FIA president Mohammed bin Sulayem tried last year to prevent the certification of the city circuit in Las Vegas, where the Grand Prix of the same name took place in November. This is reported by the same source, whose information previously served as the basis for an internal investigation into Sulayem due to suspicions that he tried to influence the results of last year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The FIA ethics committee report said the source said the FIA president last year ordered federation officials to find a way to prevent the Las Vegas circuit from being certified for compliance with safety standards.
The report quotes a source as saying he was contacted by a manager “who, on behalf of the FIA president, was tasked with identifying issues that would prevent the FIA from closing the circuit before the start of the race weekend certify.” The same source said that “the goal was to find fault with the circuit and de-license it.”
The report goes on to say that when asked for more details, the source said that “problems on the highway should have been identified regardless of their actual existence.” The source added that the task had been entrusted to a specific official and mentioned the names of two more people who were present at the meeting.
The report states that the Las Vegas track remains certified and licensed as no problems were identified.
BBC Sport knows the names of the officials mentioned in the FIA ethics committee report, but is not naming them. At the same time, BBC Sport clarifies that other officials remembered these events somewhat differently from the source.
The reasons why Ben Sulayem tried to prevent the certification of the Las Vegas circuit are not entirely clear, but around the same dates a conflict between the FIA president and Liberty Media’s Formula 1 owners escalated, the essence of which was that Sulayem tried to get more payments to the federation from Formula 1. Currently, commercial rights holders pay the FIA around $40 million per year.
A Formula 1 official declined to comment.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
