The inaugural running of last month's Korean Grand Prix has been brought into question with a piece of emerging news on Thursday.
Although F1's FIA inspectors cleared the bespoke venue in Yeongam for the October 24 event, it has emerged that state inspectors have deemed mobile stands unsafe for an international F3 race scheduled for late November.
Organiser Barry Bland said in a statement: "(Local promoter) KAVO have had to cancel the (event) due to Force Majeure."
He said the reason was a "legal technicality with the circuit", and a KAVO spokesman told AFP news agency that the cancellation is due to "delayed approval from inspectors".
KAVO, or Korea Auto Valley Operation, is a joint private venture involving the Jeollanam-do regional government.
Unsuitable mobile stands were one of the many complaints visitors had about the infrastructure at, and the planning of, the Formula One event in Yeongam county in October, an event seemingly thrown together at the last minute in spite of four years' advance notice. From the Korea Herald today:
KAVO was already under fire at home and abroad for poor preparation. It hosted the F1 Grand Prix from Oct. 22-24 in Yeongam after frantic last-minute work to build the circuit. FIA, the sport’s governing body, approved the Yeongam track less than two weeks from the scheduled race due to the delay in construction.
Although the racing track was completed just in time, the organizer failed to complete a safety inspection on spectator seats after struggling until the last minute to build 80,000-seat stands.
“We knew that it was wrong, but there was no time for delay,” said an official from the South Jeolla government.
He added that the local government is now conducting a full inspection of the newly built track, and is expected to obtain approval from inspectors before the end of this month.
On Wednesday, the KAVO announced that the Korean F3 Superprix, the one-off racing event, which was due to be held at the Yeongam circuit this month, had been canceled due to a delay in receiving approval from the inspectors.
The comment from the Jeollanam-do government official is striking, but sadly not surprising.
4 comments:
This F1 spectacle is the perfect example of something I've been thinking for a long time: Koreans have gotten about as far as they're going to get by working hard. If they want to get further than they have (they do) they need to start working smart, but I haven't seen any recognition of this fact from anybody but a handful of societal black sheep.
@Lancity
"...by working hard"
How's is that? Last I checked Koreans have never worked very hard. They stay at work very late, but I personally think that shouldn't be confused with "working very long" or "working very hard" in spite of how many times people suggest it.
@bdh
Nowadays, sure. But you have to admit there was a lot of ass-busting by the generation that took Korea from the poorest country in the world to one of the top 20 economies that it is today.
@Lancity
Hey Lancity,
I don't want to hijack the thread...but...(lol, god I hate people that say "I don't want to..." and then do exactly that...)
Well, the good news is you sound like a reasonable person and I would probably invoke the reasonable people can agree to disagree montage -especially saince I think initial point was bang on (I just disagree with the language) -> that Koreans have to pull up their proverbial socks and soon. I disagree with the language (only) b/c from what I have read, the United States funded Korea with massive amounts of money for decades (in the 10s of billions of dollars at that time which would make it staggering in today’s terms), free tech. transfers, education for the elite for free (though admittedly this often wasn't done with government involvement), etc. Japan also kicked in massive aid and low interest loans (the 5 billion USD at "low interest” - which eventually amounted to less than 1% interest - for the '88 Olympics is a good example). All this, I might add, coming after the much ballyhooed Japanese annexation. I often wonder what other countries would have been able to do with such staggering funds, aid, and help over such a long period. More than 100% of Korea's total GDP was given to them for years....
Anyway, not trying to be a dick, just disagreeing on language b/c I often hear this sort of thing and no one seems to disagree or qulaify it.
I will say that those times when I do wonder about what other countries with those benefits would accomplish...I , well, see certain countries like Nigeria and Zimbabwe and think, nope, it still wouldn't have helped so Korea certainly did something they didn't...
I've never posted here before, so, to the boss: nice work here, I read it frequently and would like to give a shout out for a lot of useful articles,
thank you.
As an aside-was at the race-what a mess. I read (linked here?) in one newspaper article that an "official" said the event was a success but only the European journalists didn't know it. Haha. Though the race itself was wild and entertaining, I'm pretty sure a lot of the Europeans (journalists and not) were pretty disappointed in the package as a whole.
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