Re: PRESS Bahrain GP

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 12:37:04 GMT, Pete Fenelon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:

>Largely because one designer (Mr Tilke) seems to have cornered the market in
>designing the new circuits and butchering the old ones, 

What a cruel German architect guy that Mr. Tilke is, forcing the Track
owners and especially the poor little Bernie Ecclestone to spend
millions on his track design monopoly. Apart from butchering beloved
old circuits, he even built tracks in the Middle and Far East, in
order to force F1 to promote drug consumption there. 

>and his circuits
>tend to be very similar. If your car works well on one Tilkedrome it
>works well on the others; if it doesn't, it doesn't. One decent straight
>leading into a slow corner, then a twisty maze of short straights and
>2nd/3rd gear corners and back home. Yawn.

Yes, very disappointing. F1 would love to race on tracks like the old
Nürburgring Nordschleife, but instead of designing such a track, Tilke
is actually racing there several times a year, and in Bathurst's Mount
Panorama, too. Seems he likes to keep these pleasures for himself. 

>And there are very few places on a Tilke circuit where a driver has to
>depend on courage and instinct.  

F1 drivers regularily ask for 300+ km/h blind corners which are off
camber and feature a bump in the middle, like the Ring's
"Schwedenkreuz".
Engine and tyre makers want long high speed sections that separate the
strong from the weak ones, because they like to see the competition
blow up big time, producing impressive crashs.
And officials want tracks that allow racing out in lonesome forests,
like in Hockenheim.
Yet all that Tilke gives them are boring short flat slow tracks, where
passing has to be done in the pits or at the Designated Passing Corner
in front of advertisements.

>Name a great corner on a Tilke circuit? 

Anyone in Barcelona, the track Hermann Tilke designed years ago, under
the pseudonym Ermano Dilgado.
Since then, he forced F1 to test there, and in order to reduce the
diversity of F1 racing, he cloned Catalunya ever since. Especially the
big F1 teams really hate to have to test and race on similar tracks,
and beg for a change that would give the teams with few money for
tests a better chance to succeed.

-- 
Matthias Flatt