Circuit of the Americas Development Updates

[KevinFromTexas]

http://www.statesman.com/news/sports...o-on-sa/nWscx/

Posted: 8:17 a.m. Friday, March 15, 2013
Tickets for November’s Formula One race to go on sale March 21

By Dave Doolittle
American-Statesman Staff

Tickets for November’s Formula One race at Circuit of the Americas will go on sale at noon March 21, circuit officials announced Friday.

Three-day passes will cost $169 for general admission and between $299 and $1,200 for reserved grandstand seats.

There is no single-day ticket option, circuit spokeswoman Ali Putnam said.

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Originally Posted by LoneStarMike

The one thing he mentioned was paying $4.50 for bottled water at the track and $9.00 for a Bud Light. I thought that was outrageous. I can see charging a premium for a special event, but that is just ridiculous.

And remember how expensive the tickets were when they first came out? And then how they dropped in price. My seat-mate had a theory about that. If enough people didn't buy tickets, the race might have been broadcast to the world with partially empty bleachers in the background. Much better to lower the prices in the end and have full grandstands.

I didn't buy anything to eat or drink out there during F1. The prices were ridiculous, so I just suffered. When I showed up for Grand Am, I was starving, so I looked around at all the crazy food prices and finally settled on a $5.00 order of French Fries & a small $4.50 bottle of water. A Mr. Gatti's personal sized pizza, about 8" in diameter, was $12.50. Yep. $12.50. A crappy looking burger was $10.50 iirc.

As for the TV appearance of the crowd, remember back when COTA cut off F1 General Admission ticket sales arbitrarily at 40,000? At least that's what they said. Who really knows though? They said they did it "due to overwhelming demand" and a cited concern that GA fans might run out of room otherwise. *snicker*

Patently ridiculous on both counts. Anyone at the race can tell you there was ample room in the GA areas.....and telling us they're stopping sales because the sales are so great? Seriously? How stupid do they think we are?

At about the same time they lowered Turn 1 prices. They also reduced the size of the T1GS at least twice. They cut off GA sales because GS sales were suffering. It was done to push people to GS seat purchases. Not coincidentally, those are the most expensive and most TV-visible seats. Still, none of the permanent Grandstands sold out, and the Main GS was 30-40% empty during the race.

Recently Geoff more claimed in an article that the 2012 USGP had been sold out for weeks before the race. Actually, it never did sell out at all. People were still buying tickets at the box office on race day. Reserved seating capacity is being reduced for the 2013 USGP. So we're to believe that COTA would do this after selling out last year? Oh. OK.

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Originally Posted by hookem

You must be a NASCAR fan, because you sure don't know what you are talking about when it comes to F1. For the record, though, I do agree with you about the F1 museum. Doesn't make sense to have one here.

The USGP had quite a lot of side by side racing, actually. And not the silly body-bumping kind in NASCAR, but the real wheel to wheel kind where the stakes are much higher. And the Vettel/Hamilton chase was extremely suspenseful for many laps. It was certainly the best race of the season on any modern F1 track, and possibly one of the top ones overall.

No, there were no dramatic wrecks, they are rare in F1. Again, it's not NASCAR. But if you want to see some NASCAR-style crashes, check out the V8 Supercars inaugural US race in May.

Kimi's pass in the esses was the most memorable action from this race, imho, and is something I'll always remember. It was just brilliant and amazingly brave, imho. NASCAR passing is dime-a-dozen. Of course there will be more passes for the lead...and they'll generally be less memorable.

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Originally Posted by Jdawgboy

The race was great no doubt about it. I have seen F1 races before and I was hooked from beginning to end not only because it was here in Austin but it was really an exciting race and the vast majority of the commentary and response from people that were there attending had glowing reviews of the race. I did not go this year but I intend to go next as well as go to MotoGP and V8 Supercars.

Fan Fest did well though I think we will see some changes next year. The biggest reaction I have heard is how Austin has that party atmosphere that Montreal has and that Adelaide had when F1 was there before it moved to Melbourne. That is something that will be a huge advantage for us as not all F1 host cities have what Montreal has.

I took a really good pic that Saturday night and I need to upload and post it.

I loved the atmosphere in Montreal in 2010 and really hoped Austin would do something similar. However, I never made it downtown during F1 week here, as I was out at the track from 8am til 6PM Thrusday - Sunday, and when I got home each day, I collapsed into a hot tub.

Turns out that having a GP in your home town, with all your everyday responsibilities in play is a lot more taxing than taking one in on vacation.

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Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

http://www.statesman.com/news/news/s...mic-imp/nTqkC/

The Austin study says that about 86,000 people will attend race day April 21, a Sunday, with a total attendance over three days of 161,000. Those figures are based on attendance at Laguna Seca and Indianapolis for the past three years and a “novelty effect” for a first-year event, the study says.

161K? That's one hell of a "novelty effect", considering that MotoGP has averaged 132K over the last 3 years at Indy & Laguna.

Well, at least they've adjusted down from their initial MotoGP estimate to something a bit more realistic.

Remember back when they predicted 1,000,000 in total attendance by May?

