The unnecessary bid for the city of Rome to host a grand prix in the future appears to be nearing an unsuccessful end, with the city's mayor saying that they are taking a "step back" from their plans to host a race in 2013.
The Rome GP was planned to take place on a street circuit around the city, with some reports suggesting that Bernie Ecclestone was open to the idea and a deal had been signed in principle for the 2013 season.
But with the F1 calendar already at capacity and more new tracks queuing up to enter the sport, leading figures on the grid, including Ecclestone himself and Ferrari boss Luca di Montezemolo have recently insisted that F1 can no longer justify two races in one country in the future.
Furthermore, residents in the EUR region of the city, where the track would be built, recently reacted negatively in a poll asking their thoughts on the idea of a GP in the area.
With Monza having signed a new deal for the Italian GP through to 2016, that seemed to end the Rome bid's hopes, though the race promoter Maurizio Flammini said at the weekend that he still felt a slot-sharing deal could be reached with Monza.
But the Rome mayor Gianni Alemanno seems to have all but given up on his plans of bringing Formula One to his city, according to quotes run in the La Repubblica newspaper on Thursday.
"The road has not been completely closed, but the interests of our city must be compatible with the national ones," Alemanno apparently said
He added that: "We'll take a step back [from the bid]... [there] will be a press conference in the coming days."
Alemanno added that he did not see that there was much point in attempting to pursue a race-sharing deal with the Monza track.
"We have always maintained contact with the mayor of Monza, with the ministers of the north and all those of the Lombardy region," he explained.
"I have to say that we never found a great dialogue, even when we stressed that if it was a choice between Monza and Rome then we would pull back."
Instead, the mayor says that he now wants to see the Italian capital bid for the 2020 Olympic Games, saying that this was an "ambitious but achievable" target for the city.
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