This weekend BTCC is going to Donington Park. Gareth Howell has left Motorbase, and it's been confirmed Onslow-Cole is racing after he had hospital treatment after the previous rounds at Oulton. Giovanardi is leading the championship by one point from Plato with Neal in third, so it should be an interesting weekend.

Bets are being taken here for how many of them will fall off at Redgate...

I'm thinking 6

Just read the story about Howell on the BTCC website. It is true that he and his teammate seem to have had an awfully high number of big crashes...

Has Plato crashed out yet this season? I don't think he has...which must be some sort of record!

Thought he stuffed it at Brands?

Nope.

It seems to be raining slightly at Donington.













And by "raining slightly", I mean "absolutely peeing it down!"

A very accurate statement there :)

We didn't see any of the races, but we were keeping an eye on the live timing. When the races were red flagged for rain the sun was trying to poke through the clouds here - and we are only 20 minutes from Donington ! <yikes>

It was rather wet. It didnt start well with the first Seat race on Sunday being r/f'd after Redgate when we lost a large number of cars.

The worst rainshower was for one of the FBMW races where they were on warmup laps and it CHUCKED it down. Start delayed then r/f. Eventually we got through them all.

From what I saw today, the BTCC drivers were more careful and there was less unnecessary panel-bashing. Why can't they do that in the dry? (that was what I noticed from ITV's coverage at least). I have also read elsewhere that other races were delayed yet the BTCC races all started on time, due to TV commitments. If that is true, it is a shame.

All true. BTCC driving standards were better and the timetable was reshuffled.

It has been a pain in the rear end for many years when races are covered live.

The TV schedules are prepared months in advance without thought for weather conditions or other mitigatiing factors such as red flags in previous races causing delays.

The main races MUST happen on time, sometimes to the detriment of everything else, including marshals lunch breaks. <grrr>

According to todays Autosport, there might not be any more BTCC at Donington. Not because of the terrible new pits, but Alan Gow has accused Donington of not promoting it enough in comparison to the the other circuits.

Alan Gow is the Promotor of the BTCC... can anyone see a flaw in his arguement? It's raining cats and dogs, it's expensive and he wonders why the turn out was so bad...

Sheila - Red Flags are now rare at BTCC and F3 Meetings - front page of National autosport this week was a story about an utter shambles of a start including a roll over in a FFord race at Brands GP last weekend which was sent straight to a SC. I'll pop a thread about that in the Marshals forum

Red flags are rarely needed if you have a safety car. There hasn't been a red flag in F1 for over 4 years, for example, and there used to be several a season.

Stig, surely a circuit should also promote an event they are hosting? If they don't, is there any point in holding the event?

By and large, circuits don't promote events - that's normally done by the event organiser/promotor.

some circuits actually do their best to not promote events...!

Oh well, to me it seems odd if that is the case. It shows that perhaps they are not fussed about holding the event. And if they lose it, they wouldn't lose sleep over it...

TOCA isn't paying the circuit to promote the meeting, TOCA isn't even paying the Circuit!! and the said organisation is the one supposed to be promoting it?!

if they can't promote their own series, then it's hardly the circuit's fault. The bad weather didn't help either.

Gow runs the series. The tracks promote the races. Rockingham promoted its BTCC race. Donington didn't and could pay the price.

They do go on to say attendance was good despite the poor event promotion and terrible weather.

Yes.

It's up to the PROMOTOR to promote the series, not the circuit or the organising club.

See ... http://the-pit-lane.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5938 ... for why that isn't nessasarily a good thing.

Also, there have been many instances in F1 where a red flag could have, and indeed should have been used instead of the saftey car.

A certain incident at Indianapolis springs to mind.

Umm. No, not quite right.

Just because you have a safety car available doesn't mean that a race can't be red flagged. If an incident is serious enough (cars completely blocking the track for example) the Race Director or Clerk of the Course may well heed calls from Observers for a race stop. Also, if a Rescue Unit has been deployed to an accident, the crew chief may also request a race stop - very few Clerks or Race Directors would refuse that request on medical grounds, especially if more medical personnel are required at the scene.

I didn't say that, I said that a red flag is not always needed. If the track is blocked, then yes, or if there is a driver who might be injured, or something...

Stig, are you referring to the 04 race at Indy where Ralf crashed, or last year when 7 cars were littered over the track at the first corner?

If the circuit is not being paid, surely it is in the circuit's interests to promote the event, and therefore make more money out of it and have a better attendance? If they don't feel that is necessary then as I said, they won't lose sleep if they lose the race.

The former - The fact you had debris all over the place, an ambulance, a rescue unit, revcovery units and marshals acting as a set of human road cones to get the cars to pick their way around the incident was more than enough evidence to show the race should have been red flagged instead of wasting time, fuel, and risking the cars overheating whilst under safety car conditions.

as to the Donington situation...

The fact of the matter is that it should be the organiser paying the circuit to race there. I know that if I was a circuit manager being asked to pay up for the pleasure of hosting a racing series, their application would get throuroughly laughed at and thrown in the bin.

But you just said nothing was being paid. Anyway that is not the point that was being discussed.

In the Indy case you mention, the most sensible thing to do would have been to take the cars through the pitlane, led by the safety car. It wasn't wasting time because the race would still have gone ahead, it wasn't wasting fuel for the same reason, and the risk of the car overheating...that is the same under any s/c situation, so no different to any other scenario.

No, I said that the circuit wasn't being paid! The organisers are the ones getting payment here... and this is actually the subject of the thread. or closer to it anyway.

The off topic...

You think that leading an entire pack through a busy and dangerous area of the circuit is a wise thing to do? The fact remains, the SC was out for far too long. it should only be deployed for things which will take 1 or 2 laps to sort out. anything longer warrents a red flag IMO

The red flag is only brought out in F1 if the track is completely blocked.

So by your own argument, Indy 04 should have been Red Flagged because the track was covered in debris (technically blocking it) and there was a driver injured which meant that support vehicles had to enter and work on a live track. Remember that that section of the track also has no run off areas. Literally nowhere to hide!

And the other disadvantage with the saftey car - well look at what happened at Brands last weekend!

I don't know what happened last weekend. And the track wasn't blocked. If it was, the cars wouldn't have been able to get through.

I don't know, i'm no expert as my argument shows.

http://the-pit-lane.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=5938

That's what happened last weekend - a startline incident turned into something much much worse because a safety car was used instead of a red flag. Responses in that thread if you please.

I haven't seen the incident so I can't comment.

Indy 04 did not need to be red flagged because the safety car was able to lead the cars through the pits. However the danger with F1 safety car periods where a red flag would normally have been used is the possibility of the cars picking up CF debris causing tyre damage that can then result in another incident.