[Elsabor67]

For some that really don't follow all the issues of what's been going on at the Nurburgring, it would be hard to understand. Long story short, previous owners defaulted (Richter/Linder) through shady dealings with the Rheinland Pfalz regional government. Bidding comes up, and the 2 higher bids (HGI and ADAC) are undercut by the 2nd largest auto parts consortium in Germany, Capricorn to the tune of $77M, although HGI and ADAC respectively bid over 100M each.

Out of the blue, the major german bank that was supposed to provide the cash to Capricorn, changes course and says NO to the credit that Capricorn and their chairman, Robertino Wild was supposed to use. Out of an obscure corner, comes Viktor Charitonin, who owns a major Pharma consortium in Russia and ponies up the cash for this and becomes 2/3rd owner and creates with Wild a board of Directors where now Wild is the CEO but Charitonin owns the majority shares. Capricorn maintains "control" of the operations of the track.

Most don't like how this smells because they remember what happened previously with the last owners when they tried to muscle out the local economy that has been a part of the ring for decades and failed. Also most expected HGI, who operate several tracks in the US would have won the bid. Sadly, others with more voice were vocal that they did not want the track to be controlled or operated by people that were not German. Now, A russian controls 2/3rds of the track and the other 1/3rd id held by the German company who maintains the day to day operations. Hopefully this does not become another smokescreen and bust.