sspeed30043

Took this from a transcript of a meeting between COTA and Travis County, I am wondering what his event might be prior to the F1 race?

">> how much -- by when -- my concern is -- is working backwards from the first event date, which is not f 1, it's actually an event prior to that, working backwards from that, by when do we have to have all of the -- of these permits finalized in order to assure that the county has enough time to appropriately prepare for the -- for the off cota site, the planning that we need to do?"


Hmm maybe the ALMS rumors might be true???

Zoxxo

They have just seven months to be prepared for the F1 race. Given the amount of work that remains to be done I think it's highly unlikely that they will try to inject another properly sanctioned race into both the COTA schedule *and* the other racing organisations schedule before that. Bigger fish to fry and all that.

It used to be that F1 insisted that new venues for F1 hold a prior race to show that they were up to it and to work the bugs out (see Formula 5000 race at Long Beach in 1975.) Not so much any more.

Z//

AU N EGL

Porsche Cup races or Ferrari cup races or GP2 are held the days before the F1 race

Zoxxo

Yes, but those are support races FOR the F1 race. An ALMS race (or the F5000 race I mentioned) would be (was) a seperate event held some time earlier as a sort of "proof of concept" + "debugging" process.

F1 never allows a "major" companion event to share the bill. An ALMS race would be considered major enough to not be considered an option and would have to be an event unto itself (with its own support races...)

Z//

sspeed30043

ALMS had a open date in September but looks like VIR made it to the schedule, so maybe the rumor is dead...

63Corvette

I just received my April 2012 Formula 1 Racing magazine today, and there is a story that the archetect Tilke, promises that the circuit will be "complete by September 2012".