Author: Interview by Orkhan Sattarov, head of European office of VK
Today in Baku street racing ended; it was won by team McLaren Mp4, consisting of Frederick Makovitsky and Stephen Dyusseldorp. Team BMW Z4, with Jacques Villeneuve, Jos Verstappen, Yelmera Buurman and Nikolaus Mayr-Melnhof, was silver and bronze winner. Spokesman for City Challenge Rene de Boer told VK about the racing.
- Mr de Boer, what are your impressions of Baku?
- Extremely positive. Personally, as well as on the part of the organization City Challenge, I would like to express my gratitude for the very warm and spiritual reception by Azerbaijanis of the first street racing in Baku - a wonderful, beautiful city. What I saw here made a deep impression on me - in particular, this was people's warm and open attitude and their enthusiasm for our event.
- What is the origin of the idea of City Challenge racing?
- The company City Challenge was founded in Berlin by Hartmut Beyer - a German entrepreneur seriously addicted to motorsports. As a former racer, he decided to take on the organization of races in the cities, in order to directly convey motorsports to people directly where they live, not making them go to distant places to see the race. But City Challenge is more than just racing. Here there is a cultural element. After all, we are uniting people from different countries and cultures with a common interest in upscale entertaining racing.
- Why did the choice of the organizers fall on Baku?
- Firstly, a City Challenge race was held in Bucharest in 2007, and it was successfully repeated the next year. After some political changes in the country it became impossible to carry out our activities there, and therefore the third race of City Challenge was held on the ring road near Budapest in 2009.
When Hartmut Beyer first arrived in Baku at the invitation of one of his friends, he immediately noticed a serious infrastructural capacity of the city in order to become an arena for City Challenge race. After many negotiations and preparatory work at the beginning of this year, Bayer signed an agreement to hold City Challenge in Baku.
- Is it profitable for Azerbaijan?
- City Challenge is a great opportunity for the city of Baku and for the country of Azerbaijan to once again create good advertising. Broadcasting of of this event is carried out in 120 countries; more than 320 million households watch these reports. This event will show the impressive dynamic development of the Azerbaijani capital. Moreover, journalists and photographers from countries such as Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland and the United States also are in Baku this weekend.
As you can imagine, holding races of this magnitude also helps the local economy - more than one thousand people come to Baku to attend this event: artists, musicians, drivers and their mechanics, team members, journalists, guests, sponsors and their families and friends. Naturally, they all use local services, make purchases here and visit various attractions of the city.
Of course, such an event would not be possible without our Azerbaijani partners, and for this reason, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to "Aztehnika", due to which we have rapidly built a high-class racing track. It was a great experience for us and we are sure that we will come back to Baku in the coming years.
