Have you ridden rockingham?! Worst circuit in the uk. No wonder its a failure. At least the new welsh ones looks like it could be a bike gp suitable circuit
Only one of those is capable of handling top flight motorsports in its current arrangement. South Wales is desperate for investment, especially in this area. 'Green' vehicle technology is a here to stay and a primary driver for future vehicle development. Does it not make sense to kill 2 birds with one stone by building a dedicated research centre for green motoring technology around a brand new, state of the art circuit in an area that desperately needs investment? After all motorsport is where the vast majority of new motoring technologies are developed...
Silverstone is 2 hours from Bristol, as is Donnington, Oulton and Brands are 3+ on a good day. Snetterton is 4 hours, Cadwell is even more. The Circuit of Wales will be 2 hours from Brum or London, 1 hour from Bristol and only 20 minutes from Cardiff. The heads of the valleys road improvement scheme will be finished soon so it will be easy enough to get in and out. It's not that far away!
It's a foreign country, it going to take more than a few road improvements to service 80000 fans though! I hope it works, because silverstone is soooo boring!
I remember the traffic problems when I drove London to Cardiff for the arsenal FA cup finals , mayhem around Cardiff,so at the end of a road it will be even worse,reminds me of the moto Gp in South America this year where the track was in cowboy and Indian terrain.
State funding of privately owned facilities breaks EU rules and won't happen. Silverstone would challenge it through the courts.
Couple of points... From what I've read there has been no private funding gone into Wales circuit so far, it's all been on grants. Problem with Silverstone is they have to pay Dorna 5 million euros just to host the motoGP. Get it back to Donington, leave Silverstone to the f1 parade. And finally, now the govt is relaxing the law on closing roads, why not an otley to blubberhouses and back past the sun inn motogp?
No way is it 2 hrs from London. Dream on @Attila. Its 2h45m with no traffic. And we all know what the M4 can turn into. It was chaos when I went to the Millennium to watch Liverpool steal the FA Cup off unlucky West Ham. Plus theres the Toll Bridge. Now I know its not ideal at Donnie, but I can be almost certain its better than Ebbw Vale.
I didn't say where in London or how fast fair point though. As for the traffic problems, yes the brynglas tunnels on the M4 are savage for traffic, however a new £4bn bypass around Newport has just been approved and the heads of the valleys road will be fully dual carriageway by the time the circuit opens. Also at Donnie you couldn't really call it the GP of wales
some fantasy numbers going on here.... Circuit of Wales will be the UK’s first high-tech, low-carbon motor racing facility. The 830-acre complex aims to attract an estimated 750,000 visitors a year, generate £50 million per year for the UK economy, and create at least 4,000 full-time jobs, according to Heads of the Valleys Development Company (HVDC). Building work on Circuit of Wales could begin at end of year (From South Wales Argus)
If they are not going to start building it until January next year there is no way it will be complete for a 2016 round. You would need to know it was ready by the end of 2015 to plan a big event like Motogp. Lots of people wandering around with pretty dreams in their head in Wales by the looks of it but no idea of how they will actually make it work. So much of this smells exactly like the Donington F1 dream.
It's all European funding. They have a number of dumbass projects going on right now in Blaenau Gwent thanks to the money they've scammed from us all.
FCC did all of the rebuilding works at Jerez a few years ago and are one of the largest principal contractors in europe, i think they have a vague idea what they are doing... 18 months is easily enough time to build a circuit and facilities ready for a race, the entire development including all of the industrial units may take a bit longer but as a Civil Engineer i see no reason from a construction programme point of view as to why the circuit could not be ready for a race in 2016. The track itself is a simple muck shift and a detailed road build up and surfacing package, fencing is relatively quick, car parks and access roads will fly up. Steel framed structures go up very quickly its only the fit out that takes time really. The last company i worked for did the muckshift, soil stabilisation and road buildup for the 1.5km extension to the Porsche experience centre track at Silverstone earlier this year, it was the last job i planned and built the gps machine control files for before i left. The entire job was completed in a few months and the longest part of the job was importing stone for the road buildup, Silverstone is miles from any quarries, Ebbw Vale really isn't.
750,000 visitors a year? Well MotoGP is lucky to get 60-70k people in attendance. If foggy was still riding maybe a wsb round could get 100k. General bsb? 30-40k Dont know what kind of visitors car racing get. Not sure how racing can be low carbon, unless they mean the facility and I would expect that to be low carbon anyway in comparison to an air conditioned office. But its all pipe dreams until detailed design pulls out the details that dreamers forget about or choose to ignore. As always happens aspirations meets financial and commercial reality in an explosion of compromise and backpeddeling as budgets rise and red tape garrotes them. This will not happen. The Welsh GP is fantasy.
