Bob Barnard Track Engineering

A friend of mine involved with the sport confessed to me recently that he did not realize that tracks paid series to come and race. I was not surprised, most fans of the sport do not know of the commercial arrangements, mainly because they are usually confidential. I know some of you think I carry on about the business, but unless you understand how this runs then a lot of things don't make sense.

Not that many do even when you know. There is a good article today on ESPN F1 by Formula Money about the economics of promoting F1 races and why it is mainly Governments doing this.

http://en.espnf1.com/f1/motorsport/story/56182.html

The most telling paragraph is the one where they explain that "The race promoters' sole source of income from a Grand Prix is ticket sales and this usually barely covers the hosting fee paid to the F1 Group. Most promoters would then be pushed into loss by the costs of running the race itself and obviously no one would be prepared to do it on this basis. This is where the governments step in." I wonder if Tavo reads this, or Red McCombs.

Again, I do not wish to harp on the Indian GP, but why do we get a string of people reassuring us all is well if there is no reason for us to be concerned. VJ Mallya is the latest one to tell us "Everything may not be 100 per cent in terms of the grandstands and the spectator facilities, but the technical areas, the pits, the motorhomes, the paddock club and of course the track itself seems to be almost ready already." Well that's OK then, as long as the teams are taken care of why worry about the poor paying public?

Then we have Carlos Slim Domit, son of reportedly the world's richest man, talking about bringing an F1 race back to Mexico. "We know that racing is costly. There are a series of criteria that need to be met for the event, most importantly security." Really! One cannot help thinking that Carlos could do a lot more good with his money to help that problem rather than give a bunch of it to Bernie and CVC.