Track Management (Francorchamps / Nurburgring)

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Vince_Fiero

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Lately I see more and more that people believe there are issues with track management.

Gerard Lopez would be interested to buy Francorchamps.

Save the ring. is a known movement since a while.


I never went into the details of managing a race track and can believe it is not simple. Huge investments and irregular, not easy to predict cash flows.

These tracks are currently owned by public money, this seems to be a guarantee for continuity at the moment.

Seeing that the discussion is about 2 tracks that are quite popular in racing enthousiasts mids, I'm surprised there is discussion on their management. At least these 2 should be clear.

How do you think they will survive the next decade?
 
I'd imagine that the Nurburgring and Spa have differing problems. The sheer size of the Nordschleife will make it financially difficult to maintain, where as i know Spa Francorchamps is increasingly suffering that modern issue that most circuits are affected by - neighbours that complain about the noise.

The Nurburgring owners raise cash by charging the public to lap the Nordschleife. There's only so many people who want to do that, and there's only so much you can charge them for the pleasure before it gets too expensive and they stop wanting to do it. A single lap is now €24, which is plenty. They don't hold many races per year there, so charging spectators is unlikely to bring enough in. They do charge manufacturers, with localised R&D bases, to use the circuit for testing, but the time they are given when the circuit is closed to the public, is obviously taking chunks of time out from where they can charge the public.

Spa can only raise money to keep running the circuit by holding races over weekends and trackdays on week days etc. If the local council is getting complaints from the local public about the noise emanating from the circuit, they'll have probably allowed the circuit a limited amount of days in a month/year where it can be used. This obviously limits any income the circuit can gather.

Motorsport Vision, who run a fair chunk of UK circuits have had to diversify by hiring out the circuits and their grounds for other, quieter activities like conferencing, corporate days and even weddings. They also have off-road 4x4 tracks and young-driver days, which will be quieter than race and track-days so won't run foul of local council noise regulations.
 
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The thing that annoys me with the Nimbys (Not in my back yard), is that the track was most probably there before they were, yet they still moan.

Who knows, in a few years time, when electric cars are the norm, there will be complete silence at the race tracks, apart from the noise from the tyres!
 
Who knows, in a few years time, when electric cars are the norm, there will be complete silence at the race tracks, apart from the noise from the tyres!

I expect it to stay closer to this, type of car winning the 24h Nurburgring 2011:




Clearly there are some issues on noise and costs.

1) The noise issue is very similar to airports and unlikely to be solved. Management can get other venues going, but that is one of the complaints of "Safe the ring".

2) Monaco is only a circuit at a very limited time of the year, maybe that is a solution for others?

3) When I was working close to Silverstone, I noticed that indeed testing seemed to be an important function. Here in Luxembourg the only real track I know of is the GoodYear track, and it is used by other component manufacturers or racing teams for testing purposes.


To me it seems that safety measures imposed, environmental measures imposed, etc... are challenging the management of the tracks. However speed restrictions on the road, more supercar day experiences offers, etc... seem to give opportunities for new tracks to open.

The real race tracks for F1 seem to have most issues, where casual tracks are easier to keep running.
 
It gets on my nerves how people who live near Donington Park can complain about the noise levels when the track is right next to East Midlands Airport which is quite a busy freight depot as well as serving passenger flights at all times of the day.

That's before considering that the track has been there for longer than they've probably been alive.
 
The Nurburgring and Spa face the same problem caused by different reasons. The main reason the Nurburgring is in deep, deep trouble is that they mis-managed their money situation (as I understand it) - such as building that rollercoaster that never worked.

Spa is in trouble because they cannot run many races events during the year due to restrictions by the locals on noise levels. This is something faced by a lot of race tracks, they are limited in events which limits the money they make.

Its also probably a bit more difficult having to manage bigger race tracks like these two as you obviously need more marshalls, safety equipment, barriers, maintenance, security, etc etc.

