Places for races: inside the circuits and services at the beating heart of motorsport

Introduction
CIRCUITS
SERVICES
About
LEFT: Barnard designed Formula One’s
famous Adelaide circuit, which featured
on the calendar from 1985 to 1995
WE WANTED TO TEST DRIVE OUR OWN TRACKS, AND
REALLY EXPERIENCE THEM AT A ONE-TO-ONE SCALE.”
of time - usually three years, if not less -
you sell enough memberships to pay for
the actual facility.
“You actually build the facility in stages,
so you’re not building the whole thing out
at once. As long as you’ve got one piece
of track and something for people to drive
on, they’ll turn up and they’ll pay their
money. And then you start building it out.”
Since Barnard made his entry into the
field in 1984, the needs of the motorsport
industry have changed significantly
to reflect the comfort-focused,
environmentally-driven and constantly
connected society within which it sits.
Automotive country clubs are only the tip
of the iceberg, according to Barnard.
“There’s been a pretty steady
transformation, in my view,” he says.
“There’s so many things going on in the
world that is moving at an incredibly fast
pace. The younger generation, a lot of
them don’t really care about a car, they
think the car is anti-environment.
“One of the German manufacturers
said that what you basically want is a
lounge room on wheels, which you don’t
have to own, which drives itself, and has
constant Wi-Fi connection. And that
pretty much to me sums up what that
generation wants.
“There’s also the rush to electric vehicles,
which I don’t personally think is the right
solution. I’ve been a believer in hydrogen
power since the mid-80s, and I think a lot
of people are looking at that as well.”
One important development in the
circuit design space has unsurprisingly
been in the area of technology. For many
years, Driven International has been
a significant player in the motorsport
design sphere, creating everything from
karting tracks to International Automobile
Federation (FIA)-homologated circuits.
Now, with the help of technological
advancements in virtual reality (VR), the
company is able to offer clients a whole
new experience when showing them
their circuit design plans.
“We basically realised that we do a lot of
technical drawings and plans for circuits,”
says Ben Willshire, the managing director
at Driven International. “It’s a little bit like if
you’re doing an extension on your house.
You can look at the plans, but people
often really struggled to get a sense of
scale. Now, architects use virtual reality for
walking people around their new homes
and you can really see what it will look like
using this 3D software.
“So, we really pushed hard on that for
the last five years to develop some tools
where we wanted to test drive our own
tracks, and really experience them at a
one-to-one scale.”
Driven International has worked closely
with former Formula One driver Karun
Chandhok to test its circuit models virtually
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