THE UPCOMING TOP GEAR festival will be used as a benchmark for the soon to be completed Bushy Park race track.
That is the word from operations director of Bushy Park Circuit Inc (BPCI), Mark Hamilton, who has insisted that the international race meet would not be the track’s defining moment.
He made the comments during a tour of the St Philip facility on Wednesday, where the media were brought up to date on the construction progress.
“We will be using the Top Gear Festival as a test, because it will be the first event being hosted at Bushy Park after the renovations have been completed.
“But Bushy Park will not be quantified by Top Gear, as the track has been built for long-term use,” Hamilton pointed out.
“However, we can use the festival as a template going forward, and after it is completed we will know the areas where we have to fine-tune and improve.”
With the festival, which will feature some of the biggest names in the sport such as 2008 Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton, set to be held on May 16-17, he said that the majority of work was on course to be finished by their self-imposed deadline of March 31.
While pointing to an area where the asphalt had already begun to be laid on the track, Hamilton noted that having lost two weeks of work due to rain between December and January, a seven-day work week would be required from now until completion.
“We are at the stage now where we are putting down the tarmac, and obviously that is a watershed moment in the facility’s redevelopment.
“We are quite happy with the progress thus far. We have a self-imposed deadline of the end of March, and we feel comfortable that the majority of the main elements will be in place,” he explained.
“We will have one or two items that will go past that but it is not a concern. We have given ourselves some [leeway] in terms of then and when the actual festival will begin, so we will have a six-week buffer . . . to play with and certainly everything will be finished by then.”
