The major in Montreal, Valerie Plante, has pulled the plug on Formula E in the Canadian city.
Plante won the election in November 2017, and has since then put a critical look on the economies for this years event, which made a huge loss. She went to election with the promise of moving the event out of the city centre but has now decided to cancel the event.
If the final weekend in the FIA Formula E Championship 2017/18 should have been running, like it was already announced on the calendar, Valerie Plante would estimate a loss of 35 million Dollars to be covered by all the citizens – only for the 2017/18.
The 2016/17 race also made a big loss, but the municipality covered the economics for organizers.
The ticket sales for the double event were catastrophic, with only 25.000 tickets being sold, followed by 20.000 free tickets handed out, with the hope of getting some of the money back in food and hotels etc.
The race got to the city by the now former major, Denis Coderre, who wanted to promote the city and for renewable energy.
The Formula E series have a big headache now, since they are without their final weekend of the 2017/18 season. They have already made changes to the calendar one time this season, when Brazil had to cancel their round, and move it to Uruguay instead.
An option to raise the number again, would be to have more double rounds. That isn’t easy to do in the city centres, where there are exact plans for the traffic and putting up and down the track.
But a clear opportunity would be the Berlin round, which already in the 2016/17 held a double event, after the race in Brussels was cancelled. The Berlin round is run in the former airport Tempelhof, so it doesn’t matter that much if the concrete blocks will stay for one extra day. But the Formula E organizers haven’t come with an official solution, since the decision from Valerie Plante was a big shock, that they hadn’t been expecting at all.
The third race of the 2017/18 season will be run in Marrakesh, Morocco on 13 January.
