Silverstone/Donington facilities....

[AndyRAC]

With all the talk of Silverstone/Donington and the British F1 GP, I thought it was interesting looking at the facilities at Donington against Silverstone. What I am amazed by both tracks are the lack of covered Grandstands, of all the countries were you would think it was necessary, neither has a decent one to talk of - like the one at Barcelona. Considering the price of entry for both events and Britain having a history of Motorsport, yet we can't provide what I would consider proper facilities for fans.
Any thoughts on this, I have seen an article recently calling for the Government to help Silverstone out, as other countries do - mm, not sure about that.

[ArmchairBikeFan]

At least Donington has a good track going for it. Everyone hates Silverstone. It's dull, featureless, has no elevation changes, basically it's a terrible bike track.

[patnicholls]

Donington has certainly had some work done in the last couple of years - with the pits being upgraded a couple of years ago and some new buildings including a bar up this weekend that weren't there last year.

re: grandstands, a few temporary ones go up on the start/finish straight and at Redgate for MotoGP and WSB etc. Looking around the rest of the track, it's hard to see where a large grandstand would go without a big straight - the Melbourne loop is too tight to fit one in, the pit side of the s/f straight has hospitality areas, and in most of the other areas you'd be levelling a hill looking nicely onto the track to build a grandstand in the same place. Without a long straight like Barca, and Donington being a 'traditional' circuit as opposed to one of modern construction, it's harder to fit one in.

Personally, I'm 50/50 on grandstands. I prefer to have a wander about to a few corners and take some pictures, get a feel for different areas of the track, so wouldn't stay in a grandstand. It should also be borne in mind that most of Barcelona, all of Mugello, all of Brno, virtually all of Jerez, etc, are done using the natural environment (hills surrounding the circuit) as opposed to grandstands. You've also got to be able to justify building the things and maintaining them if large crowds will only be in for a few days a year.

I may be wrong on this, but the major 'facilities' issue seems to be road access - again, traditional locations always struggle against modern circuits which have been built in the middle of nowhere with motorways running right up to them. The other one is toilets - Donington hosted the Download music festival last week, so a lot of Portaloos were kept on site for the GP which increased the numbers this year. The mostly teen-based festival crowd had apparently made a bit of a mess of the campsite though - so it's a mixed blessing!

[MrJan]

The trouble with grandstands is that they are expensive and for the majority of meetings at the tracks no bugger will sit in them.

Like Pat I enjoy walking around the track and tend to find grandstands are just irritating places that stop me from being able to see part of the track