Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 Race Track - Page 6

bluedogok · #**101** Posted **Aug 28, 2010, 4:22 AM**

F1 races are expensive, a three day ticket (reserved seating) for Montreal this year was $225-495, general admission was $100. Most of the European tracks are quite a bit higher, we looked into going to the next race at Monza in September and they are around $250-520 for reserved seating and $133 for general admission. Indy has hard the largest crowds mainly due to cheaper tickets and lower travel costs for the Europeans than even to travel to some of the other races on their continent. We went the last year in Indy and it was considered a "poor crowd" attendance wise by Indy standards at around 80,000 estimated since the Hullman/George family doesn't usually release attendance figures, the 2000 race was estimated to be 225,000, that was for the Sunday race alone. I would think that somewhere in the range of 140,000 for the inaugural Austin F1 race (the Sunday feature) would be realistic.

Armybrat · #**102** Posted **Aug 28, 2010, 7:46 PM**

Well, I am excited about the F1 track too. Maybe because my 25 acres of open land is a stone's throw from the west side of the track property.

On the map posted earlier in this thread, it's located on the "U" where McAngus Road is printed.

From what I've read recently, the track will be primarily on the eastern half of the 900 acre development property.

Myomi · #**103** Posted **Sep 1, 2010, 4:54 AM**

The layout is finally out. Fresh of the proverbial presses! I am certainly no expert on F1 track design, so I am eagerly anticipating what people have to say about this track. Can't wait for dirt to start moving and for the races to commence!

http://www.statesman.com/sports/form...ut-890582.html

Credit: Statesmen.com

KevinFromTexas · #**104** Posted **Sep 1, 2010, 3:59 PM**

Quote:

Promoter unveils F1 track layout
Design pays homage to some of word's most famous circuits.

By John Maher
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Updated: 7:09 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010
Published: 10:45 p.m. Tuesday, Augt. 31, 2010

The 3.4-mile track has 20 turns, a maximum elevation change of 133 feet, a back straightaway that is three-quarters of a mile long and a width that will vary between 39 and 52 feet.

Hellmund said the F1 cars should be able to reach a top speed of 200 mph on the track.

He also estimated the cars might be roaring by the grandstand at 180 mph on their way to a tight, uphill corner at Turn 1, one of the highest points on the track. Hellmund said Turn 1 could be the circuit's signature corner and that it would also be one of the four designed spots to give drivers their best chance for passing, or overtaking as it's called in F1

http://www.statesman.com/sports/form...ut-890582.html

JAM · #**105** Posted **Sep 1, 2010, 5:08 PM**

How do these tracks work in terms of viewing the race? Is the race only viewable in the grandstands? Do the cars disappear out of site and then suddenly come roaring by the grandstands?

electricron · #**106** Posted **Sep 1, 2010, 5:23 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAM

How do these tracks work in terms of viewing the race? Is the race only viewable in the grandstands? Do the cars disappear out of site and then suddenly come roaring by the grandstands?

Basically yes. I supposed some with heavy binoculars will be able to see downhill on the track a long ways. But the story suggests an uphill climb after turn 1, which is just the opposite...

bluedogok · #**107** Posted **Sep 2, 2010, 2:54 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAM

How do these tracks work in terms of viewing the race? Is the race only viewable in the grandstands? Do the cars disappear out of site and then suddenly come roaring by the grandstands?

It depends, with the elevation changes of the track there are supposed to multiple viewing opportunities from the grandstands.Also most of them have general admission type tickets where you can go inside the track and watch the race from the hills inside the track. Indy was flat and we were sitting just under the seating section above us so we saw much of it on screens but you could find several vantage points on the infield portion. They also had big screens scattered around to watch other sections of the track. I have watched many a race at Hallett outside of Tulsa (a smaller, 1.8 mile club racing track) and there were several vantage points from where you could see many parts of the track due to the elevation differences. Notice also how the track could be split into two courses, that could allow two different events (like a club race, HPDE, etc.) at the same time on smaller courses.

