Our columnist, Graham Watson, was taken aback when a bridge over the track at the Red Bull Ring collapsed due to an overly tall crane truck. It was another learning moment.
Race Operations, as the name suggests, is all about everything needed to ensure a Grand Prix weekend runs as smoothly as possible. You can imagine that a lot goes into this. But sometimes, things happen that you’re not prepared for.
It was a shock, a few weeks ago. You may remember the images on social media: the collapsed bridge at the Red Bull Ring during the Austrian GP. Suddenly, it was all hands on deck, these are unforeseen things that you hope to be prepared for as an organization. But you only find out when it happens. And we certainly found out.
Let’s go back to that moment. The weekend was going fantastically, the race in Austria is always one of our favorite races as F1. The promoter is amazing, in Spielberg they think of things before you can even ask. Everything was running smoothly in that regard, the F2 main race on Sunday had taken place and then someone came running: ‘Graham, Graham, a crane has fallen over!’
I said: ‘Which crane?’ I jumped up from my spot, walked to our camera room with all the images from the circuit, and then I saw it: one of the bridges on the circuit had collapsed, it was just lying on the track. That was a gulp moment, then you think: what now?
We Would Have Been in Real Trouble
We primarily use these bridges to run fiber optic cables across the circuit. These are necessary for the cameras, microphones, the entire broadcast, you name it. In this case, we were lucky: because we placed the junction of these cables on the inside of the track at this location, we didn’t have a cable running over the circuit. If that had been the case, everything would have been destroyed by the collapsed bridge. And then we would have been in real trouble for the TV broadcast.
Of course, the most important thing is that no one was injured, and technically it was fortunate for us that the cables still worked and the connections as well. But still, you can’t just straighten such a bridge. So yes, it was a moment of panic. However, it was also a good test of how you handle a calamity. Together with the local organization, it went well. Within an hour, the bridge was gone, the track was repaired, and we could even run a Porsche Supercup race.
This ended relatively well, but there are other things that can give you a scare. Think about Imola, two years ago, with the flooding. The Grand Prix didn’t even take place, it was a great human tragedy, especially in the region. For us, it almost went technically wrong. Our so-called Broadcast Center was almost underwater. Fortunately, we had it placed on a rise, it stayed dry and was only five centimeters away.
If that had been underwater… It would have been a technological disaster. Fortunately, we try to be prepared for everything. We have triple redundancy for power: primary generators, circuit power, UPS systems. We distribute cargo across multiple airplanes.
But a collapsing bridge? That wasn’t on the list. Now it is. We’ve learned something new.
