Donington round slipping away?

[Nick Harrison]

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/n ... ticle.html

[tristancliffe]

Edit: You fixed your link

I've always wondered what will happen to the racing there whilst it's being improved. Have the club got guarantees from the circuit that it'll be open for racing when we are meant to be there?

[RedRedWine]

Whilst I'm not on the race committee, I know that you just don't get guarantees for anything in club racing. Contracts, where they exist, are pretty one sided in favour of The Powers.

If we do lose Donington, just comfort yourself with the thought of the stonking financial loss they will be racking up with this whole hare-brained scheme - and then worry whether Donington will get dug up, knocked down, messed about - and left for dead when they do go bust.

[tristancliffe]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/72677

Our race is likely to take place under yellows or behind a safety car as we weave in and out of the diggers and rollers.

[AndyY]

I listened to Simon Gillet today at the Autosport show and, interestingly, he said that the existing run offs were adequate for F1 & that there was no plans to increase the run offs on the existing bits of the track.

The track is due to re-open on Feb 20 2009. The current track closure is only due to the need to dig out the tunnel under the chicane and make it big enough enough to get the construction traffic through to the infield.

He also said that the planned building work could be done in time for the GP as much of the new buildings were going to be of modular construction. He also said that the planning permission gained last night was for "phase one" & that a "phase two" planning application would be made later in the year (presumably not for the 2010 GP, though).

Finally he is adamant that the Donington 2010 GP will be a "public transport GP" uilising park & ride, flying in to EMA, using the new Loughborough Parkway railway station etc etc and made the point that places like Wembley, Twickenham etc did not have parking for 80K visitors on site and yet they coped!

Didn't talk about how it was all to be financed, though!