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Apparently Bernie turned up at Brands and I don't think the reason is that he's a closet A1GP anorak.
If he isn't thinking of buying it he should. Why?
1. It would be cheap (as much as it pains me to say so).
2. It wouldn't be hard for him to grow it.
3. He could tie in TV deals with F1.
4. It would give him somewhere to park his old GP2 cars (just change some bodywork and repaint them).
5. He could gain income from circuits that can't/won't hold F1. For example the British A1GP round at Silverstone, Tiago Monteiro in the A1GP Portugal entry in a return to Estoril (properly promoted this time of course) etc etc.
6. It won't cannabalise F1/GP2. If you read official website forums you will see a lot of the people posted comments are new to motorsport (which I why I am staying here!). Brands did a survey and found that 28% of the attendees were completely new to motorsport. In other words it is a different consumer base for a different product.
7. All that would be left to rule the world would be to buy IRL and Champcars and merge them! OK just joking with this one.
An alternative scenario (and a horror one) is that he does see it as a long term threat, and would buy it to close it. I would hope he would never dare think such evil things, but look how closely F1 is looking at street circuits and new markets such as India, and then think of Karthikeyan growing interest in A1GP there, or the crowds we've seen in Durban...
Of course another scenario is that he'll leave it completely alone.
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