Cost of marshalling F1 tests - Autosport article 16th June.

[Clive]

OK, so the BRDC are the promoters. Any chance they can contribute a more realistic sum towrds the expenses of the marshals, who they admit they cannot do without, or reintroduce the sew-on patch, or perhaps organise a pit lane excursion just for us to ogle the cars and, heaven forbid, talk to a F1 driver?
OK I'll come back to reality in a mo, but we can dream..........

[Stephen Green]

Why nor make your feelings known to the BDRC? You never know they may do something along the lines you mention. Nothing ventured etc etc

[Stoowert]

A good question Steve, but I refer you to an earlier post. Isn't that what the Marshal's Club is for?
No? Well surely it can't be there just to provide cover for race clubs...can it?

[b1ackcr0w]

Originally Posted by blueflagger

How much of that cost figure is insurance I wonder?

This point in itself, kind of supports the point that has been made about the standard of safety at testing.

If testing is becoming prohibitively expensive due to increased insurance costs, the surely means that the underwriters have been able to demonstrate and increased risk/hazard ratio or potential increased risk/hazard in the activity of their customer.

To reduce any kind of insurance premium, you must either reduce the risk (likelyhood of a claim) or the hazard (the size of the claim). This then presents us with a chicken and egg situation. It is plainly obvious that if we have more and better trained/motivated safety crews at the tests, that would result in decreased risk and hazard, an ideal situation for both the sport and the insurers. However, if the allocation is going on insurance for ongoing testing, the money cannot be spent on getting in the extra bods for the job. This leaves F1 with essentially two choices, they could invest extra funds in the marshalling and safety crews to be better trained and numbers bumped up at test days, which would seem to be the positive response. Or they could try and reduce testing to lower the risk (while frankly the hazard would remain or even get worse). That option would seem to be the negative response. Again, to my chagrin, F1 seems to be leaning towards the latter, more negative, response.