Formula One cars will be racing on the streets of Dublin next year in an event which is expected to bring more than a quarter of a million people into the city.
City racing featuring the F1 cars already takes place in Moscow and Rotterdam and yesterday, Barvaria Beer, the event organisers and main sponsors, announced they were adding Dublin to the roster.
The day-long demo will take place on June 3rd next year and the organisers expressed confidence that it would prove to be a significant boost to the local economy and would showcase some of the city's key landmarks to a global audience.
The demonstration race track will start at the Central Bank before passing Trinity College and going down Burgh Quay and crossing the Samuel Beckett bridge. The track ends on Custom House Quay.
City racing, featuring the high powered Formula 1 cars, first took place in 2006 and today close to half a million people turned out in Rotterdam for the event.
'It has been 16 years since Ireland witnessed the excitement of a current F1 car but Bavaria City Racing is about to change that,' said the managing director of the event Gavin Collins.
He praised Dublin City Council and the gardai for the manner in which they embraced the concept and said the track had been specially designed to showcase some of the city's oldest and most modern sites, including Trinity, the Bank of Ireland on College Green, the Custom House and the Convention Centre.
While tickets will be on sale for some sections of the course from tomorrow, 96 per cent of it will be free to spectators, Mr Collins said. Cars from all the main F1 teams will take part and while there will be no competitive edge to the racing he said it would give an Irish audience a real feel for the high octane experience.
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