TBK-Light.com

It looks like an unloved child of Valencia. Still, give it DRS, KERS and Pirelli tyres and anything can happen.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

You mean the bastard love child of Valencia and Korea...



This must be Tilke's formula for circuit design:

1) Long straight followed by sharp turn, minimum of 90 degrees
2) Long straight must include kink
3) U-shaped bend, either one long curve or sectioned out to look like 50 pence piece
4) Right left chicane, followed by medium length straight, followed by left right chicane
5) Two 90 degree corners in quick succession at one end of the course

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

Can just imagine a meeting at Tilke HQ.

"I know, F1 needs to exploit new markets. The European Grand Prix and Korean Grand Prixs have been a great success, so let us make a circuit like both of them!"

Derp Derp.

Although in fairness to Bernie, if some silly little bugger offers him a ludicrous, unsustainable amount of money to host a race - I'm looking at you, Korean man - then you can't blame him for appeasing the bigwigs at CVC.

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Dan Wheldon | 1978 - 2011

Looks terrible.

Wow he really ran out of ideas like 7 years ago.

What do you guys expect when you have to build a track around an Olympic Park and have to cope with FIA restrictions!?
The Olympic Park has the priority when it is about planning the infrastructure there. No wonder why the actual track has a quite boring set of corners.

Something that resembles Phoenix perhaps?

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BTCC Pick Em's Champion 2010
Formula Fun Cup Champion 2013
http://www.the-fastlane.co.uk

no wonder since he has to design all new f1 tracks

Srsly what a shitty looking track.

Not strictly just F1 but I didn't know where else to put it....

Autosport put A1 Ring in their "worlds worst racetracks" feature...

Makes me even wonder if they "get" motorsport at all.

Their main argument was that it was a poor man's Oscherrich ring, which is technically true but then holding that against the track when itself is very decent, racing wise, and as far as I can tell didn't put on a boring F1 race for the 7 years it hosted the race there.

Compared to some of the other shit to come along in the past few years it's the fricking motorracing mecca....

Maybe I have different motivations on what makes a great track to those at Autosport.
I'm just a fan, I rate a track based on the quality of racing there, not hoping that if I write a nice article about Porsche they might loan me a Carrera Cup for an afternoon and I'll actually get to drive it.
I imagine the A1 Ring isn't great to drive (and that it's easy to miss a braking point on the various gradients and ruin your lap so add frustrating on to that) but I don't know why they don't realise that the racing there is usually excellent.

I guess with tracks like the A1 Ring and Hockenheim etc, it would help the tracks reputation if they weren't racing around the graveyard of a much better legendary track, and I can see that to an extent, but you have to move past that eventually and judge what we have now on its own merits.

And then, just when I thought I was mad enough, in their "tracks that almost made the list..." section they said they tried to put Cleveland on there, but their driver expert Danny Sullivan wasn't having any of it (thank god)
My copy nearly went out the window right there and then!

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RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

You do have to wonder about their mentality sometimes.

It was supposed to be about tracks the drivers hate, name one driver that hates Cleveland.

Probably Bourdais after Paul Tracy landed on his head...that'd probably be it.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

Modern Spa, Silverstone and Monza are not a shade on the originals either. But if anyone says they are the worst then they're fucking idiots.

I know it's an opinion piece really, and I'm banging the same drum yet again - but Autosport is full of shit. They just talk complete and utter BOLLOCKS, claim everything as an exclusive, even if it's months old, and report every rumour as true, so that when they can get one right they can claim off it for years.

Autosport is crap. It really is.

Yeah, what they need is a competitor that has better standards forcing them to raise their game, but since the motorsport magazine market is that small, that's never going to happen and they'll always have the monopoly.

I like Motor Sport the magazine more but there's also a lot of stuff in there I just skip over because it's not for my age group or interests.

_________________
RIP Birmingham Wheels: here's some of the crash videos I recorded when it was there:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIaKIE ... 5t9d5PvoHA

Twitter:

http://www.twitter.com/paulhadsley

i really dont mind the russian track.

everyone thought the sydney olympic park track was going to be shit but it's put on some damn good races.

I used to buy it religiously every week. I have at my parents home about 8 years worth of magazines starting in 1996, hardly ever missing an issue. And I was paying Australian imported costs. In the end I was paying about $11 an issue. I don't want to think about the money I spent on them. Then when I lived in Japan I did the same for a couple of years and had to throw those ones away....But if you go back through the issues over time you can actually see the content get worse and worse and have less substance. For me when Nigel Roebuck left, the magazine lost its luster. From Adam Cooper's writing I feel he is only concerned with his own self importance. And this is how pedantic I am. In 1999 they started changing the layout of the magazine and it became more tabloid like, and in my opinion, which I stressed at the time, a much more inferior magazine. There was less content and more slick layouts.

Nowdays I down load it sporadically..and pretty much delete it straight away. They are no longer worth keeping like they used to be which is a shame, cause I do enjoy going back over past issues and reading through the race reports...and seeing just how woefully wrong they were with most of their predictions.

For me, Austria was a Pirelli, DRS, KERS kind of track for the late 90s and early 2000s. I always felt like the race was exciting and something would happen, and would genuinely anticipate the race. It may not have staged thrill a minute races, but there was always just something about it that I loved and compared with most races in that period, there was always passing and some drama.

That layout looks worse than any other circuit on the current calendar. What a shame..

simple lay-out, great racing. I was going to say "eat that Tilke" but he designed the place...

I think I have the subsciption out of habit now and possibly since I'm about 100 editions from having a complete run.