Track fee to drop

The head of the governing body of motorsports in Barbados has finally admitted that the $75 000 per day fee which was being charged for the use of the new multimillion-dollar race facility at Bushy Park, St Philip, was unreasonable.
Andrew Mallelieu, president of the Barbados Motoring Federation (BMF), told a room full of racing club members, who gathered for a meeting at the Wildey Gymnasium on Monday night to discuss the troubling fee situation, that local and regional clubs would not be able to pay the extremely high fee which he had conceptualised.
“I don’t think now with the hindsight that we have, that the $75 000 is going to be paid by anybody other than an overseas promoter coming in to do a Top Gear or something like that,” he told the gathering.
“I think that the fee that is going to be paid by local clubs is going to be much less than that and I think that we are in the process to get to what that number is,”?said an apologetic Mallalieu, while warning members that what obtained in the past could not occur at the ultra-modern facility.
The emergency meeting was held by the Barbados Auto Racing League (BARL), the oldest circuit racing club in Barbados, which has been at loggerheads with the Bushy Park Circuit Inc. (BPCI), developers of the racing track, over the fee and the overall regulations pertaining to the use of the facility.
Asked by BARL’s board members to explain how he arrived at the fee and if it was approved by Government as stipulated in Bushy Park’s lease agreement, Mallelieu also confessed that he had no discussion with Government.
He explained that he utilised his expertise as a valuer to come up with the fee.