F1 helped Hungary tear hole in Iron Curtain

By Marton Dunai BUDAPEST (Reuters) - The rain was coming down at the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix and, to pass the time, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone was telling his friend Tamas Rohonyi about the problems of trying to organise a race in the Soviet Union. "He said Moscow was depressing and the bureaucracy made it near impossible anyway," Rohonyi recalled in a telephone interview with Reuters this week. "I told him, why not try Budapest?" The rest is history. Hungary, at the time firmly behind the "Iron Curtain" and in the embrace of the old Soviet Union, this weekend celebrates its 30th successive grand prix with every hope of continuing for years to come. Russia, the original target, finally made its F1 debut last year with a grand prix in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. "With his typical decisiveness, Bernie said: 'Well, let's not talk about it," said Rohonyi, an old friend of the Briton as Brazilian Grand Prix promoter. "Why don't you go to Hungary and ask them?" Rohonyi flew to Budapest, the home town he had left behind as a youth after the 1956 anti-Soviet revolution. He still had contacts with some high school classmates, some of whom had made it into the top ranks of the Communist ruling elite. "Then, as now, you only had to know a few of the right people to have ties to everyone," he said. "I had some meetings, and the people I met told me there was no way this would work. There had not been a top-tier car race in Hungary since before World War Two, they said. There was no track. But they promised to press the issue." OPEN COUNTRY Hungary, long considered freer than its Communist neighbours, was opening up to the West and soon enough the authorities realised what such a globally televised event could do for the country. "I did not need a lot of convincing that hosting Formula One fit our goals to the tee as we strove to show Hungary was an open country, able to adapt to the demands of life in the West," then-Deputy Prime Minister Jozsef Marjai recalled in a 2001 book. "It was one part of the puzzle that also included our International Monetary Fund membership, which was despised in Moscow... but also things like allowing casinos or McDonald's restaurants in the country." That autumn Ecclestone flew to Budapest with apparatchiks at the Sports Bureau bending over backwards to arrange a landing permit for his American-registered Lear Jet. When he saw the view from Buda Castle, the Briton declared the city to be "the best kept secret in the world". "He had wanted a Red Race on an urban track, and Hungarians promised to deliver both," said Sandor David, a sports editor at Hungarian Television (MTV) who had pioneered TV broadcasts of Formula One in Hungary in the 1970s. David helped convince Ecclestone that MTV could upgrade their technology in time for the race. It would take a $5 million investment, a huge sum at the time. "Ecclestone was asked at one of the meetings, are your plans serious? He said, 'Sir, I flew here on my own time, own my own dime, what makes you think I'm joking?" said David. TECHNICAL TRACK The urban race was not to be, however. The Budapest city council torpedoed two separate plans, leading to a two-year delay, so the government purchased land 15 km (9.3 miles) east of the capital instead and built the Hungaroring. Once the bureaucratic and the political hurdles were out of the way the rest happened very quickly. A technical track with eight right and seven left turns was built in less than eight months, and on the weekend of August 10, 1986, about 200,000 spectators showed up. Hungary had not seen that many Westerners in decades. "We ripped the Iron Curtain first," said Janos Nadasdi, chief of the Motor Sports Association at the time. "We arranged for the teams to be able to skip the visa processes and opened a designated gate for them at the Austrian border station where they could enter the country with a mere sticker. They were very happy with that." (Editing by Alan Baldwin)