Is it all over for the Grand Prix in Korea?

After a great deal of handwringing about safety, accommodations, and track preparations (and here and here) and safety, F1 racing's Grand Prix finally came to Korea — way down south, away from all the people — about a year ago. And while there were plenty of glitches, promoters were confident that things would go more smoothly next time when they weren't in such a hurry.

But if The Telegraph is correct, there may not be too many "next times":

Korea’s future is looking decidedly dicey. The promoter of the Yeongam event, Won-Hwa Park, said earlier this month that he wanted to seek a cut in the estimated £35 million hosting fee because of the huge losses the event is facing. According to local media, the total cost for the race this year was £52 million, with income from tickets estimated to be only £16 million.

Korea’s current deal, which runs until 2016, includes a 10 per cent escalator for hosting rights over its duration.

“There are lots of things in life you can’t afford, and you don’t have to have them,” Ecclestone said. “And it took us long enough to negotiate with them in the first place.”

Of the local lack of support, the 80 year-old added: “It was strange. They didn’t really get behind it. That was a disappointment because it was a big enough effort to get it on in the first place.”

It would have been nice to know about the governing body's fickleness before all that money was poured into the project.

To be fair, it's not just Yŏng•am complaining about the high hosting fee. And it may take a little time for support to grow, as it is a nascent "sport" in Korea. There certainly are lessons to be learned about publicizing such a new event in a place without much of a tradition of car racing.

...

Formula One racetrack is "on track" to open in August

That goofy pun courtesy of AFP:

South Korea aims to complete work by late August on the track for its first Formula One race, a month later than scheduled, organisers said Wednesday.

The 5.6-kilometre (3.5-mile) track at Yeongam, 320 kilometres south of Seoul, will be ready by the end of next month at the latest, the Korea Auto Valley Operation (KAVO) said.

"Our initial plan was to complete it in July but construction has been delayed," a KAVO official told AFP, declining to give details.

KAVO, a joint venture between a private firm and the provincial government, is building the circuit for the Korean Grand Prix on October 24, which will be the 17th leg of the 19-race season.

Organisers say the track boasts the longest straight stretch in Asia.

I have mixed feelings about things like this. On the one hand, racetracks are like golf courses in that they can be huge wastes of land that cause more environmental impact than they should. On the other hand, however, anything that provides jobs and development outside of Seoul — particularly in the Chŏlla region — and a reason for capital residents to leave the city is a good thing, I s'pose.

I wonder if they will hit their target of two hundred thousand Korean and international visitors. They'll have to make it awfully easy for people to get there if they want those kinds of numbers, but I guess train service is pretty good.

It will be kind of cool to watch cars zip along the coast, and that "longest straight stretch in Asia" may come in handy for television commercials and test drives, and may even inspire some more musculature among the local automakers.

On a Romanization note, for those who either prefer or don't mind the current "Revised Romanization," I might add that names like "Yeongam" are regularly misspelled even according to RR rules. Wherever a combination of letters might lead to confusion between two possible Han•gŭl spellings, a separator such as a hyphen or dot is to be used. Look it up; it's in the rules.

"Yeongam" could either be Yeong-am [Yŏng•am, 영암] or Yeon-gam [Yŏn•gam, 연감], and someone unfamiliar with this southwestern county might have to look it up if they haven't seen the Han•gŭl before.

 The eu [으] used in place of ŭ also presents a problem, since there are words where e [usually, 에] is followed by u [우], as in Seun Sangga, a well-known electronics district (sangga) in downtown Seoul. Writing Seun Sangga in McCune-Reischauer presents no problem, but doing that with Revised Romanization without a hyphen, leads the reader to wonder if the the place is 슨 or 세운. The word for shrimp, saeu in both Romanizations, presents the same problem for RR: Is it sa-eu [사으] or sae-u [새우].