COTA Austin - construction and infrastructure

[bill shoe]

COTA to draw more than 1 million fans to races by May 2013:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/aust ... ans-by-may

The Grand-Am auto event will take place Feb. 28 through March 3. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those four days.
The MotoGP motorcycle event will take place April 19 - 21. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 225,000 during those four days.
The V8 Supercars auto event will take place May 17 - 19. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those three days.

Has Grand Am ever drawn 300,000 actual paying spectators over an entire season? The 24 hours of Daytona gets into the tens of thosands of genuine paying customers, and no other stand-alone Grad Am event comes close to that. Grand Am may not have 300,000 actual paying spectators over its entire existence.

If someone leaves and comes back the next day, why do they get counted multiple times? This is like saying the population of my house over a 3-day weekend is 12 because all four of us leave and return every day.

I'm jealous of the people that get paid to do these press releases, but if I was a pure fiction writer it would be more interesting.

[Mr Alcatraz]

COTA to draw more than 1 million fans to races by May 2013:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/aust ... ans-by-may

The Grand-Am auto event will take place Feb. 28 through March 3. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those four days.
The MotoGP motorcycle event will take place April 19 - 21. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 225,000 during those four days.
The V8 Supercars auto event will take place May 17 - 19. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those three days.

Has Grand Am ever drawn 300,000 actual paying spectators over an entire season? The 24 hours of Daytona gets into the tens of thosands of genuine paying customers, and no other stand-alone Grad Am event comes close to that. Grand Am may not have 300,000 actual paying spectators over its entire existence.

If someone leaves and comes back the next day, why do they get counted multiple times? This is like saying the population of my house over a 3-day weekend is 12 because all four of us leave and return every day.

I'm jealous of the people that get paid to do these press releases, but if I was a pure fiction writer it would be more interesting.

Good post!
I'm still trying to figure out how they came up with 300,000 for the F1 race. It's my understanding that the facility only seats a little over 100,000
I think calling Epstein's numbers a little optimistic is an understatement

[Pup]

Provisional USGP weekend schedule of events:

Say what you will about CotA, at least they found a way to make Q1 interesting.

[FW17]

Provisional USGP weekend schedule of events:

Say what you will about CotA, at least they found a way to make Q1 interesting.

Whatever happened to Historic F1?

[Mr Alcatraz]

Provisional USGP weekend schedule of events:

Say what you will about CotA, at least they found a way to make Q1 interesting.

Whatever happened to Historic F1?

Good question, what about that Hairy. These support races are lame.

[FW17]

Turkey 5.34 km - Lap time 1.27 aprox

Bahrain 5.412 km - Lap time 1.33 aprox

Malaysia 5.543 km - Lap time 1.36 aprox

China 5.451 Km - Lap time 1.34 aprox

India 5.137 km - Lap time 1.29 aprox

Austin 5.516 km - Lap time 1.38 aprox


That stadium section in the last sector kind of made the lap time longer.

First time I saw the circuit I thought it will be a 1.25 circuit, which would have been cool for spectators, but 1.38 is definitely on the longer side.

[Nando]

You need more information then simply the track length to find out laptimes mate.

[hairy_scotsman]

Good question, what about that Hairy. These support races are lame.

Lots of speculation about that now. As they noted, and as you can tell by the overlap in some of the scheduling, this schedule is subject to change, so maybe they just haven't figured out where to slot the Historics in yet. I know that those guys wanted very badly to race at COTA and made 1 or 2 trips to the circuit. Hope it works out for them.

[hairy_scotsman]

You need more information then simply the track length to find out laptimes mate.

Sure, but I don't think that's far off. Maybe about 1:35-36...

[hairy_scotsman]

COTA to draw more than 1 million fans to races by May 2013:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/aust ... ans-by-may

The Grand-Am auto event will take place Feb. 28 through March 3. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those four days.
The MotoGP motorcycle event will take place April 19 - 21. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 225,000 during those four days.
The V8 Supercars auto event will take place May 17 - 19. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those three days.

Has Grand Am ever drawn 300,000 actual paying spectators over an entire season? The 24 hours of Daytona gets into the tens of thosands of genuine paying customers, and no other stand-alone Grad Am event comes close to that. Grand Am may not have 300,000 actual paying spectators over its entire existence.

If someone leaves and comes back the next day, why do they get counted multiple times? This is like saying the population of my house over a 3-day weekend is 12 because all four of us leave and return every day.

I'm jealous of the people that get paid to do these press releases, but if I was a pure fiction writer it would be more interesting.

Good post!
I'm still trying to figure out how they came up with 300,000 for the F1 race. It's my understanding that the facility only seats a little over 100,000
I think calling Epstein's numbers a little optimistic is an understatement

I think the facility can hold 200K or so, but COTA has been all over the map when stating the capacity. Anywhere from 100K to 120K lately. There's no doubt in my mind that it can easily accommodate much more than the reported 40K cap on GA.

