Written by Lorenzo Baer, Edited by Vyas Ponnuri
After decades of being one of the most prestigious races in the world, the Pau Grand Prix suffers a slow and agonising death, where an uncertain future calls into question the existence of one of the oldest GPs recognized by the FIA.
Despite attempts to save the event for 2025, the chances of the historic race in the Pyrenees taking place in the near future remain slim.
Will the Pau GP take place in 2025?
One of the best-known Grand Prix events in the world, the Pau GP has undergone a turbulent period, and there is no prospect that the situation will improve next year.
The newest chapter in this story unfolded on Sunday, 8th December, when Association Sportive de l'Automobile Club Basco-Béarnais (ASAC BB), the organisers of the Pau GP, took part in a general assembly with representatives of the judiciary power of the city of Pau.
This meeting aimed to shield the institution, which has been experiencing serious financial problems since 2022.
Based on information collected by the French media, it is estimated that ASAC BB and Créa-Sud, a company outsourced by Basco-Béarnais to organize the race between 2022 and 2023, owe approximately €400,000 to various creditors.
According to the same sources, the main debt is owed to the company Aximum, the main service provider for the Pau GP in recent editions, and still have to receive roughly €200,000 from ASAC BB.
Another important open debt of ASAC has to do with the last edition of the race, in 2023, and an unpaid bill of €150.000 to Repsol, the fuel supplier during that year's GP.
The debt situation worsened even further early this year after the city council of Pau refused to release the annual subsidy of €220,000 to ASAC, based on the principle that the institution did not plan to organise the 81st edition of the race in 2024.
Without this deposit, a huge void opened in the institution’s financial resources, with the critical situation turning into a desperate fight for survival.
Despite ASAC BB financial problems, there is still a light at the end of the tunnel, which allows the dream of the return of the event to take a more concrete shape.
Joël Do Vale, current president of ASAC BB, has been trying to balance the ASAC's accounts, using the scarce resources still available in association’s accounts to pay some of the most urgent debts, alongside remaining members of the institution’s committee.
The institution also took drastic moves to improve its financial flow, such as the sale of its traditional offices and headquarters in Place Royale, one of the most noble and expensive addresses in Pau, in addition to cuts in the organisation's structure, further reducing the number of employees to a minimum necessary for its management.
ASAC BB also launched a desperate appeal to its members and affiliates to pay their monthly fees according to the schedule, as a way of boosting the institution's finances.
With these large debts, the question then remains: will the 2025 Pau GP take place?
For Joël, who was also former vice-president of France’s motorsport governing body, the FFSA, the chances are very remote. According to an interview given by the president after the meeting on the 8th, the most likely answer is that next year's edition will be cancelled again.
The purpose of this decision would, however, to advance the planning for the 2026 edition, for which the president is confident in the race going ahead.
For him, the future of the event depends on a closer and more thrustful alliance with the City Hall of Pau, a relationship that has been strained since the last edition of the race, in 2023.
For example, in 2023, the municipality contributed €200,000 of the event's grand total €2 million budget.
In an interview with French media in October, François Bayrou, the mayor of Pau, stated that the Pau GP, in its traditional form, is too expensive to be solely funded by the municipality.
The viability of the GP depends on sponsors, with the city council supporting two business models for any future Grand Prix.
This hinted at either a historic racing event, on the lines of those such as Goodwood’s FOS or the Historic Monaco Grand Prix, or a “low-carbon” Grand Prix, looking towards Formula 4 or Formula Regional cars.
Therefore, it is difficult to evaluate even if the Association Sportive de l'Automobile Club Basco-Béarnais will be in a position to organize the GP in 2026.
There is a long journey before ASAC becomes a financially viable institution again, and until then, there are only guesses as to when Pau will host a Formulas race again.
ASAC’s economic problems have been accumulating for years
To explain why the ASAC BB finds itself in the current situation, we must go back to 2020, and the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Planned to take place in late May, the 2020 edition of the GP had to be cancelled due to the international health crisis.
Despite being deprived of organising the event, ASAC received the subsidies related to it, using them to pay the institution's administrative expenses in the 2020/21 biennium.
With the expectation that the race would be contested again in 2022, and the recurring difficulty of the city council in finding partners interested in sponsoring the year's race, the ASAC made a risky move.
They assumed full responsibility for the organisation of the event, delegating part of the organization services of the contest to the company Créa-Sud.
Although this alternative saved the 2022 edition of the GP, the plan backfired soon afterwards, as it was then when the financial abyss began to approach the ASAC.
The economic return from the 2022 edition had not even been close to planned, and the bills were beginning to accumulate on the association’s table.
However, without a large-scale partner who could share the costs of managing and organising the event, ASAC simply had no choices, besides solely organising the 2023 edition of the race.
The event received certain exemptions. given its status as a race was critical to save ASAC from a financial collapse.
Despite the difficulties and obstacles, the 2023 edition of the race got off the ground, albeit miraculously, but with good prospects of success. ASAC even managed to attract the Euroformula Open as the main category of the weekend.
However, it was at this point that other external actors began to conspire against the plans made.
A request from Pau city council was passed to ASAC a few weeks before the race, that Euroformula cars would have to run on biofuels, in line with the locality's strict low-carbon emission policy.
This was not specified in the original contract between the category committee and ASAC. The last-minute news came like a bombshell for Euroformula Open, which rejected the proposal to use such fuel without prior testing in its cars before.
As a result, Euroformula refused to attend the Grand Prix, which forced ASAC to elevate the support Formula 4 event to the main attraction of the weekend in 2023, at the last minute.
Obviously, such a move was not enough to save the integrity of the race, making the 80th edition of the Pau GP one of the biggest fiascos in the event's history.
This scandal only served to compromise the image of ASAC and the city of Pau, who had completely isolated themselves from the international automobile scene.
If the prior events had made finding a sponsor already difficult, the chances of getting sponsors for the future became extremely remote after the 2023 edition.
The effects of these decisions could be felt explicitly in 2024, when François Bayrou, mayor of Pau, had to indefinitely postpone the race due to a lack of funds, coupled with the near bankruptcy of the ASAC Basco-Béarnais.
It is important to highlight that it is not only on the sporting side that Pau suffers with the absence of the GP.
According to the Pau municipality data, it is estimated that the GP weekend has a financial impact of more than €800,000 on the local economy.
Therefore, there is a strong pressure from the city's commercial and tourism sector, now deprived of one of the most profitable periods of the year in the city.
Pau: 124 years of motorsport history
Pau's interaction with motorsport dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the first race in the city took place on 25th February 1900. The event took place over a 335 km round trip route to Bayonne, and was won by René de Knyff in a 16hp Panhard.
However, it was only the following year that the terminology “Grand Prix de Pau” definitively came into use, when Maurice Farman, driving a 24hp Panhard, was crowned the first recognised winner of the GP in 1901.
In 1930, Pau served as the home of the French Grand Prix, and in 1935, took the form we know today, 2.769 km in length.
Since then, the circuit has accumulated a rich history, written by great names in world motorsport.
Juan Manuel Fangio, Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt, René Arnoux, Jean Alesi and Lewis Hamilton were just a few drivers who left their marks on the Pau trophy, forming part of the legacy of one of the most traditional events in world sport.
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