I don’t know what’s worse: the noxious fumes, high-pitched motor whine or crowds of wannabe Eurotrash. The Grand Prix du Canada is not a high point of my Montreal summer.

But those aren’t feelings I readily share with the downtown business owners I know. They earn too much from the Grand Prix to brook any criticism of the race. The three-day event in June is by far the biggest of the summer for Montreal’s tourism industry — perhaps even the biggest in the entire country. It brings an estimated $100 million into the city and produces a priceless public relations bonanza when the race is beamed across the world to 300 million TV viewers.

That’s why the news that Montreal had been dropped from Formula One’s 2009 race schedule has produced such anguish, not just among ordinary fans, sports journalists and business owners but also among Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay, Premier Jean Charest and Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Harper, in the midst of a battle for Quebec votes, immediately dispatched a cabinet minister to call up F1 chieftain Bernie Ecclestone to find out what was going on.

Quebec’s politicians, meanwhile, acted like jilted lovers, dropped without warning. It was just last year that the three levels of government and the local organizer, Normand Legault, spent $5.5 million on the track’s pits and press centre to please F1 officials.

But it seems Montreal’s Grand Prix fell victim to forces much larger than rundown facilities or a notoriously bumpy race course. Rising F1 costs and deeper pockets elsewhere in the world, especially in the Middle East and Asia, are the more likely culprits.

A spokesman for Legault says the financial situation has become untenable, given the soaring costs of hosting the Grand Prix. Legault has decided to walk away from the race after being blindsided by the F1 decision in the midst of negotiations.

F1 is tight-lipped about its finances, but it’s reportedly guaranteed as much as $20 million from the Montreal event. That seems like a big number, but it pales in comparison to what other countries are willing to shell out. Montreal has been displaced by Abu Dhabi on the 2009 schedule, where the cars will be circling a new, $400-million track.

F1 organizers in Valencia, Spain, reportedly paid $50 million for the rights to hold this year’s European Grand Prix.

At the same time, F1 has been pleading poverty, and with only one stop left in North America, the cost of schlepping cars, teams and everything else to this continent may have played a role in the decision. Max Mosely, president of motor racing’s governing body, has given the circuit’s 10 teams until 2010 to slash costs because the current pace of spending is making F1 unsustainable.

Judging from the letters to the editor in Montreal newspapers, I’m not the only one who finds the Grand Prix an irritating and even dangerous circus. (Aggressive drivers are a perennial headache around Grand Prix time when would-be Jacques Villeneuves roar through the streets in their Fords.)

Still, if the cancellation of the Grand Prix turns out to be more than a bluff, there’s no doubt the loss will be a blow, not just to Montreal’s economy but also to its reputation and self-image as a world-class city. It would follow the departure of the major-league baseball team and other smaller but significant signs of decline, including the waning influence of the World Film Festival and the city’s seeming inability to get two key megaprojects off the ground — building new French and English super-hospitals.

In so many ways, this is not just another weekend sporting event. And that’s why the politicians will use taxpayer dollars to try to save it one more time. IE