If Silverstone goes - The damage to the local F1 ecomony, jobs and UK!

[Hugh Jarce]

Eddie Jordan did a good piece on BBC today regarding the 50 mile radius hotspot for F1 technology and related business around Silverstone and that if the track falls into decline how this could be drastically effected.

He said that they would be willing to move where the F1 technology, money and facilities were even if that were overseas!

I guess its not beyond the realms of possible that for teams like Renault that even places like Enstone could be relocated to Viry in France if there were less reasons to keep the UK centre open (British GP, local testing etc).

It just shows how much more is at stake than petty arguments and politics.

Do you reckon the British government should step in with a major injection of cash to sort this out?

It's not just about F1 as important as it is, it's about potentially losing another great and historical British industry.

[Peter Mallett]

Well reports in another thread suggest that the government has pledged 16m of our English pounds to the motorsp[ort industry. Where this will go is anybody's guess.

[Hugh Jarce]

Mmmmm!

It will be intersting who actually has the clout to decide where it should go.

It would be hard to see British F1 thriving with no decent track to host testing and races. And, what with £16M buy - replacement seats for the sun-bleached ones that now exist?

£16M is such small fry in comparison to the loss of reveune, unemployment, closure of related businesses.

I guess what is needed is a British WD Champ again to set the thing alight! But even as an optimist that's hard to see happening.

I seriously wonder how much a total revamp of Silverstone would cost to get it up to Sepang standard?

[Peter Mallett]

Well I agree 16 mil is small beer. But that's all I know of.

I'm still struggling with the "up to the standard of" thing. Silverstone, like the rest of Britain isn't Malaysia, America or Italy etc.

We don't have the space for wide roads and vast expanses of tarmac. We never will have the space so how could you build Sepang and its environs in Northamptonshire?

As to a British WDC? How long would it take until the knives came out to debunk our hero and then rub British Motorsport's collective nose in the dirt?

Take a look around this site. There's loads of handles made up from South American, Italian, Australian or German driver's names. Not many Nigels or Grahams etc. are there?

It suggests to me that whilst there are loads of F1 fans in the UK, most of them turn out to denigrate the British drivers as being talentless and just plain lucky!

With that kind of attitude its no wonder the sport suffers in the UK.

Oh and by the way. You will never, ever get a roast pork bun in Sepang!

[Hugh Jarce]

Nice one!

I agree with you that Northamptonshire isn't the kind of 'green field' site where you can build the ultimate circuit and facilities, however, Silverstone does feel rundown.

It is a big ask to get people to pay big amounts of dosh to sit on a scaffold structure on a terrible seat with no 'lid'.

But, a serious investment of cash could provide the kind of 'face lift' needed. It seems that elsewhere Governments are 'insightful' enough to put money into such sporting facilities becuase they know the 'spin offs' for incoming revenue and business are worth it.

The UK always seems to struggle on this one. I can never fathom why!

Oh and on the issue of 'doing in' our next hero, I'm not sure that they would necessarily get that treatment. I think Hill, Hunt, Stewart and co have faily healthy reputations.

Either way, what an utter tradegy if there was not a UK GP and the 'show' went elsewhere. It's almost too hard to contemplate.

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by Hugh Jarce
Either way, what an utter tradegy if there was not a UK GP and the 'show' went elsewhere. It's almost too hard to contemplate.

No argument with that. It overlaps with my thoughts in the Silverstone too expensive thread.

[DSM]

The real sadness is that F1 itself is swimming in money. It's just not in the right place.

[Peter Mallett]

Well. we speak about teams struggling. But if its a sport then we have work on the survuival of the fittest. If is a business then we should be looking at the funding. Can the two issues be separated?

[high contrast]

During times of peace, hi-tech engineers leave aero space and military establishments and gravitate to subsidury industries like Formula One teams and their suppliers. Governments arn't silly they need to keep these valuable people gainfully employed nearby in case they need to call on them!

