Originally Posted by johnnychips
Please could you enlighten us non-petrolheads, unless you're referring to a budget hotel that tried to open?
Oh it's a long and dull tale of pipe dreams, idiocy, Bernie Ecclestone and a chancer named Simon Gillett.
Basically, Gillett persuaded a lot of people that he could take the F1 race from Silverstone to Donington Park. He signed a long term deal with Ecclestone but then couldn't raise the funding to bring the track and facilities up to spec.
It dragged on for ages and nearly bankrupted Donington Park in the process. They did some work, but it was shoddy and consisted of digging a big hole and causing the track to subside and also wrecking a load of perfectly good tarmac around the rest of the track.
Eventually Bernie pulled the plug and the race went back to Silverstone and Donington Park was left with nothing having given up the motoGP race to Silverstone as well in pursuit of F1.
So Donington is now a shadow of itself and in motorsport terms has been put backwards 10 years. It's now operating again, but without the draw of big races, then the need for massive new hotels is fairly minimal.