Here is the elevation rendering. There is a total of 133 feet of elevation change.

hookem · #**108** Posted **Sep 2, 2010, 4:27 AM**

One thing I don't understand: the press release accompanying the images says there will be "grandstands for at least 20,000 with room for 50,000 more". Doesn't that number (70K) seem much smaller than the estimated attendance numbers most people throw out for the US Grand Prix? All the estimates I heard before were well over 100K.

electricron · #**109** Posted **Sep 2, 2010, 2:28 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by hookem

One thing I don't understand: the press release accompanying the images says there will be "grandstands for at least 20,000 with room for 50,000 more". Doesn't that number (70K) seem much smaller than the estimated attendance numbers most people throw out for the US Grand Prix? All the estimates I heard before were well over 100K.

That's just what I've been trying to say for some time.

Grandstands for at least 20,000 means just that, seats for only 20,000 may be built. With room for 50,000 more may mean a grassy (hopefully dry) hillside to sit upon a blanket. Don't forget to bring your own blanket. A Formula 1 race continues if it is raining, so your hillside blanket can get very wet and muddy.
Of course, they may mean having the ability to expand the grandstands up for 70,000 at a later time. It could be decades before they do.

For comparison purposes only, the Texas Motor Speedway has 204,861 seats in its grandstands. Of course, most of the time few are actually using them.
Source: http://www.eventticketscenter.com/Ev...x?EventID=2789

bluedogok · #**110** Posted **Sep 3, 2010, 1:51 AM**

The majority of the crowd at road course tracks are in the infield where you can move around and get different viewpoints of the track.The only time that I sat in the grandstands at a race was the 2007 USGP at Indy, since it was a roval track and different than a typical road course. We watched quite a bit of the practice sessions from the infield, the races were in the afternoon so we moved to the seats where we had shade since we were in the lowest grandstand.

I also don't expect the facility to be fully built out at the first race due to time constraints. I know some of the other tracks have added grandstands over the years but since these FIA tracks are so large there is really no way to put a grandstand around the track. That would be even difficult to do at a 1.8 mile track like Hallett Motor Race Circuit outside of Tulsa. The ovals are the only place with grandstands all around and the longer tracks are not fully enclosed, only the shorter ones like Bristol get the full stadium treatment.

JAM · #**111** Posted **Sep 9, 2010, 12:39 AM**

Quote:

Twelve hours.

That’s how long it would take fans on race days to get into, and then out of, the proposed Formula One track to be built southeast of Austin, according to a quick analysis of the site plan by county planners.

Planners working on the race track site plan reached that estimate after a field trip to Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth, where it takes about three hours for fans to enter and exit the track, said Joe Gieselman, manager of Travis County’s Transportation and Natural Resources Department. He added that the F1 calculation was reached by plugging in the number of anticipated attendees at the Austin event.

The 12-hour figure emerged during a county commissioner’s court meeting Tuesday, during which Richard Suttle Jr., the attorney for promoter Full Throttle Productions, was peppered with questions from commissioners. Gieselman said the county’s delay-time estimate, as well as other pointed queries about who would pay for road improvements and how many jobs the project might create, served to highlight the county’s frustration over the paperwork submitted by Full Throttle — which is thus far so sketchy as to make planners’ jobs nearly impossible, he said.

While such a wait to get into, and then out of the track would be a logistical disaster, Gieselman said it illustrated the difficulty planners face in trying to make decisions about the project without enough information up front.

“It was like, Hello, that [12 hours] cannot happen,” he said. “But tell us what it will take to get” the time down to a reasonable figure.

Gieselman said his department needs a better idea of what the whole project will look like before it starts issuing approvals.

County officials also questioned Full Throttle’s economic impact estimates. Full Throttle has calculated that the track project would employ 1,500-plus construction workers, another 1,200 workers during race weekends and 40 staffers year-round; and that F1 would generate $300 million annually in economic activity.

“Many of their statements have been made without any basis,” Gieselman said. “Where is the study that shows there’s going to be all these jobs created?”