[eein]

Agruing on the basis of lots jobs and an industry lost in the country don't really wash. The amount of money compared to the number of jobs is high compared to many other things in the uk that have not been helped when jobs were at risk. Look at steel, mining, oil and more recently telecomms - all asked for help, none got it, and hundereds of thousands of jobs were lost.

But I do agree that it would be good for money to be put in, just that the jobs angle is not one that the government will care about. It needs to be related to public opinion and thus votes.

Who would leave anyway? Maybe Renault. Maybe Jordan. I don't see Ron leaving his new Paragon. And even if some teams go, it is the engineering compnaies that supply who would suffer - the likes of pi and others. Silverstone should take measures to make themselves a world class place to test (like Paul Richard has). That way, if they were to loose the GP, teams would probably stay.

[RWC]

Like all other threads to do with the disrepair of the british f1 industry,tracks or pride this is all getting tiresome.

[Peter Mallett]

If it was Melbourne or anywhere in Australia wouldn't you be interested?

Please show a little respect for those who care.

Personally I believe Silverstone is of major importance to the history of the sport. Whilst it shouldn't stand on that alone the amount of knocking it gets is disproportionate to the amount of entertainment it provides (and I don't just mean the GP).
Apologies if the typing is bad, I've just cut the top off one of my fingers! Cooking is more dangerous than motorsport.

[RWC]

Thats just my point.f1 as it stands now is not worth fighting over!!!
You have awsome racing in britain and it's nothing to do with f1-you'll do very well indeed without it.Just wait until f1 once again has respect THEN fight for all your worth to get a piece of it!
That's the good version.the uptight&sick of it all version is-get over it,we're all sick of the poms whinging that they should own f1
Oh,as for the OZ gp-i'm happy to see it here(mostly for the TV coverage-we get to see alot of close up tech stuff) but would rather see it on a REAL track somewhere,anywhere.

[Peter Mallett]

Point taken. But the "whingeing poms" bit is somewhat dated.

As I said if we consider it a sport then we have to fight for these things. If its a business then we just look at the money.

Respect for F1 is not changed. Its the ethos that's changed within it. Get people to understand the significance of history and you might get less of this backstabbing that happens every year.

[Don K]

Peter, are you saying we should bring F1 back to a championship that's driven purely in Europe and the Americas?

Or do you think we should pay respect to history in some cases, and ignore it in other cases?

It would be strange to have a championship without a race in Britain.
It would be strange to have a championship without a race in Italy.
It would be strange to have a championship without a race in Germany.
It would be strange to have a championship without a race in France.
But it is impossible to truly globalize the sport while clinging to 4 or more races in Western Europe.

If F1 were to become a global sport, I guess we should have at least:
- 2 races in southern america
- 2 races in northern america
- 1 race in southern africa
- 1 race in northern africa
- 2 races in south east asia
- 2 races in eastern asia
- 1 race on the indian subcontinent
- 1 race in or around the arabic peninsula
- 1 race in eastern europe
- 1 race in central europe
- 1 race in scandinavia
- 1 race in australia

This would bring the minimal amount of races to 20, while making it impossible to ever have a race in Spain or Belgium or central asia.

So if we want to globalize F1 while sticking to a maximum of 17 or 18 races, some of the traditional F1 coutries will have to give up their GP.

[Peter Mallett]

Don,

Thinking about this further I tend to agree that just because of history, it shouldn't drive a decision. But then I ask why do we need to globalise it?

With technology as it is we can see the races in any location in the world?

If it is for the fans in each country to attend then that puts a different slant on it.

We already have two races in North America. Why do we need China? For tobacco money. Once that disappears we won't need China at all.

Two races in South Amarica would be good. Argentina and Brazil.

The point is that poor old Silverstone gets attacked every year and the "Britain doesn't have an automatic right" argument gets thrown out to the assembled press. Why? Because Bernie has the hump about something so small it shouldn't bother a multi millionaire.

