A financial bail-out is needed 'very soon' if the Canadian Grand Prix is to return to the Formula 1 calendar in 20💝09, it has been urged - as supporters rally round to save the race's immediate future.

The popular race - held every year bar one since 1978 around Montreal's evocati🌊ve Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on the ?le Notre Dame - was controversially axed from next season's calendar last month, as a result of outstanding debts owed by outgoing race promoter Grand Prix du Canada to F1 commercial rights-holder Bernie Ecclestone.

Since then, frantic work has been going on behind-the-scenes in Qu?becois and Canadian political circles in a bid to raise enough money to get the event re-instated. Most recently the Montreal hotel association has pledged to add a one per cent 'g🌱rand prix' tax to the standard rate of all rooms in the city - taking the rate from three per cent to four per cent - and will donate all the extra money raised to the organisation of the race.

According to French-language Canadian newspaper La Presse, this could generate as much as $5 million a year, in addition to which bಞoth the Qu?bec and Canadian federal governments are vowing to invest $2.5 million apiece.

That will bring the total to $10 million, with Ecclestone demanding three times that amount in order to give Montreal back its slot ✤on the schedule. It has also been suggested that the city's mayor Gerald Tremblay could be prepared to cut the annual cost of leasing the track to just $350,000.

With a rescue plan due to be presented to the Formula One Management chief executive on Thursday (20 November), Tremblay - a key figure in all negotiations 🐠about the race's future - stressed that speed is of the absol𝄹ute essence.

"I think we need an answer very soon," he told Montreal's Gazette newspaper. "He (🙈Ecclestone) is not interested in where the money's going toജ come from, he just wants to get the money to which he thinks he's entitled."