Suttle was also asked about who would pay for upgrades to the roads around the site. Gieselman said that as a general rule, site developers are expected to pay for necessary improvements to public roadways.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/conte..._how_long.html

Armybrat · #**112** Posted **Sep 13, 2010, 2:24 PM**

Well, the traffic to Austin's new F1 track is gonna be difficult unless they (developers & government) move quickly:

http://www.statesman.com/news/local/...Trk=RTR_781143

Quote:

Ben Wear: Getting There

Published: 9:58 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 12, 2010

Somewhere above 100,000 people converge on Royal-Memorial Stadium six or seven Saturdays each fall, surging into adjacent neighborhoods over several hours for tailgating and then leaving more or less en masse shortly after the clock winds down. Those who have ventured into this maelstrom know how fun that fifth quarter of football isn't.

Now imagine if there were only two ways into and out of the stadium area, both of them two-lane streets. For instance, Red River Street from the north and, say, a thinner 24th Street from the west.

Bad, really bad.

Which is almost surely the situation that gearheads will face two years from now at Austin's first Formula One race out on what is now prairie land southeast of the Austin airport. Assuming the race happens, of course.

Yes, there is a four-lane, lightly used tollway — Texas 130 — a mile west of the track property. And two other major highways, Texas 71 and U.S. 183, are within three miles. But that last mile or two could be a killer.

Or, more to the point, a parking lot.

The roughly 900-acre site is bordered by three roads: FM 812 to the south, McAngus Road on the west and Elroy Road on the north and east. Elroy and FM 812 have exits off the tollway and connect with U.S. 183 to the west. None of them connect directly to Texas 71.

And all of them have just two lanes.

Worse yet, only FM 812, a road maintained by the Texas Department of Transportation, has shoulders. McAngus and Elroy are the skinniest of county roads. Both periodically buckle according to the shifting clay soils that underlie the rolling land east of Austin. Driving them is an adventure.

Now consider this: Traffic engineers have a rule of thumb that a highway lane, with everyone going full speed, can move about 2,000 cars an hour. If you're calculating at home, that's about 4,000 cars an hour heading west and another 4,000 going east on FM 812 and Elroy. Except that the eastbounders on Elroy would just end up on FM 812, so maybe we can't count them. And no one would be going anything close to full speed.

The F1 organizers say there could be 140,000 people at the race. How many cars, pickups and RVs is that? I'm no traffic engineer, but it's got to be something well above 50,000 sets of wheels.

Joe Gieselman, Travis County's transportation director, surveying this unhappy prospect, dropped a big number on his county commissioner bosses last week: 12. As in, getting to and from the race, if nothing is done, could take 12 hours. Each way.

Is there any form of entertainment on earth that you love enough to spend 24 hours in a traffic jam? A Beatles reunion, including a resurrected John Lennon and George Harrison ... maybe.

The F1 people don't accept that 12-hour number. But the problem is that they don't have anything at this point to reliably dispute it. With the start of construction supposedly just four months away and the first race envisioned for the last half of 2012, they haven't begun a traffic impact study, or finished the site design with all the entrance points.

Without all that, it's hard to say how many lanes FM 812 or Elroy (or McAngus, where the track might have a parking facility) would need. What we do know, from talking with Gieselman and Carlos Lopez, the Austin district engineer for TxDOT, is that neither the county nor TxDOT has any money set aside for expanding those roads.

Eddie Gossage, president of the Texas Motor Speedway north of Fort Worth, said his company spent more than $10 million improving nearby public roads before and after the track opened in 1997. The race developers here aren't willing to say at this point how much they would contribute to any roads.

Which leaves, as Donald Rumsfeld might say, going to war with the roads we have.

Lopez points out that organizers of such races typically put on a concert after the race, which would have the effect of making some chunk of race-goers linger for a while. He also says he could "contra-flow" FM 812, perhaps making it one-way east from the tollway before the race and one-way west afterward. He could do the same thing on FM 812 the other direction to where it meets Texas 21, for people coming from Bastrop and points east. There would be shuttle buses, probably, from distant parking spots.

"Will it be a day at the beach?" Lopez said. "No. It'll still take a lot of time to get in."

A third access option would be to expand McAngus road (east/west) to provide access to FM 973.

