Now that the NASCAR race in Montreal appears to be dead in the water, organizers of the Grand Prix in Trois Rivières are on their way to Fort Worth today to try to save it for their own city, with the backing of the Quebec government.

Junior Tourism minister Pascal Berubé told CJAD News they're ready to support the Trois Rivières Grand Prix in their efforts to snag the event. As for how much financial support, all Berubé can say is it won't be as much as it was for the Montreal event.

"We don't put the money exactly the same amount of money in Trois Rivières. For now it's a secret deal because there's a lot of matters of accountability with the government and we want to make sure the federal government is going to put money as well," Berubé said.

"But the promoter is pretty aware of the amount of money that we're ready to put in this competition. It's a lot of money for this kind of competition but we do think it's an investment for the Trois Rivières area and we do think we can bring new money to Quebec especially from the Americans."

Trois Rivières Grand Prix organizer Dominic Fugère says they're ready to plug the NASCAR race into their existing programming.

"We have the most diverse programming for an automobile Grand Prix for all of North America," Fugère said.

"The benefit for NASCAR is that they get to keep their international footprint, they get to still have on the counter an event with a premium purse."

A dispute over the timing of the event led to the cancellation of the Montreal race.

But Fugère said whatever NASCAR wants, NASCAR gets.

"If we can have the NASCAR nationwide series here, we'll move our date, don't worry about that."

In an email, a NASCAR spokesperson said they've visited several different venues as potential sites and still have some things to work out before releasing the 2013 schedules. Trois Rivières is in the running along with three other contenders including one in Ontario.

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