Worse than expected

This morning we opened up with a story titled ‘Better than expected’, we’d now like to withdraw that and apologise for our absurd optimism.

After earlier delays the first day has been abandoned because, in the words of the Clerk of the Course, ‘the low sun makes it too dangerous to continue’. The first heat was originally scheduled to start at 1600 but after the delays earlier in the day they eventually got under way at 1646. At 1706, with three races run, the call was made to halt racing.

“The sun is low and going into the gravel section the drivers cannot see because the sun is in their eyes. It’s safety, it’s too dangerous to continue so we have stopped now and have a new timetable for tomorrow,” said Clerk of the Course, Jan Mochan. That new timetable details warm-up at 0700, the first heat at 0830, followed the second at 1000, the third at 1215 and the final at 1500. This tightly compressed schedule may, if it adhered to, allow the completion of the event before a similar situation with the sun tomorrow, but places a huge amount of pressure on the organisers and on teams. “It’s crazy!” said Kenneth Hansen Motorsport engineer Rickard Johansson, “If you are lucky and have no problems, then okay, no problem. But with a timetable like that even a small problem with the car could put you out because there is no break and no time to repair.”

Of the few that got to drive on the track, British racer Hal Ridge was in the first race. “It was bloody dangerous, I could not see anything on the gravel section,” he said, “The team were shouting ‘Joker!, Joker!’ over the radio but I couldn’t see it, I had to stop on the track and let the dust clear a little then I could see it.”

There is little doubt that the conditions were dangerous, but equally little question that the situation was entirely of the organiser’s own making: poor track preparation leading to the dusty conditions that caused the early delays and further slow running of the event (an hour elapsed between the end of timed practice and the start of the third heat) pushed the event into its current situation. It’s not the first time there have been complaints about problems caused by low sun at this venue, and with time passing quickly on a sunny day with not a cloud in the sky, it should have been obvious to the organisers that this could, probably would, happen again.

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