JANUARY 13, 2006

Court date for Monza dispute

The squabbles over the Italian Grand Prix are not likely to amount to a real problem for the Italian Grand Prix, but the processes must be gone through and so the appeal from the Autodromo Nazionale against a court order which would make it impossible to run the Grand Prix will go to court on March 7.

The problem is that a local judge, blind to the political and economic questions involved, ordered that the race track produces too much noise for the local residents, some of whom had complained. In such circumstances it is normal for the complaints to be overruled as the racing circuit was there long before the residents and they knew what they were doing when they acquired their properties.

The Italian government proved in the 1990s that it was not willing to let the Italian Grand Prix die and over-ruled objections when a number of trees had to be cut down to ensure the safety of the circuit.