Saturday warm-up?

[nrc]

Any particular reason they ran warm-up on Saturday? :confused:

[Sean O'Gorman]

I was going to guess noise issues but an Atlantics race at 10 AM would seem to cancel that out.

[grafddrx7]

Any particular reason they ran warm-up on Saturday? :confused:

Alot of tracks are getting to the point of having to restrict hours that cars can be running. For some reason, people keep building houses right next to race tracks, then bitching about the noise. >> See Road Atlanta's situation. Or NO racing at all on Sunday's at Lime Rock.

While I don't know for sure if this is the reason for the wierd schedule at Portland, I'm pretty sure I'm not too far off.

[nrc]

I didn't see anything on the CC but I happened across the answer in wire story. As suspected, NIMBYs again.


^QUIET PLEASE:@ Warmups were held Saturday night instead of the day of the race because of a Portland City Council resolution passed April 26 that prevents warmups at Portland International Raceway before 10 a.m.

The racetrack has had an increasingly tenuous relationship with area residents, and Mayor Tom Potter has even suggested moving the city-owned raceway to a new location.

Sebastian Bourdais shrugged at the change in warmup time, saying "It's actually closer to the conditions at race time that way," but he pointed out that it gives the racing teams significantly less time to prepare the cars.
http://sports.myway.com/news/06172006/v0040.html

[Heeltoe]

David Phillips @ Speed (http://www.speedtv.com/articles/auto/champcar/26677/)
EARLY START MEANS SATURDAY WARM-UP

With Sunday’s race scheduled to start at 12:30 pm (Pacific time) to accommodate a network Sunday afternoon television schedule and with a local noise ordinance forbidding race engines to be fired-up before 10 a.m. on Sunday mornings, the Champ Car race warm-up has been moved from its traditional Sunday morning slot to 5:30—6 p.m. Saturday afternoon

[Sean O'Gorman]

How the hell do you move a permanent road course?

[TravelGal]

They can't get rid of the race per se but they can make it damnably uncomfortable to run it. Voting on APRIL 26 to change the noise restrictions and make them applicable to this year's race sounds close to breach of contract to me. But they'd say the city didn't have the contract, the promoter did. Or they didn't include that in the contract. Nevertheless, it makes it less and less likely that CCWS will track back to that track, IMHO.

[coolhand]

I have been to portland. south of the track is like a convention center. East is the freeway. I have never been to the far west end, and south is parking i believe.

How far away are these people who are trying to shut it down?

edit, ok I looked at a map. west is a golf course, north is a lake and then the convention center, east is the freeway.

to the south there is parking, a river and then some industrial looking place then houses. It cannot be that noisy, but you never know.

[oddlycalm]

First of all, you have to take the city throwing a bone to those complaining about the noise a bone with a grain of salt. They may be trying to make peace for now, but if push comes to shove those opposed to PIR will get a hard dose of politics and money 101.

It's like this; the city owns the track, the city makes money off the track, the city just built a light rail line to the front door of the track, the local business make money off the people that use the track and the state makes money off the hotel occupancy tax.

This is one of the rare cases where the politicos and business community is in favor of the track staying put. It's also in the middle of a city park, a wetland area, and a serious flood zone so the developers can salivate until the end of time but there will never be a single house built on that land.

The effected neighborhoods pre-date the track and began building up around 1910. PIR has been there for a very long time though. After the city of Vanport flooded in 1948 the area sat dormant until the city built the track in 1960. It opened in 1961 with the Rose Cup races which continue to this day and were just held last weekend.

Part of the problem is the lay of the land. The North Portland neighborhoods of Kenton and University Park are located on a low bluff to the South, so any noise is pretty much line of sight. Those aren't the only areas to hear the track though. I've sat on the porch of my daughter's place a couple miles away and you can hear the track very clearly, particularly during the ALMS weekend. The Corvettes in ALMS exceed 130db, which is as loud as a .30cal rifle shot from 3ft. away, so you know that's gonna be heard for a very long way.

oc

[NismoZ]

Perhaps this isn't a valid comparison but I recall the complaints about noise in Cicero, of all places, after the first Chicago Paperclip race. An inner city venue with low flying jets headed to Midway, and an adjacent railyard full of VERY loud chugging Diesels. During the race, high in the stands, you could FEEL the low rumble of the locomotive engines over the race engines with no difficulty. For TWO days during the year the locals were subjected to a DIFFERENT sound no more intrusive than the ones they experienced the other 363 days. I'm not beyond thinking the whole flap was politically motivated to somehow squeeze more cash out of the organizers. One thing is for certain. If Champcars are too loud for Portland we'll never have to worry about The League going there! :)