Another British cock-up

Visitors to Silverstone will have to pay as much as £300

BBC motor racing correspondent Jonathan Legard believes organisers at Silverstone are wrong to increase ticket prices for next summer.

Who wants to be a millionaire? Answer, anybody planning to go to watch next summer's British Grand Prix.

At a time when leading figures within Formula One are warning that some teams could go bankrupt because of a global recession, organisers at Silverstone have opted to fly in the face of economics, marketing, public interest and common sense.

£300 for a grandstand seat in the middle of a muddy field, accessible only via roads gridlocked for hours?

Young people are being driven away from the sport

Jonathan Legard
BBC motor racing correspondent

They cannot be serious.

If the circuit produced half-decent racing, they could argue the point over value for money.

But how many times has Silverstone come out on top of your Season's Best Race list?

In its impressive "Vision statement for the future" last June, officials talked grandly about Silverstone's proud history and tradition and its increasing role in education and training of the young.

Now, barely four months later, those same young people are being driven away from the sport because less of them will be able to afford to get in.

AND fewer people will be allowed entry because the capacity is being slashed by 30,000.

All because of traffic problems, we are told.

Nothing to do with maximising revenue from a smaller crowd, of course.

Traffic management = financial management.

Northamptonshire must have a world monopoly on car congestion because Rockingham staged its first Cart race amid similar stories of four-hour jams.

Organisers at the US Grand Prix charge $30 for a three-day pass

So why is it that at Austria's A1-Ring, where there is only one access road to the track, the queues appear to melt as if by magic after the race?

Why is it that at Hockenheim - deep in the heart of Schumacher country - a crowd in excess of 140,000 regularly disappears into the night after the German Grand Prix without the stress and strain of a Silverstone-style logjam?

And why can it be that only last month the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis attracted 175,000 people through the gates and within two hours you could drive out of the circuit, onto the freeway and into the international airport less than 10 miles away within 20 minutes?

You read that correctly. Twenty minutes.

Oh yes, and Indianapolis charged $30 for a three day pass this year. That's £20.

According to the official Circuit de Catalunya website, you can buy a three-day pass for next year's Spanish Grand Prix for £37 - less than half an hour's drive from Barcelona, one of the world's great cities.

In 2002, Silverstone is charging £199.

So who has got it right?