost that isn't necessary to incur for drivers. Then they could have spared one of the European rounds from the chop. I wonder if these increased flyaway costs were a factor in OMSE pulling out.
People above are talking about entries next year as if Ekstrom and Hansen definitely won't be there. From what I've read, they've just lost factory support. Has it been confirmed that they won't run teams if no factory support, or is this just hypothetical? Each year we say that it doesn't look good for entries and then it comes to March and there's 15 permanent entries. I'll save the "RIP WRX" comments until March.
I am gutted that we've lost Mettet and, of course, Lydden. The modern tracks look on TV to be awful (except for South Africa). Catalunya isn't actually that bad but they need to remove the kink on the back dirt section as it ruins the chance of a last corner overtake. Silverstone is absolute rot; like they dropped a length of rope on a piece of plywood and based the circuit on how it fell.
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