As a balnce to the argument. In Australia they have the "Great Race" every year at Bathurst. I'm sure they have other events there but everybody identifies it with the big one. Remember the outcry when it went ST?

I think we are talking along similar lines here.

[RWC]

I'd like to say silverstone IS a cr*ppy track and britain has no special rights to a GP but that would be agreeing with bernie...
See the dillema i'm in?

[Peter Mallett]

Yeah.

And you're Australian to boot.

Still we all have our crosses to bear.

[Mr V]

Originally posted by RWC
I'd like to say silverstone IS a cr*ppy track and britain has no special rights to a GP but that would be agreeing with bernie...
See the dillema i'm in?

Have you been to Silverstone? Do you know how good or bad the circuit and it's facilities actually are? And if Silverstone is such a cr@ppy track, how come it's produced the best 2 races of the last 2 seasons? (with 5 races left to go in 2003)

[Peter Mallett]

Originally posted by RWC
I'd like to say silverstone IS a cr*ppy track ...........

Still saying this RWC?

Woodcote looks really easy until you go through it flat out. Even F1 cars get understeer through it.

The width allows for overtaking and whilst it was possibly a fluke of circumstances, I believe it showed on Sunday how good it can be.

[bacon sandwich]

What also people forget is that yes we have Italian, German, French, Brazilian et al nationalities driving in F1. But how many of them have come through the British formulas to get to the pinnacle of F1.
And how does Silverstone survive for the rest of the year putting on all these meeting to try and bring the drivers through the ranks ? - with the money from the GP. Because of the GP Silverstone can afford to run other meetings throughout the year at a loss. With no British GP - I think it will have a knock on effect on all the lower formulas - as the likes of Senna, Mansell, Sato, etc won't bother learning their craft in a country that doesn't even hold a GP.
And Hugh you are right - the British teams won't think twice about going to another country if the money and circumstances are right.
I am quite surprised that the Renault team haven't gone to France actually.
Also I would love to know - who are we being compared to ?
I agree with you Peter - we can never be a Malaysia - Malaysia is 4 years old - Silverstone is 54 (or whatever!)
Yes the pits could be re-done, more toilets and better camping facilities - but I can't believe we compare that badly with say Hungary (used once a year) or Monza or Brazil.
All this really started in 2000 because ECCLESTONE changed the date to April and surprise it went wrong - cos it rained. His fault for changing the date - and we've never been able to prove it since!
Emmmmmmm now I know Antonio Pizzonia feels!

[Jukebox]

Silverstone is a great track with many overtaking opportunities, make it stay!

Traffic problems had been overcome, the on track intrusion by the idiot could happen to any track in the calender.

[bart_jacobs]

If you look at the economics, and jobs for a country that hosts a GP, the britisch GP is in no way more special than another country... Look at Spa, Imola, Austria... And it's not like the Silverstone track is that great... I could easily name 10 other track, that are far better.

[garcon]

No bart, that ignores the fact that many F1 teams are based within 50km of Silverstone, and many more component manufacturers and suppliers are also within that area. Of course, there are motorsport hotspots elsewhere in the world, but the one surrounding Silverstone is among the hottest.

I hadn't really thought about it, but I now see Hugh's point. If Silverstone is lost to F1, and especially if that means no British GP for a while, then over the medium term I can see an industry steadily moving out of the country and re-building elsewhere - possibly near Barcelona as that's used for so much testing, possibly northern Italy, possibly Malaysia! Who knows?

It is much more than the economics surrounding the event itself, which I agree are no different to just about any other track (except some of them actually seem to make money ).

[bart_jacobs]

Ok, i see your point, and must agree. I didn't read the whole treath. But Siverstone has had some problems, and I believe that this is just a warning, just as they did with Spa (tabacco advertising) and Spa coudn't come up with a solution, so they cancelled the event. Personally; I don't think that silverstone has much to fear...