UK best crowd for World Series/donington or silverstone for 2008?

[chunterer]

Re the last post I have to agree with bella - Donington hardly compares with most of the more recenrly constructed venues for space or facilities. However i'd rather Donny keep the event as it's kinda become synonymous with the Renault event hasn't it?

Originally Posted by Lightning Bug

What about Rockingham? Fantastic viewing, circuit layout promotes good racing, and there's loads of space to handle a big circus and a big crowd. It can be a bit flat atmosphere-wise, but not when there's a big crowd.

Yes I thought of the Rock I think the big road circuit layout would be good for it - but the perimeter capabilities for coping with big crowds and loads of cars are probably no better or worse than Donington?

However if you're talking 2 days and coping with 100k plus people how about Birmingham city centre. WSR would be a good meeting to put forward for the annual 'Superprix set for return' stories! Superprix always used to run over 2 days for F3000 and supports - a lot of the problems created that led to it's demise were because organisers were convincced they needed to get a bill through to increase it to 3 days and all that. I hadn't really thought that WSR only runs over 2 days so there's wouldn't be huge issues about managing the series around the city centre streets would there?

[bella]

there may be toys cast about the lack of testing, but i'm sure the people wouldn't mind a macau-esque 7am start. probably couldn't say the same for the marshals though

[sceptic]

Silverstone only gets 90,000 for the Grand Prix (on race day) - but that's because that is the circuit's capacity. H&S won't allow more people in.

However with Silverstone you can be sure that those 90,000 people can get into the circuit before the race. At Donington this year they were still queuing to get in after the WS race ended.

Rockingham can only hold 68,000.

I suspect that this is also partly related to Donington taking Superleague...

[kipper]

Originally Posted by sceptic

I suspect that this is also partly related to Donington taking Superleague...

I'm not so sure if Donington losing the Renault World Series date has had an impact on them taking the Superleague Formula. I would have thought that most circuits would be keen to maximise their profits and would therefore prefer to have as many of the bigger events as possible so it is possible that Donington would have prefered to have kept the Renault meeting and gained the Superleague Formula.

[adstubbs]

I think a number of factors are behind the switch to Silverstone, one of them being Donington's ability (or possibly lack of) to manage a crowd of the size attracted by the WS. As already mentioned, crowd security was not good at this year's meeting - put simply, I don't think they had anywhere near enough crowd marshals to cope with the number of spectators, especially when you have to assume that a large proportion of the crowd have proably never been to a motor race before. It's all very well the tickets saying motorsport is dangerous, but if someone gets injured because they're standing where they shouldn't be (despite having been asked/told to move by marshals), Renault are going to cop it! The state of the circuit by Sunday morning won't have helped either - bins had not been emptied on Saturday night, so were already full on Sunday morning. That said, I do much prefer Donington as a circuit - I don't think the racing on the full GP loop at Silverstone will be as good, and the atmosphere will certainly be different

[westfieldbend]

Neither -
Brands Hatch
Or lydden

[Marcel ten Caat]

Originally Posted by WSR Fan

That's very interesting, thanks!

The other day I read something suggesting that the WS season will start on 10/11 May in Zolder, Belgium. Coincidentally though, the Spa 1000km LMS race, which the WS supported this year, is on the very next weekend, 17/18 May. I don't know why the WS would consider going back to Zolder, given that Renault are keen for them to race solely on current F1 circuits (thus the move from Donington to Silverstone).

Let's make it even stranger. The LMS Spa date was pushed back to the May 10/11 weekend, putting it on the same date as the World Series.

However the new World Series date for Belgium is May 3/4...at Spa!