There is no easy solution to these problems, I think generally you have to accept that motorsport is inherently expensive in almost all aspects. I think though more could be done to make motorsport better accepted in the community and more done to bring people interested in it. One of the biggest problems is getting involved. Its not cheap or easy to get into motorsport at any level, especially not driving. The average person will not have any direct involvement in motorsport, its not like you can take part in school or on the street or anything like that such as with football.
As long as motorsport is seen as a sport for the rich and exclusive and people don't really care for it, its always going to find it difficult to convince people to invest and also people stop imposing these noise restrictions and so on.

The real race tracks for F1 seem to have most issues, where casual tracks are easier to keep running.

What do you mean by "casual tracks"? Do you mean street circuits? These don't exist most of the year, so of course they are easier to run. But they rely heavily on the local govenment to fund and allow it. Motor racing should not and could not rely on events like this as they could easily disappear as events from one year to the next. Its also not practical for running more than one race in a year.

If you refer to newer tracks...well these are all owned and run by huge investments almost always by their governments. Turkey, Korea, China, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, etc are all in existance due to mega spending from their respective governments. Its obviously easier to keep a race track open and running if you have a much bigger cash supply. Spa, Nurburgring, Silverstone, etc do not have much cash to play with and the governemts have little to no interest in becoming involved.
 
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The only reason Monaco still runs is entirely because its only one of a few events ran there in the entire year! It wouldn't be possible to run more motorsport events on that track because, obviously, its a public road and the public might want to use it most of the time! Not to mention the maintenance costs are pretty much non-existant, as long as the local authority maintains public roads.
Its not a solution for other race tracks or for motorsport series in general.
 
Street circuits only work because public roads are already paid for by the local government or municipality that owns the road. There's no incentive for them to pay for a road that goes from Point A back to Point A and services absolutely no one who actually has to get anywhere.

The idea of turning the Nurburgring into an amusement park was probably a good one on paper... just not very well-planned or executed. A race track has to bring in some other kind of cash flow, otherwise it's just a big White Elephant crumbling away in the ever-changeable weather between races.
 
It gets on my nerves how people who live near Donington Park can complain about the noise levels when the track is right next to East Midlands Airport which is quite a busy freight depot as well as serving passenger flights at all times of the day.

That's before considering that the track has been there for longer than they've probably been alive.

I've mentioned this before in other threads, but it's relative for here too.

We did a Thursday night race there some years back which was run to much lower noise regs than a normal race. We failed the drive-by noise tests and were called to race control to explain ourselves. Just as the conversation began a plane took off from next door which drowned us out, even though we were inside and behind double glazing. When we asked about the disparity in noise created from both venues we were told that Donington and East Midlands Airport both get fined for exceeding local noise regulations. DHL, BMI and EasyJet can all afford the fines and consider it part of their running costs. Donington Park, and whoever is running the event held there at the time, is less likely to be able to swallow the fine and still stay in profit as their margins are much much smaller.
 
I've mentioned this before in other threads, but it's relative for here too.

We did a Thursday night race there some years back which was run to much lower noise regs than a normal race. We failed the drive-by noise tests and were called to race control to explain ourselves. Just as the conversation began a plane took off from next door which drowned us out, even though we were inside and behind double glazing. When we asked about the disparity in noise created from both venues we were told that Donington and East Midlands Airport both get fined for exceeding local noise regulations. DHL, BMI and EasyJet can all afford the fines and consider it part of their running costs. Donington Park, and whoever is running the event held there at the time, is less likely to be able to swallow the fine and still stay in profit as their margins are much much smaller.

Well that does make some sense then, i still find it silly how the residents can expect it to be a 'quiet' area considering what surrounds them, surely it would be expected that there would be a lot of noise when near a track/airport. I accept some don't chose to live there but surely you would accept the situation.

It seems stupid to me how you can complain when you knowingly moved to the area, it's not like the track and airport suddenly sprung out of the ground now is it?
 
What do you mean by "casual tracks"?

Like this one, recently renewed:
http://www.circuit-mettet.be/

circuitgif.gif


or this one I once drove on:

Le circuit de Chenevières

le-circuit-de-chenevieres-s-agrandit-29141-1-v4zoom.jpg


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No big infrastructure, not super large in grounds around it, no stages for public and lots of fun to drive on.
 
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