Dover Yuletide meet
“For the first time we were able to pay our lease bill in full, thanks to Mr Richard Lee and his kind donation to the club, he said.”
However, the lifeline was temporary as the current lease payments to the Dover trustees loom large for
2022. During the pandemic, no payment reprieve has been given to the JRDC, but they have managed to split the payments into five instalments.
“If we don’t have a race meet by February, the club will go bankrupt, he said.”
If racing is back up and running, the next thing for Barnes to tackle is the degrading surface of the track. At nearly 40 years old, the asphalt is breaking up and can’t be patched anymore. Only a full resurface at an estimated $27 million will fix the problem, but as Barnes stated, the club needs to be racing to address the problem.
“There’s no impact on safety. What the bad surface has an impact on is outright speed as drivers have a difficult time finding a tyre compound that will work at Dover. Too soft and they won’t last the eight laps.
Too hard and they won’t get enough heat in them to provide grip,” he explained.
For the duration of the moratorium, Barnes has continued to maintain the circuit and its grounds, providing track testing days, with a maximum of four cars for the day. This has allowed drivers to upgrade their cars in what has been effectively an extended off season.
Barnes bemoans the lack of competition due to the moratorium as he feels it’s been impacting the younger drivers, who have no racing to show or increase their skill, or build their résumés for international events.