I noticed that too, Barry. Looked they'd pulled the seats and everything to me.
I also noticed on the F1 show that there's about 4 sections of grandstands at the Shanghai road course where they've removed seats and and turned them into giant signs.
Wouldn't you think with ticket sales that bad, they would eventually lower prices? Too much to hope for? The spring race at Dega used to always be packed. Apparently, it's not just me not going anymore. The Allison Grandstand on the backstretch was pretty full....that was a surprise. Those are the cheapest seats there.