Hey, you're not disagreeing with
me, but with the regulation recommendations!
Actually, pavement is pretty costly. I estimate, roughly speaking, that 1 km of 12 m wide road costs about 1.5 million devaluated dollars, not taking in account that a track, usually, requires (or should require!) extreme measures for pavement regularity.
That's only for the road, no safety areas, no landscaping, access roads nor extra safety posts nor major bridges or culverts.
That's way more than any facilities can cost, I think (please, architects, lend me a hand here).
So, a 7 mile (11.5 km, roughly)
track instead of a 5 km track can cost you around 10 million dollars, for starters. I think this is a low estimate: a true good track has requirements that go beyond normal roads.
Pomona track: the average difference in height among any two patches in this track is thinner than a paper sheet. If the wheels slip because of a bump, a drag cylinder explodes, period.
Same goes for safety areas:
everybody and his dog agrees that leca or gravel beds are totally unsafe and unable to stop an F1 car in any way, as many accidents have proved again and again.
John Fitch is against leca. Who's John? The inventor of the water-filled barrier. He has the support of this impressive list of people: "Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Carroll Shelby, Stirling Moss, Phil Hill, Paul Frére, Benny Parsons, Dr. Steve Olvey, William and Doug Milliken, John Gorsline, Brock Yates, Karl Ludvigsen and Chris Economaki"
So, if you contemplate the idea of an extra 6.5 km of sweeping curves, for the excitement of fans, you have to think of the need of 100-meter-wide paved areas around the track.
I think we're talking serious money here: 8 times more or less the figure I gave, because you have 8 times the width.
Again, running the risk of serious corrections from the forum, we could be easily talking of a cool 100 million dollars for 6.5 km of safety areas for "extra" sweeping curves, throwing some money for barriers and the such.
I cannot imagine how to figure out the fact that the access road are longer because of those safety areas, because you're increasing the size of the perimeter of the track.
No wonder Tilke tries to follow the recommendations, giving you a track of 5 km: that's roughly in the middle of the minimum (3.5 km) and the maximum (7 km) recommended length and give you a lap time of 1:30 more or less.
I haven't spoke of maintenance costs, but you could figure, roughly, around U$30.000 per km per year for simple reseals, again no landscaping nor bridge maintenance. However, resealing a racetrack is not that simple. At Indy you have to lift all the safety barriers and reposition them after the paving, for example, not to mention that the downforce loads "suck" pieces of pavement when cracked.
Check this link if interested.
A track should be as flat as possible, this increases exponentially your maintenance costs. Check
what I wrote at the end of this post, if you're interested. I quote myself:
"I dare to think that the body of an F1 car has more tolerance in dimensions than the finished surface of a drag track."
When a racetrack pavement fails, it could mean the difference between life or death. --Kevin Forbes--
Take in account that landscaping area increases roughly to the square of the length. Throw in some devaluated dollars for fences, vigilance, personnel, and you're increasing
very quickly the cost well beyond what an spectacular paddock or a hotel (that actually pays for itself) cost.
The "only" benefit comes from sections that are "a real high".
I'd say: no wonder Ecclestone wants street circuits. At least you can justify the investment, because the track is used (and mantained) for regular cars during the rest of the year. That makes easier to get a balanced budget for the promoter and helps to keep the stand tickets at a reasonable cost. These kind of street tracks are located, usually, downtown, with few trucks, hopefully, which means that the municipality can mantain reasonably well the surface (altough I wonder what will happen in the long run).
Meanwhile, I think drivers are not happy with "our" proposal for a 7 mile long "chain" of fast curves.
A fast sweeping curve at 200 km/h means a load on the neck that is
truly the proverbial "pain in the neck". Keep that load on your head for 300 km and we're talking about the risk of serious accidents caused by G forces around 3-4 Gs. That's something hard to balance against that lonely benefit. Not even jet pilots have to resist 3 Gs for 2.5 hours...
G-G diagram: it shows you the acceleration capabilities of a car, and it is used to estimate the envolvent of trajectories I mentioned before. In an F1 car, the lateral axis has a scale that goes up to 3.5 Gs and all of them are used by the driver.
If I may ask a favor, tie a 10 kg weight to your head, incline your head to the side and keep the weight lifted for the next two hours while you play R-factor, then answer me: how do you feel about the architect that designed such a "working" place? And how did your lap times improve?
Finally, I don't know if the extra-excitement for spectators that a track double the length would bring is diminished somehow by the fact that you'll have half the laps: you'll see the cars less times; actually, you'll see them half the number of times, because the length of the race is more or less constant (as Miguel explains).
](./images/smilies/eusa_wall.gif "Brick wall"){kind=small}
but the effect of the 2009 cars was something I was thinking of while posting; e.g. how the new regs will change how the circuit is driven...
