I'm not surprised at this. For so long now it's been known that the Silverstone event was in trouble.
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Originally Posted by basa
It is scandalous that the home and founding country of F1 can't provide a decent state of the art race track. We can do it for football, olympics, tennis, golf etc, etc, why not F1.  It is a major spectator sport. I dunno if I'm right but I heard that as many people watch a Grand Prix as watch Premiership football on a race weekend. (Well maybe not now as it seems to be no more than a high speed procession ).  |
We may be able to get funding for improvements, but the majority of that funding comes from within the individual sports and the sponsorship it attracts. That works well for events that run over a period of time, or for which the facility can be used regularly over the year. Silverstone has one or two major events in a year and a few minor ones. It's never going to be able to reinvest at that rate, whilst the cost of the F1 race, excluding the sum paid to the F1 owners must be huge with policing, stewards, marshalls and so on. I can see how, despite vast ticket costs, the money just disappears.
Anyway, F1 these days is just a procession. Touring cars and the like are far more interesting, either to see in person, or to watch on TV. F1 has to level the playing field between teams and add some unpredictablitly if anyone is going to remain interested in it. It may currently employ a lot of people in the UK, but the continual money needed and requests for bail outs from the government surely is lower priority than spending wisely on the NHS, law and order, etc.