The city council has drawn up a plan that foresees, if the proposal is accepted, a public tender for private investors to invest €150 million with the ambition of bringing Formula 1 back to the racetrack, which entered the public sphere in 1997.

The amount on the table was determined based on “the assessments that Parpública made of the asset,” although these point to a “slightly higher” amount, admits the mayor, for whom “Parpública currently has everything to be able to decide to hand over the surface rights and management to the municipality of Cascais.” Speaking to Jornal de Negócios, Nuno Piteira Lopes also acknowledges that it is “absolutely necessary” to make interventions “in all the infrastructure” – from the paddock to the bathrooms.

This is not the first time that the Cascais City Council, which until the last municipal elections was presided over by the also Social Democrat Carlos Carreiras, has tried to buy the Estoril Racetrack from the State. In 2015, the municipality in the Lisbon region went ahead with the purchase of the equipment, for a sum of around five million euros, but the deal was rejected by the Court of Auditors.