Australian Grand Prix chief Ron Walker has said that his spectators have no interest in listening to F1's proposed new turbocharged engines, suggesting that the track, and others on the calendar, will dump the sport if the switch is made.
In a somewhat odd development, Walker has slammed the new 1.6-litre V6 turbo engine plan, which the Formula One Commission agreed to implement from 2014 in a meeting last week.
He suggested that the new engines would sound like "a tin can rattling", and said that the move would 'destroy' the race's standing with fans.
Furthermore, Walker claimed that his own race, and the majority of other current F1 events including Monaco, Spa-Francorchamps and Monza, would leave the sport and instead pursue race deals with the American IndyCar series.
According to reports, only the Chinese and Korean circuits are happy to stick with Formula One's new engine rules.
"We are not going to have our customer base destroyed," Walker told the Pitpass website in an interview this week.
"I told them that the circuits would not run it. The sound is part of the brand. [The engines] must be 18,000 revs and it must sound the same."
Although the final details of the new 2014 engine proposal are still being discussed, the new rev limit is believed to possibly be as low as 12,000rpm.
And Walker suggested that the circuits will be happy to stand against the teams over the issue, suggesting that they would be happy to leave the sport in favour of helping to expand America's main open wheel series.
"If the teams want to have a brawl over this they are going to get the biggest brawl of their life," he ranted, possibly while punching something.
"They won't be able to introduce the engine because we won't run the engine, we won't run the races."
He added: "An IndyCar race costs about $3.5million, compared to what we are paying [for F1] and it is louder and noisy."
Aside from the fact that 'louder' and 'noisier' means the same thing, there were no further details as to whether the tracks had begun any formal negotiations with the IndyCar series.
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