[old man]

Some of this question of who would pay for the facilities that we would like to see may depend on who gets the income from the spectators and that is something I don't know about.

When SRO decide where to run a race I believe the decision is taken based on the cost to them of hiring the circuit and whether that can be covered from the income they get from the entry fees, the hospitality packages they sell and I suppose there are other elements of their income.

Perhaps at say, Spa the hire cost is relatively low because of the spectator income to the circuit owners but at a circuit where numbers are normally low the owner will want a higher fee. J Palmer did not have the BGT one year and SRO said it was because his hire charge was too much but the following year a deal was done, was it that JP worked out a way of getting fans to come and so lowered his rental charge to SRO?

Silverstone is run by the BRDC, what do they do about gate money, is it all kept by them or their organising sub-contractor or is it split with SRO? Who, for instance, paid for "Our Nige"? Scuderia Ecosse gained little by bringing him in and do not, it would seem have the budget to pay him and it is inconceivable that he did it for nothing so who paid? Circuit promoter, SRO, both, Who? And what was the resulting increase in gate income and was it worth the investment?

As we can see from the fact that we are to have two F1 races in Spain now, the public there have a hero and we all know that the public follow the drivers to a large extent so Spain wants two races to see Alonso. The real fans may follow the cars but there are not enough of "us" to pay for the improved facilities so how can we break into this circle and improve the package to get income growth from spectators? It would be interesting to know more about the way the whole thing works because we are talking without a lot of the facts. Neverthless I would like to see much more promotion from within the sport in an attempt to build a wider fan base. Is that what JP did at Brands and Oulton and what Donington failed to do for the last LMS race there when information was non existant. Will the new Donington owners ever get a chance to show what they could do for top level Sportscar racing, what was the BGT meeting like for the fans?

We all seem to think that the ALMS is doing a good job, do they make a profit or is it all subsidised by Mr Panoz?

More questions than answers it seems