Too hilly there. It's like a ski slope. Plus it runs across Hunter St mall. Would be quite a few residents up in arms about the noise and blocked access right there.
That's not how I remember it at all. It's flat all along the waterfront. I reckon that you could go all the way down Wharf Road to Wolfe Street and turn left onto Scott Street. Then follow Scott Street all the way back to Watt Street. You're going up one side of the railroad and coming back down the other. It might be hilly if you went up Wolfe Street, but I am not suggesting that. Looking at it in Google Maps satellite view, it looks like it would be manageable.
Okay, you'd have to go past The Crown Hotel and turn left across the old tracks at Hunter St. I thought of that when it was first proposed. I figure it would have been on the cards as well. Not much spectating can be done from there. So, probably took away from the experience. Would be a fast bit of track on both sides though.
Google Maps seems to suggest that it could be done between the Queens Wharf Hotel and Scratchley's on the Wharf and rejoin opposite the RSL club.
In which case, I would run it in reverse so that it concludes the lap rather than starts it. Also, the purpose-built section around the headland looks like it would be better in reverse because it would be faster; it's a multi-apex sweeper where each individual apex is of a different radius.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean here. Did Winterbottom and the council say the same thing or different things?
Nothing special, just that bit you mentioned.
If you pitch it right, people can get excited for it. How many major national sporting events have a finale outside one of the state capitals? Even when Newcastle make it to the NRL Grand Final, they have to travel to Sydney for a "home" game. The Newcastle race has the potential to be accessible to a new fanbase in the same way as Townsville.
I do think that it needs to be a bit longer. It's the shortest street circuit on the calendar (Townsville and the Gold Coast come in at 2.9km, while Adelaide is 3.1km), and the third-shortest overall (Symmons Plains and Barbagallo are ~2.4km each). It's such a short, tight lap that it runs the risk of being another Canberra - and Canberra fell just short of four kilometres.
The potential problems arise when you consider that the compact layout is likely to be very cramped. Large sections of the circuit are only two or three lanes wide in places, even with modifications to pavements and parking bays to make it as wide as possible; compare that to Adelaide and Homebush Bay where most of the circuit is four lanes wide. The short design also means that the straights won't be particularly long, which makes passing even harder. There's a real possibility of processional races because a defending driver will only have to plant the car in the middle of the road and nobody will be able to get past.
