1 I just took a look with Google Earth. That town can't have a population of more than a couple of thousand. It really is out in the sticks. France doesn't get a lot more rural than that. I wonder why they built a race course there? (Probably because land was cheap.)

2 1500, one hotel.  It's so far away from anything that the teams despise going there.  The track was originally built for a race-driver school back in the '60s, I gather.  The French gov'ment decided to pump a lot of cash into it as a way to boost the economy of the very rural region.

It didn't particularly work, I guess, since there's still only one hotel.  I gather going there on race weekend would be like going to the Super Bowl at a modern domed stadium... but there's only a two-lane dirt road leading to it.

3

I was wondering about that. It did seem as if the roads there were rather narrow for the kind of traffic I'd expect for race weekend.

There is another bitty town on the other side, but it's even bittier, and probably doesn't have a hotel at all.

This reminds me a bit of the Pendleton Roundup, one of the great rodeos of North America. Ordinarily Pendleton OR is a rather sleepy town, albeit a hell of a lot bigger than this one. Ordinarily it has a population of about 17,000. For the Roundup, the population approximately doubles for a couple of weeks. A lot of the visitors bring trailer houses or motor homes with them, and of course rodeo cowboys don't generally expect the kind of opulence that I would suspect is considered pretty routine for F1 drivers and teams.

Also, it's better served by the road system. I-84 goes right through the middle of it.

About 30 years ago I went to the Roundup one year. My roommate and I drove out there and waited at the booth for people to show up with unneeded tickets to sell, and we each picked one up. It didn't turn out to be possible for us to sit together, but that wasn't a big deal. A lot of fun, even if I did get sunburned.

...probably more fun than watching this race, from the way you describe it...

4

I'm wrong. According to Wikipedia, the 17,000 people of Pendleton host about 50,000 visitors for the Roundup. Which means the population quadruples.

5 I'd love to watch a F1 race at the track; the atmosphere must be amazing... even at a track like the one at Mangy-Curs.  It's the whole watching a dull race on TV thing that blows.

6 And yet we in the US don't rate a race.  Not to mention that there's currently no French Drivers!  (uh, no Americans either, shhh...)  I'm sure they could find a nice spot of land here in my neck of NJ to host build a track, wedged nicely between New York and Philadelphia, with D.C. only a few hours away...  To that end they could go back to Watkins Glen.

The Vegas rumors were nice, I don't see why that couldn't be as big as Monoco celebrity wise...

7

Is there anything that no one will add to Wikipedia? It's got an article on the 2009 F1 season.

The number of races listed as confirmed or suspected is absurdly long. Another race at Indy is listed, but I bet not.

What I thought was more interesting is that they're going to impose a spending cap on the teams. It wouldn't include driver salaries and engines.

I wonder if transportation and lodging would be included in the budget? It can't be cheap to move the team and all its equipment all over the world, presumably by air.

8

I just remembered something else I wanted to ask about. If you've got a track where passing is particularly difficult, then there would seem to be little benefit to having a light car, and you'd be best off going with as few pitstops, and as heavy a fuel load, as you could manage.

Certainly if you're running a 3-pit or 4-pit race, each pit stop will be shorter because you're taking on less fuel. But overall, 4 pitstops will take more time than 2, so you'd be better off with 2.

What am I getting wrong here?

9

Okay, I just took a look at that wiki for the 2009 season.  Amusing, and about as speculative as it's possible to be.  The only thing that can really be taken as gospel from it is confirmed races.  Yes, even the teams list is up in the air (don't ask, I don't want to get into it until some more news comes out).

I'm only going to assume that transport costs will not be included in the budget.  You're right about it not being cheap, that's for sure.  In the European part of the calendar, they use trucks to move about from race to race.  The teams also have what they call mobile homes that are about as high-tech as their cars.  For the overseas races, they fly the cars and staff, but most everything else is shipped (literally) ahead of time.

Regarding the pitstop conundrum, Steven, I'm going to have to write a full post on that one.

10 Not to mention that there's currently no French Drivers!

Sebastien Bourdais (SeaBass) might take issue with this assertion.