Cue...the London GP

[Logrence]

So...Bernie has managed to get Silverstone out of the way easily enough...how long before we get an announcement on a Grand Prix in London for 2006, do you think?

Criticise Ecclestone all you like, but I don't think anything he does is ever as obvious as you might think it is.

Discuss.

[Logrence]

P.s. I think this is the reason Ecclestone wanted to put Silverstone on a one year and then a 6 year option contract - he'd've been quite happy to have a GP at Silverstone next year (if the dosh was right) and then to ditch it for a race in the capital.

[Mr V]

Can't see a GP of London ever taking place, it would be a logistical nightmare.

[pole2pole]

How do you close off London for a weekend and who is going to pay for it and more important what about the track safety.

[Andrew Gunnell]

The olny place in the UK were roads can be closed, so a race can be held is Birmingham. So unless London can get a by-law passed then they can't have a race.

[BootsOntheSide]

A London GP is a pretty over-ambitious idea, for the reasons P2P gives. The evening demo event was one thing - it brought the sights and sounds of F1 cars to a wider audience - but designing a credible racetrack within the confines of the city would be a logisitical nightmare. F1 needs to avoid street circuits as far as possible - other than Monaco (which has so much heritage) they've never been as successful or exciting as road course races in the same country.

[fosheti]

on paper it would seem a logistical nightmare, but so would a royal event, there where estimates of nearly a million people for the queens golden jubilee,that was all planned for, and i guess a lot of the circuit construction would take place at weekends and at nights, i think it could be done with the right plans

[nkh]

You can close the streets off for royal funerals, weddings and so on, you can close off Paris for the Tour de France, you can close off Copenhagen to host a classic car race...

With qualifying on sunday morning it should be posible to do all the free practice on saturday. It would bring a lot of people to London, they'd probably buy stuff in the stores and sleep in the hotels. It would be free advertising for London all over the world (I doubt many viewers say "hey, that Silverstone place looks nice, let's go on holliday there next year").

If the people in London can see it as a good deal, then there shouldn't be a lot of problems left.

[kdr]

i often wonder whether the people who float the idea of a london grand prix have ever actually been here. too many nights in their bedrooms playing gran turismo on their playstations.

[garcon]

Why try to attract more people to London? It always seems pretty full when I'm there...

Nothing surprises me anymore, and if a London GP does happen I'll still be saying it's a stupid idea.

[Knowlesy]

Nah, i say keep it at Silverstone.

Oh no, wait how silly of me, of course..........

[Tweed]

Bring it up to Oulton Park, if Jonathan Palmer lets them....

[garcon]

And have the circus on my doorstep? No thanks...

[alesi95]

The London GP is a horrible Brain wrong.

[ralf fan]

Stupid idea... considering that you have a track upto f1 standards in SIlverstone...but these billionaires never go for the simple option!!

[EvilPumpkin]

Would there be a little man standing at the start/finish trying to get the drivers to pay a congestion charge?

[JLD]

I can't honestly see this happening. There is no way that the centre could be shut down for the required time.

[garcon]

I've just had a peculiar vision of bloody great yellow Gatso cameras on the pit lane...

[Mr V]

Originally posted by fosheti
on paper it would seem a logistical nightmare,

The biggest problem would be the fact that there are "trafic light islands" in the middle of the roads. This in effect would make the track 2 laned and extremely dangerous should a driver hit it.

[nkh]

It doesn't have to be in the center of london in small oneway streets, it could be like the DTM race in Berlin (Avus-Rennen) where they went out on some autostrada type roads.

I like the idea that the track isn't some overthought 'clever' design, it's more exciting to see that the track follows the suroundings. Spa is nice, if Monaco had been wider it would have been perfect, I remember Adelaide as something special too (but maybe that's just because I had to get up in the night to watch it, and the Hill / Schumacher fight and Mansel wining in 1994).

[pirenzo]

Well how about the bumpiness of London roads. They seem smooth enough to us, but it was evident from the demo this year that the cars were jumping about all over the place on them, and that was with ride heights right up.
Now, any Londoner knows, even small scale roadworks take somewhere between 2-4 months to complete. Imagine digging up, levelling and resurfacing all the neccessary roads in London! We might have a track eventually, but not before 2025...

[N I Tram]

It's a crazy idea, with tonnes of problems. Silverstone is perfect for the race as it is.

[Logrence]

I don't know if anyone has seen the proposal, but the plans are for it to go down Park Lane and round Hyde Park...if they can stage concerts for half a million people there, they can squeeze in an F1 race, believe me.

Think of it in terms of Olympic bids, commercial value.

What's more interesting, more exciting, more glamourous? London, or Silverstone?

[ensign14]

It's a back-up for Bernie if GPWC goes ahead. Either he gets Silverstone signed up for 2006-7, thus stopping GPWC from getting it for its putative first season, or he loses Silverstone but trumps it with London.

[Mike_Wooshy]

but if he DID sign london ... then surely GPWC would sign silverstone ?????