OCTOBER 3, 2002

Premier1 lives

The organizers of the Premier1 Grand Prix series, who have been silent in recent months, have released a statement confirming their intentions and where they currently stand in their plans to launch the series.

The series, which will be a single make championship with teams tied to the world's leading soccer clubs, has run into numerous problems and the launch has been delayed once again to 2004.

The collapse of chassis supplier Reynard, the attention being paid to the 2002 World Cup by the soccer world, and a major front office reorganization have all slowed the series in the past year. The organizers are still trying to sign soccer clubs, and will once again have to go through the process of finding a chassis supplier, not to mention finding teams willing to run the series, and circuits on which to race.

The organizers are confident, however, that the series will go off in 2004. "Together, we have achieved more in the past few months than was done in the previous two years," said Operations Director Robin Webb. "But we took the policy of not broadcasting our every move - instead we simply put our heads down and got on with the job of meeting our critical targets. The first of those objectives is to have the soccer clubs contractually committed to the series and, as will be revealed, we are doing this with enormous success."