Ducati Sporting Club UK > General > Idle Chat > The Future of Silverstone?

[antonye]

So now that the British GP has been axed (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/moto...ne/3703350.stm ) what will the future hold for Silverstone for us punters?

Will it still host the Superbikes next year, or will that go too? Will they be able to keep the track in a state of decent repair if the cash stops coming in? Will the price of trackdays there go up to compensate for the lost earnings of the GP?

What do you think?

[Rattler]

How much money would they make on the GP? They were being asked for around £9M to host the GP!!!

Maybe they'll now make more money by not hosting it!!!

[Steve M]

If Silverstone was to lose the big go-cart race (which I don't think it will), then they are likely to put more effort into their other big events - like WSB.
When you think Bernie wants 8.9 Million to allow them to run the race, I don't think they can be making much (or probably a loss).

F1 really has lost touch with reality (and it's boring).

[antonye]

Very true Tim, but can you really see them losing money at a GP weekend? If they do lose money then somebody somewhere isn't doing their job right!

Look at all those punters from previous years paying £75 a ticket just to get through the gates! Then you've got Grandstand charges, all the hospitality suites, the money they make from the stalls selling overpriced burgers and coke, merchandising, etc. Do they get paid for the TV rights as well? Then there's all the knock-on effects of it being the GP circuit.

The paper quoted that the area stood to lose £30m in lost revenue if the GP doesn't go ahead! While this obviously doesn't all go to Silverstone, it shows the amount people are spending in that one weekend.

OR do they purely host the GP there at a loss, to make more money on other events?

[Jools]

Let's face it, Formula One is not a proper sport - it's just a money game. The winning team is invariably the one with the most financial backing to attract the top designers, the best team managers, the best aerodynamicists, the best logistics operation, the best IT package...and that's before the best driver ever gets near the car.

OK, the old adage "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go" applies in any form of motor sport even at club level, but nowhere is it more apparent than the disparity between Formula One budgets. I don't follow the sport closely because for all the razzmatazz and big bucks it's still deadly boring, so I might be ill-informed but I heard somewhere that Ferrari's yearly budget was some 300 Million, I don't know if that's Stirling, Euros or Dollars but that's immaterial because it's still ten times the budget of someone like Minardi.

So the whole thing is not about sport, it's about big business. The global corporate sponsors want to see some payback for their big bucks and countries want the kudos of having the big glamour circus in their back yard with a GP in their countries name. In the middle of all this Bernie Ecclestone plays his power games and plays off countries angainst sponsors. How much did China pay to get the Shanghai GP? Shedloads, no doubt, and that's after having to build the circuit. Cigarette companies and technology companies are falling over themselves to get exposure in China and Mr Ecclestone is astute enough to charge the Chinese for the privlege of having these corporate sponsors tout their name in front of the worlds largest potential market and charge the sponsors for the privelege of getting their name around in China.

Neat trick if you can do it, good business...but a sport?

The US and Western Europe are dead markets as far as F1 is concerned. After all, who's going to pay for a car when you can't even put your logo on it in the UK (and many other EU countries), or when you get litigation from US cancer victims claiming "but I thought Scumacher smoked Marlboro..."

Ecclestone needs to keep the whole circus funded otherwise the whole thing collapses like the hollow sham it really is. Gotta get big bucks otherwise we've got no cars, drivers, glossy jet set image or Hello magazine lifestyles..

Sport?

[JPM]

I doubt S/stone loses money with F1, I would imagine it probably brings more people in through other events because of the F1, everytime I go, I sit there and think Schumachers been here, Senna, etc all of the greats in F1.

I can imagine all of the car boys would love to do a t/day there to say they have been round the circuit that Schumacher did such a thing at etc.

I doubt the facilities will drop, to be fair they're probably the best in the UK, I've certainly got no complaints from that angle.

But I do fear T/days will go up in cost, same for anything there I guess, they need to recoup some of that lost money I would imagine, so it's going to come from somewhere.

I very much doubt WSB will not run there, why should that stop? I don't think S/Stone offers much from a viewing point of perspective, you tend to be so far away from the track, which is my only real gripe with the place.

[ali]

A GP in London would be awesome.... for the 5,000 people that had corporate packages, flats overlooking the circuit, etc.

For the rest of the population of London it would be a f***ing disaster. Not just four days of transport chaos, but years of road-works for modifying various parts of central London, tube line 'upgrades', etc, etc.

For the drivers it would be both boring (a procession) and dangerous (teams pushing drivers to please sponsors).

Is it really worth p*ssing X million people off for two years just to give a few captains-of-industry anecdotes about drinking champers off a russian hooker while watching Schumacher roll to his 999th win?

All in all the London GP is one of the most ill-conceived, ill-advised ideas to come from politicans in a long time. Which means it'll almost definitely happen.

Get rid of F1 and get some real racing back on prime time tv.

Cheers,

Ali

[neilkeogh]

This has been on the cards for a few years now.

I always thought that GP as far as Formula 1 was concerned stood for Grand Procession!

I hate the sport? people paying vastly over the odds to watch very fast cars following each other around a track, how exciting is that?

I personally think that even the people that pay very good money to watch it are getting bored and restless.

Who knows maybe more airtime for bikes, but I doubt that very much, our sport followed by thousands at the track who knows how many at home, and it gets zip coverage in the newspapers, but then again i much rather read about tennis or golf not!

[Ian]

Damon Hill has been quoted as saying that in his opinion this is about moving the UK F1 to London streets, - Birmingham City ran a GP or the like a few years ago.

Silverstone has become too much about corporate hospitality as has F1 in general so perhaps Bernie is trying to get a bit more of a buzz back into the sport, - certainly Monaco has it.

On first hearing the news i thought it was a disgrace but actually I now think it is erhaps a ste in the right direction. A pity Dorna don't take a harder line with Donington, - WSBK is trying to with Brands Hatch, - we as race fans get riped off by these circuits on big events, - perhaps we hold up the club racing scene, but i am not convinced, - the maths on an event like Brands WSBK don't add up, - that event takes an enormous profit.

[Edited on 1-10-2004 by Ian]

[Ozz]

Having been there last weekend watching the MRO it was interesting to hear evry single racer that I spoke to say how awful the track was. Apparently it is really bumpy and this was compounded on the saturday when it rains and became very slippery as well. In one race I was told that only 19 of the 41 starters finished.

And as for the chicane at the end....