Cape Town could get a Grand Prix within two years, says Bernie Ecclestone. The Formula One's commercial supremo has been making noises for more than a decade about once more running a GP in Africa - with Cape Town as the venue of choice.
The last South African Grand Prix was run at Kyalami in 1993, and was won by Alain Prost.
Now he says negotiations are in the final stages, with a deal just weeks away from being signed.
The first proposal, in 2005, was for a purpose-built Herman Tilke circuit on the Cape Flats, next door to Cape Town international airport (which would solve a lot of logistical problems), but that fell through when it became obvious security would be an ongoing problem.
Then local motorsport promoters looked at the example set by Durban, which ran a series of successful A1 GP meetings on a temporary street circuit, and proposed a straightforward but very scenic layout around the Waterfont and Mouille Point areas.
This is not pie in the sky; the Western Province Motor Club staged a very successful meeting around what was then the Green Point Common in the late 1970s, so it could be done.
This is apparently the deal that Ecclestone is “weeks away from signing."
In an interview with Journalist Jean smyth of Eyewitness News on Tuesday he said: "I'm hoping we can make a decision as soon as our lawyers have a good look at them... within the next couple of weeks.
“It'll be good to be back in South Africa. We were very happy when it was here in the past.”
Motorsport SA has confirmed that a Cape Town consortium has approached it with a view to running a Grand Prix but that such an event would first need to be “inscribed in the FIA calendar by the MSA”.