DECEMBER 24, 2005

Fitting 22 cars in the F1 pitlane

There will be no problem fitting 11 teams into the garages of Bahrain and Malaysia but as the Formula 1 season goes on in 2006 there may be problems in other places, notably Melbourne and Monaco where space has always been very tight. Melbourne's facilities were pretty mcuh state-of-the-art 10 years ago but nothing much has changed since then. The design is such that adding an additional building to the existing five units (the administration building plus four garage buildings) would not be easy and there would inevitably be questions of cost and whether building should be allowed. It is unlikely that this could happen in a hurry, not least because the authorities have already decreed that they don't want construction going on during the Commonwealth Games, when the spotlight will be on the city. The annual construction of the race track is being done as usual and will sit around until the Grand Prix weekend, which is several weeks later than usual because of the Games.