The 300K number would seem to rely then on numbers something like 80k on Friday, 100k on Saturday, and 120k on Sunday. Is that typical? It seems like I've always heard typical Friday and Saturday numbers are a bit lower than that. However, what's more interesting to me is the Grand Am, Moto GP, and V8 Supercars projections. They're saying they'll draw the same numbers (300k) for V8s & Grand Am as they'll draw for F1....and 225K for Moto GP seems pretty over the top as well.

Grand Am's combined attendance for the entire 2011 season was just over 500k according to a marketing prospectus I saw recently, and as far as I know, V8s don't draw 300K in Australia.

[FW17]

The 300K number would seem to rely then on numbers something like 80k on Friday, 100k on Saturday, and 120k on Sunday. Is that typical?

20k and 40k crowd on Friday and Saturday should be a fairer estimate.

[Mr Alcatraz]

COTA to draw more than 1 million fans to races by May 2013:

http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/aust ... ans-by-may

The Grand-Am auto event will take place Feb. 28 through March 3. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those four days.
The MotoGP motorcycle event will take place April 19 - 21. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 225,000 during those four days.
The V8 Supercars auto event will take place May 17 - 19. Promoters estimate a maximum attendance of 300,000 during those three days.

Has Grand Am ever drawn 300,000 actual paying spectators over an entire season? The 24 hours of Daytona gets into the tens of thosands of genuine paying customers, and no other stand-alone Grad Am event comes close to that. Grand Am may not have 300,000 actual paying spectators over its entire existence.

If someone leaves and comes back the next day, why do they get counted multiple times? This is like saying the population of my house over a 3-day weekend is 12 because all four of us leave and return every day.

I'm jealous of the people that get paid to do these press releases, but if I was a pure fiction writer it would be more interesting.

Good post!
I'm still trying to figure out how they came up with 300,000 for the F1 race. It's my understanding that the facility only seats a little over 100,000
I think calling Epstein's numbers a little optimistic is an understatement

I think the facility can hold 200K or so, but COTA has been all over the map when stating the capacity. Anywhere from 100K to 120K lately. There's no doubt in my mind that it can easily accommodate much more than the reported 40K cap on GA.

The 300K number would seem to rely then on numbers something like 80k on Friday, 100k on Saturday, and 120k on Sunday. Is that typical? It seems like I've always heard typical Friday and Saturday numbers are a bit lower than that. However, what's more interesting to me is the Grand Am, Moto GP, and V8 Supercars projections. They're saying they'll draw the same numbers (300k) for V8s & Grand Am as they'll draw for F1....and 225K for Moto GP seems pretty over the top as well.

Grand Am's combined attendance for the entire 2011 season was just over 500k according to a marketing prospectus I saw recently, and as far as I know, V8s don't draw 300K in Australia.

Getting back to what Bill Shoe posted; does that (the line I blued) mean they will count me three times since I have a seat for all three days?
I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only one.

[hairy_scotsman]

Getting back to what Bill Shoe posted; does that (the line I blued) mean they will count me three times since I have a seat for all three days?
I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Yes, that's how they're doing it. It's not an uncommon method, but whenever I (often) see news headlines stating that each GP will bring 300K people here, I cringe pretty hard. Even if the total attendance is 300K, it's not going to bring 300K people here. It's going to probably bring about 100-120K. That's an important distinction that I'm afraid a lot of people looking at these numbers are not aware of.

[Mr Alcatraz]

Getting back to what Bill Shoe posted; does that (the line I blued) mean they will count me three times since I have a seat for all three days?
I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Yes, that's how they're doing it. It's not an uncommon method, but whenever I (often) see news headlines stating that each GP will bring 300K people here, I cringe pretty hard. Even if the total attendance is 300K, it's not going to bring 300K people here. It's going to probably bring about 100-120K. That's an important distinction that I'm afraid a lot of people looking at these numbers are not aware of.

This has me thinking:
I wonder how many Austinians (is that a word) that don't give a toss about F1 will make it a point to get the hell out of town that weekend just to avoid the clusterf#ck?

[hairy_scotsman]

Getting back to what Bill Shoe posted; does that (the line I blued) mean they will count me three times since I have a seat for all three days?
I'm also pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Yes, that's how they're doing it. It's not an uncommon method, but whenever I (often) see news headlines stating that each GP will bring 300K people here, I cringe pretty hard. Even if the total attendance is 300K, it's not going to bring 300K people here. It's going to probably bring about 100-120K. That's an important distinction that I'm afraid a lot of people looking at these numbers are not aware of.

This has me thinking:
I wonder how many Austinians (is that a word) that don't give a toss about F1 will make it a point to get the hell out of town that weekend just to avoid the clusterf#ck?

Interesting question. Doubt we'll ever know...& it's Austinites.