Silverstone…Built for Speed not Vision – Brian Sims
June 27, 2013
It’s that time of year again! Summer and the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. Well, let’s not push our luck about the summer bit, but it’s certainly time for the hoards of British F1 fans to head along the A43 to Silverstone. Interesting to see that ticket sales seem to be rather slow this year and we’re being told there are still plenty available. Is that due to the weather or is there a more significant reason? Let’s be honest, it’s not cheap to go F1 racing at Silverstone, particularly if you want to take the family. I believe that a family of four will need an outlay of around £450 and that’s without paying for the fuel to get there and the task of feeding everyone once you’re inside.
Around this particular time of year, the most popular topic of F1 conversation is of course the British Grand Prix and the former Northants airfield that now hosts the event. Love it or loathe it, Silverstone Circuit certainly seems to get its fair share of opinions. Parking fiascos when it rains was one of the favourite moans; the seemingly high price of tickets is another favourite. Invariably the positives involve some of the classic races that we’ve witnessed at this Northamptonshire former airfield. Remember Mansell winning here, people ask? That move on Piquet? Amazing! The stunning crowd scenes afterwards, more like Wimbledon in the Henman era than a motor racing track, the fans enthuse.
The problem seems to be that on the one hand we have a track that is second to none in terms of producing some fantastic F1 races over the years and is loved by the drivers but on the other, we have a circuit that in my personal opinion is one of the worst from the spectators’ perspective. Maybe therein lays the problem.
We know that you can’t control the weather, but if there’s any precipitation around, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will descend on Silverstone. Still, in the current British apology for a summer, that could be true of anywhere.
Sure, the weather will be a contributory factor when deciding whether or not to dish out the cash for tickets, but I don’t think that gets to the heart of the problem. The issue that seems to spark of the biggest debate is the flatness of the place which means that you tend to spend more time watching the race on the big screens than actually watching the cars. Add to that the phenomenal distances that spectators have to walk to get anywhere from the car parks and you start to understand why people are reluctant to take the family.
The contrast between Silverstone and a former home of the British Grand Prix, Brands Hatch, near Maidstone in Kent, couldn’t be greater. Built in an amphitheatre, Brands Hatch allowed people wherever they were standing to see a lot of the racing. I watched several F1 races there and always enjoyed the experience. It was the ideal scenario. The drivers loved the place and the track delivered some superb action for the spectators who could see so much without the need for huge screens. Sadly, the proximity of residential sprawl means that we’ll never again see a Grand Prix car snaking around the undulating curves of Brands Hatch again, but fortunately national-level racing still continues and demonstrates admirably just how important viewing angles are when it comes to spectating.
Another circuit which from a topographic point of view provided a high level of visibility was Donington Park and that did indeed host a memorable British Grand Prix back in 1993, won in the wet by Ayrton Senna. F1 has never returned there unfortunately.
I talked before about the fact that spectator levels of expectation in so many other sports are increasing all the time. If we continue to build Grand Prix circuits that don’t take this fact into consideration, we can hardly be surprised if the paying public choose rather to watch the races from the comfort of their homes, on the latest high definition TVs, on which they can see all of the action without it costing a shedful of money.
There is nothing in the world to beat the atmosphere of an F1 Grand Prix in terms of the initial impact of noise, colour speed and sheer adrenalin. The reality is that to maintain that level of excitement people must be able to watch all, not just a bit, of the action.