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/a...1m-fans-by-may


The breakdown went like this:

- F1: 300K (announced attendance 265K)

- Grand Am: 300K (announced attendance 26,648, and even that's probably a stretch)

- MotoGP: 225K (No. More likely 100K-150K if everything goes well, but now they've stepped in it & pissed off a huge chunk of the MotoGP fan base with this Kevin Schwantz silliness)

- V8 Supercars: 300K (uh...NO. More likely 50K-100K, maybe)

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Originally Posted by Komeht

Right - this seems like an article about nothing.

Austin hotels can't currently handle the capacity - of course this will be promoted to the region as a whole. This is a sales pitch for promoters who can't make client's who want to be in Austin happy disguised as a news article.

If the reporter would do some checking he'd find out that everything in the Austin area is booked at more or less the same rates as last year.

No, there are thousands of rooms available now, and at much lower prices than last year, even with the UT Football conflict.

http://www.hotels.com/search.do?dest...=USD&r=2&cpr=0

Rooms were scarce early on last year and prices were high as the result numerous room-blocking contracts COTA had with area hotels. This artificially drove supply down, drove prices up, and induced purchase urgency on the consumer.

People will always pay more to sit closer to the stage. Price point is driven by supply and demand. Anyone who chooses Moracco over Austin to save a few hundred bucks or for that matter choose to stay in San Marcus or San Antonio because of lower hotel prices does not diminish the fact the all the Austin hotel rooms will probably be sold out by F1 race weekend and at whatever price point is being asked.

Well, they didn't sell out last year at those crazy-high prices. Not even close. People opted for San Antonio in a big way and it hurt Austin sales significantly. A few weeks before the race, when COTA’s room-blocking contracts began to expire, vacant rooms began to flood the market and rates dropped precipitously. There were thousands of rooms available in Austin on GP weekend, but it was too late for most people.

Now there are package deal/F1 tour booking companies opting out of the Austin hotel market altogether as a result of the insane pricing.

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Originally Posted by Jdawgboy

While it is something that Austin has needed for a long time, I am a disappointed in the end product. They went from announcing it was going to be 20-25 thousand capacity down to 17,000, then to 15,000, now only 14,000?

Yeah, for a long period every time they talked about the capacity of the amphitheater, the number was always wildly different from the last time....and if you take a good look at the place, count seats, rows, & sections, you can see that it only has about 5000 fixed seats. The grassy area behind that is even smaller. There's no way that's a 14K person venue unless all those people in the back are packed in like people standing on a NYC subway train at rush hour. Probably not even then.

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Haven't been here for a while. Sorry about the string of posts, but I figgered it'd be better than one big one.

BTW, here are a few of my Grand Am photos, & there are about 200 of them in these two galleries:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...7614878&type=1

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...7614878&type=1

Here are a few:

[lzppjb]

[lzppjb]

These were taken with my phone.

[KevinFromTexas]

I've never really been a corvette guy, but I have always loved this body type:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ps7c532600.jpg

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MotoGP weekend schedule just released by COTA:

http://circuitoftheamericas.com/imag...s/schedule.pdf

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Carruthers not pulling any punches in Cycle News piece on COTA's poor handling of the Schwantz/MotoGP mess:

http://cyclenews.uberflip.com/i/119121/100

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Event schedule: http://circuitoftheamericas.com/moto-gp

FAQs: http://www.circuitoftheamericas.com/faq-motogp

Circuit Map: http://circuitoftheamericas.com/imag...rack_large.jpg

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Statesman: MotoGP attendance not likely to match projections

Well...DUH. Their various weekend projections ranged from 161K to 300K. However, 100K is well below average for U.S. MotoGP events.

http://www.statesman.com/news/sports...ections/nXBCr/

Julie Loignon, a spokeswoman for Circuit of the Americas, estimated Tuesday that the three-day attendance for MotoGP, motorcycling’s equivalent of Formula One, would be 100,000. That would likely translate into a race-day crowd of somewhere above 50,000.
“Right now it looks like about half of what a UT (football) game would be,” said Leah Fillion, a spokeswoman for the city’s transportation department. She said it would be business as usual downtown and that the city is anticipating about 40,000 to 50,000 for the race.
A study by Don Hoyte, a former economist with the state comptroller, projected 86,000 for the Sunday race and 161,000 for the three-day weekend, April 19-21.

[lzppjb]

Doesn't surprise me. I must be one of the many people that just aren't interested in seeing motorcycles race...at least in this area. I'm not badmouthing it. It just doesn't pique my interest.

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Wow. Check this out.

Corner workers opting out of Moto GP gig in support of Schwantz:

http://www.motohouston.com/forums/ar.../t-253721.html

[alwaysmiling]

I wanted to go to the race but $60 a day to park? Is that for real? So its a $40 cab ride each way or $60 to park? Someone please tell me I'm missing something, so that I can still go to the race without feeling like a sucker...

[ivanwolf]

I'll be a volunteer for this race as bikes are interesting but I'm more a car guy.

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Kevin Schwantz will be on Wind Tunnel Sunday night. Send tweets to @SPEEDWindTunnel if you'd like to suggest a question for him.