All Races Canceled At Silverstone MotoGP Round

Well, that was certainly depressing. A British GP track unable to cope with a bit of mild national climate is like hearing Lucifer is stumped by hot coals...one tends to lose faith in things.

A few observations:

A crowned road surface, present on almost all public roads (and most classic race tracks, notably Assen before it was disfigured) is a drainage concept that goes back to the Romans. It works. And while other aspects of circuit design and construction have advanced considerably in the last 2,000 years, I am reliably informed that water still runs downhill. 

We all know that the four wheel types hate crowns, as it mucks up the camber of their enormously wide tires and upsets their under-body aerodynamics. So modern track surface design seems to rely on a complex relationship between the tilting of a nominally flat racing surface and the texture of that same surface (e.g., size and pattern of voids and both the individual and aggregate volume characteristics of those voids) to drain the weather. And more power to those who do the sums for these new designs, but I think we have now thrown the baby out with the rain water; a reduction in the radius of the crown height was required by the autos, but perhaps we could now look to put a bit back in (what crowning there is now appears only to ensure that the surface doesn't get built with a concave profile, rather than establishing a clearly convex one).

A an aside: How do you establish stability in a structure with (essentially) no tensile strength? Well, an arch seems to do this nicely. I cannot help but think a bit of a crowned arch to the racing surface profile would go a long way to reducing the frequency and size of all these bumps we constantly hear about. A dead flat surface has no mechanism for distributing loads in compression (which is pretty much all a racing surface has to rely on for stability), a crowned surface does.

The "tilted plane" design of many modern tracks will force all of the drainage to one side only. This is hazardous if your "one side" does not have the capacity to absorb 100% of the runoff (as opposed to 50% in a crowned profile), but may be helpful if your modern tack has lots of high curbs at the edges. Curbs make for very nice little dams, so tilting the drainage pattern away from these may be required. 

Tracks are getting wider and wider, which means more area and a greater volume of water to deal with. A lot more. Honestly. looking at the shear area/volume numbers we are looking at, my first instinct is to skip most thoughts of drainage and start specifying pumps for the task. Drainage can be made to work, but it is bloody expensive. The entire area surrounding the track surface has to be constructed as a drain field, and that means then filling the excavated volumes with the appropriate material (i.e., gravel or a matrix of materials that will provide both stability and sufficient voids to act as a reservoir). And nobody will see the results of all that treasure except for once every seven years when nature roars. The temptation to go on the cheap and play the house odds is overwhelming, especially so when the F1 syndicate appears dedicated to elevating the act of extortion to a virtue.

The Press conference was brave...but hollow. OK, the riders decided that it was unsafe...but based on what data? Their experiences during the 11:30 AM sighting laps? Hardly relevant, as it was now 4-1/2 hours later and conditions had changed (i.e., no longer any steady rainfall). Driving around the course in that spiffy BMW earlier was all well and good, but all of those tours were undertaken when it was still raining vigorously (and frankly I would not have bothered). There was some talk that the concern of the riders was that if it began to rain again the track surface would quickly become unsafe (if it was not already), but at 4:30 the rain had stopped and I saw no forecasts for a return before dark fall. Were the riders aware of this? Whose forecasts were being used? Was there a "common" set of data points being considered, or were each individual team to make their own choice?

Then there is human nature and inertia. Hell, half of life is just overcoming both of these. Yes, safety first, last, and always. But there is a difference between considering the safety aspects in your street clothes, with a hot shower and a hot meal less than an hour away, and doing so after getting back into your leathers and doing a sighting lap at 4:45, with a clear understanding that the conditions during the sighting lap were expected to see no further degradation over the next three hours. I am not criticizing the teams and riders for being human, and wanting a resolution after a long, cold, and very frustrating day. But I suspect that not having them all suit up and go out for a lap or two put a heavy thumb on the scales they used to weigh their ultimate decision, and I think the fans should have been accorded the respect that a few sighting laps would have demonstrated. After that, I know we would all respect the riders decisions regarding safety 100%, and fully acknowledge that a track's appearance is not the determining factor. A racing surface may cause hydroplaning without any puddles being visible. Another track may be perfectly ride-able with some evidence of standing water. So it may have ultimately been a fair decision to cancel, but I am not convinced it was made with fair data...or that a hot shower and a hot meal didn't stuff a few votes into the ballot box. Cheers.

PS - Note to Capirossi: There is a difference between a task and a responsibility. It may not have been your task to personally inform each rider of the late safety meeting, but it was damn sure your responsibility to make sure it was done, mate. The "it's not my job" rubbish played very badly.

PPS - Note to Franco: Yes, it may be difficult to accomplish a full-up test and evaluation of a resurfaced track under all possible conditions. But I can bloody well tell you where the water is going to wind up with nothing more than a bag of marbles. Get some.