And I would only be too happy to sell them my 25 acres of relatively level open land on McAngus Road for a remote parking lot - it's probably about 400 yards to the western side of the F1 property. On the map, it is located right below the "u" in McAngus Road.

For a price, of course.

KevinFromTexas · #**113** Posted **Sep 13, 2010, 11:38 PM**

Oh man, my sister and brother in law live 2 1/2 miles north of there, just north of Pierce Lane. That whole area is already a traffic nightmare. Remember that this is where they were having traffic problems on Ross Road from the three schools on that street. My sister said it takes her 20 minutes in the morning to get from her house to 71, and it's only about a mile. She said the alternative route is 130, but it takes a long time too, because of the traffic and the light. Of course this is the thing I warned them about when they planned to buy a new house there, but ha, no one ever listens to me.

Armybrat · #**114** Posted **Sep 14, 2010, 10:54 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Oh man, my sister and brother in law live 2 1/2 miles north of there, just north of Pierce Lane. That whole area is already a traffic nightmare. Remember that this is where they were having traffic problems on Ross Road from the three schools on that street. My sister said it takes her 20 minutes in the morning to get from her house to 71, and it's only about a mile. She said the alternative route is 130, but it takes a long time too, because of the traffic and the light. Of course this is the thing I warned them about when they planned to buy a new house there, but ha, no one ever listens to me.

Well, whenever F1 Race Week comes around, they'll have to just plan on leaving town for a week or else camp out at home without going anywhere. lol

Downtown_Austin · #**115** Posted **Sep 17, 2010, 8:45 PM**

Local F1 lobbyist/attorney, Richard Suttle, presenting to County Commissioners....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vph_B...layer_embedded

Armybrat · #**116** Posted **Sep 18, 2010, 4:04 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Downtown_Austin

Local F1 lobbyist/attorney, Richard Suttle, presenting to County Commissioners....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vph_B...layer_embedded

Really prepared!

The ATX · #**117** Posted **Sep 18, 2010, 7:58 PM**

I've gone from believing this was a developers pipe dream when it was first announced to thinking it was going to happen when it was announced that Red McCombs was involved. Now I'm back to the doubting side again.

Schertz1 · #**118** Posted **Sep 19, 2010, 1:37 AM**

This is laughable on 100 and 1 levels. Less than three months to dirt work and they have no engineered plans. In fact, they are not even close. There are no environmental impact studies, no traffic studies, no secured right of ways, no commitments on expanding the infrastructure, no plan on where to move the gas lines, no noise studies. It will be loud, what kind of bull s___ is this? We are so quick to commit public funds to any millionaire with a pipe dream. How about this, if it is a viable project go to a bank or commit your own funds. Texas should look great after this thing falls apart.

hookem · #**119** Posted **Sep 19, 2010, 5:44 AM**

Keep in mind that Travis County is the whipping boy of the City of Austin, and the City of Austin is the whipping boy of the State of Texas... So in all frankness, Travis County will get whatever F1 wants to give them, and nothing more. If F1 has the state and city backing, it's not going to matter what Travis County thinks -- they are the low man on the totem pole in this case.

Besides, Whisper Valley was already on the annexation list for the City of Austin. If they go ahead and annex it, Travis County instantly has no relevance in the matter -- the roads, water infrastructure, zoning, permitting, etc. will all belong to the City just like that.

H2O · #**120** Posted **Sep 19, 2010, 2:16 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by hookem

Keep in mind that Travis County is the whipping boy of the City of Austin, and the City of Austin is the whipping boy of the State of Texas... So in all frankness, Travis County will get whatever F1 wants to give them, and nothing more. If F1 has the state and city backing, it's not going to matter what Travis County thinks -- they are the low man on the totem pole in this case.

Besides, Whisper Valley was already on the annexation list for the City of Austin. If they go ahead and annex it, Travis County instantly has no relevance in the matter -- the roads, water infrastructure, zoning, permitting, etc. will all belong to the City just like that.

This site has nothing to do with Whisper Valley. Whisper Valley is across the river near Decker Lake.