[kropotkin thinks...] - 2008 Donington MotoGP Preview - The Sound And The Fury

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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Racetracks are remarkable things. At their heart lies a deep paradox. For devotees of motor racing, they are mighty temples, places where they congregate to worship at the high altar of speed. For them, the smell of hot oil and fuel burnt and unburnt, and the deafening howl of engines pushed to bursting point and beyond for lap after lap stir the blood and are the very reason they flock to the track in their tens and hundreds of thousands, to fulfill a deep-seated need to experience the spectacle of racing.

For racing's detractors, the noise, the smell and the danger are precisely the reason to loathe racetracks. To them, thousands of people traveling from all around the world to watch a group of leather-clad lunatics waste such a precious – and costly – commodity as gasoline by going round in circles at high speed is utterly incomprehensible, and almost criminal in its wastefulness. The fact that this strange activity also produces a great deal of noise and a certain amount of stench just adds to their aversion.

In many countries, the problem is getting worse. Once located far from civilization, the space and open roads that made racing easy to organize have attracted wealthy refugees from the expanding towns, meaning that the suburbs are gradually closing in on the once isolated racetracks. And as those big comfortable homes, sold as oases of tranquility, get closer to the circuits, the complaints about the noise and the crowds and the traffic have increased, and the authorities which supervise the tracks are constantly forced to examine ways of reducing the problems.

Crisis? What Crisis?

Some tracks are luckier than others, though. For a variety of reasons, a number of tracks have fewer problems to deal with than the rest. The Losail circuit in Qatar, located in the middle of a desert and built at the behest of an authoritarian government, is unlikely to be surrounded by expanding populations hungry for space, and even if it were, their complaints would fall on deaf ears. A track like Jerez, in the heart of bike-mad Spain, has more fans living nearby than people who hate racing, and can therefore rely on plenty of local support. Any recent arrivals near the track are most likely moving to be nearer the circuit, and fully aware of the consequences.

There is a slightly more novel reason that Donington Park, the venue for the British MotoGP round, manages to limit complaints about the track. Like Qatar, the track benefits from its location. Unlike Qatar, however, this has less to do with its isolation from the inhabited world, and more to do with being situated next to Nottingham East Midlands Airport. The 50,000 aircraft a year which take off and land at the airport generate plenty of noise and stench of their own, neatly disguising some of the noise of the racetrack, and diverting attention away from the circuit.

But as smart a strategy as this might seem, there are downsides. The fact that many of those 50,000 aircraft are bearing local residents off to exotic and much warmer climes for a much-needed vacation means that those very locals are more likely to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the noise emanating from the airport. Whereas a vanishingly small segment of the local population is likely to spend their afternoons at Donington Park, either spectating or taking part in motorized forms of sport. As a result, and rather unjustly, complaints about the airport tend to be tempered by self-interest, and any criticism of the noise and the pollution deflected towards the Donington Park circuit.

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