Valencia: Valencia has reached an agreement to host a Grand Prix from 2008 on a circuit around the Spanish city’s new America’s Cup port, Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone announced on Thursday. The race is to be called the European Grand Prix.

Ecclestone said that the seven-year agreement with the Valencia government was conditionalon the present president Francisco Camps of the centre-right Partido Popular winning local elections later this month. “The contract will not be signed until after the election, but I’m convinced it will happen,” Ecclestone told a news conference.

“This will be an urban circuit rather than a street circuit and even better than some of the ones that are already on the calendar.”

The race is scheduled for late in the season on a newly designed circuit of between 4.1 and 4.3 km in length reminiscent of Monaco’s with its harbour-side location.