Circuits in the street
Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:30AM
I am doing an interview with Mark Glendenning of Autosport this morning about the Adelaide F1 race. Autosport is 60 years old this year and is running a series of articles on that history, including a review of iconic tracks from each decade. They have chosen Adelaide for the 80's, which is quite appropriate, as we rewrote the rules for street circuits. This has prompted me to write about what makes Adelaide so good, it is still going after all in V8Supercar guise.
I have said often, and recently, how it annoys me that tracks are built to fit in to the surroundings and not vice versa. This is never more true than for a circuit in the streets. Now I use this term to reflect how it should be viewed, and how I was told to approach Adelaide. One, I was told by the Government who were paying for this that I "was not building a track for 24 prima donnas, I was showing off Adelaide." Two, the sporting body in Australia, CAMS, told me I was building a circuit in the streets, not a street circuit. In simple terms this meant I was not going to be given carte blanche to ignore the rules of track design, but should work as if I were building a normal circuit, and where I could not meet the requirements of those rules then we would discuss options and finally an exemption.
This results in a very different mindset, and I am grateful to them as it was the basis of our philosophy and the driving force behind decisions made to put a lot of effort into rearranging "street furniture" to produce a great track. We knew the race had a long term contract and with Government backing not likely to stop early. We also wanted to make setting up the track as easy as possible, so if we were going to move things like street lights and traffic signals then we should design a system to do that without digging them up every time. Without going into details we came up with great solutions, and it pains me to know that very few have been copied. When I see a race like Long Beach that has been going over 30 years and still has barriers placed to go around light poles I have to ask why?
Of course the streets we had to work with gave us a great start. I always say that a track designs itself, it is there, I just have to find it. Like they say with sculpture, it is in there, you just have to knock all the excess off to reveal it. Adelaide had the parklands next to the city center, and wide roads, but still with medians and light poles and traffic signals that needed rearranging. I was aware as a driver that being able to see through corners was really important, and I did not want it to have that tunnel effect, so I moved the barriers back whenever there was the opportunity, and on the inside of corners moved it back to the back of the footpath. To prevent damage to wheels we filled in the curb to make a FISA type race curb, for which more than one team thanked us for the money we saved them. This lead to problems we had not foreseen. The only piece of track we had problems with was the footpath at the Rundle Street corner, where Rosberg for instance had more of the car on the footpath than the road!
Talking of street tracks, Le Mans started yesterday and the Peugeot's were quick straight out of the box. Under the qualifying times from last year while the track was still cleaning up from being a public road. Audi are going to have to pray for rain, which it looks like they might get. I mentioned Radio Le Mans, and if you are not listening you are missing out. These guys know their stuff. No fluff, know the history, know the cars and drivers, and are on top of what is happening 100% In some ways it is better than TV, as the TV tends to concentrate on one or two cars or teams, while these guys have enough people to be able to capture anything that is happening as it happens, in whatever class. And they paint great word pictures. The description of the Ferrari that came in on the back of a truck during the Qualifying session was classic. I am going to tune in to their commentary during the race rather than listen to the Speed guys. No offence, but they actually know something and do not keep going off into which motel they stayed at when they raced here 20 years ago.
The Jaguar is living down to it's expectations. It ran 6 laps in four hours during practice, and did not manage much more in the two hour qualifying. It has some pace, not enough, when it is going, but whoever in the Jaguar marketing department thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. They have always made great looking cars that are fun to drive, but have been plagued with a reputation for being unreliable. The latest designs are so good I could even be tempted to buy one, but this debacle is not convincing anyone that they have resolved the reliability issues, even though I have not heard of problems with the latest road cars.
I have said often, and recently, how it annoys me that tracks are built to fit in to the surroundings and not vice versa. This is never more true than for a circuit in the streets. Now I use this term to reflect how it should be viewed, and how I was told to approach Adelaide. One, I was told by the Government who were paying for this that I "was not building a track for 24 prima donnas, I was showing off Adelaide." Two, the sporting body in Australia, CAMS, told me I was building a circuit in the streets, not a street circuit. In simple terms this meant I was not going to be given carte blanche to ignore the rules of track design, but should work as if I were building a normal circuit, and where I could not meet the requirements of those rules then we would discuss options and finally an exemption.
This results in a very different mindset, and I am grateful to them as it was the basis of our philosophy and the driving force behind decisions made to put a lot of effort into rearranging "street furniture" to produce a great track. We knew the race had a long term contract and with Government backing not likely to stop early. We also wanted to make setting up the track as easy as possible, so if we were going to move things like street lights and traffic signals then we should design a system to do that without digging them up every time. Without going into details we came up with great solutions, and it pains me to know that very few have been copied. When I see a race like Long Beach that has been going over 30 years and still has barriers placed to go around light poles I have to ask why?
Of course the streets we had to work with gave us a great start. I always say that a track designs itself, it is there, I just have to find it. Like they say with sculpture, it is in there, you just have to knock all the excess off to reveal it. Adelaide had the parklands next to the city center, and wide roads, but still with medians and light poles and traffic signals that needed rearranging. I was aware as a driver that being able to see through corners was really important, and I did not want it to have that tunnel effect, so I moved the barriers back whenever there was the opportunity, and on the inside of corners moved it back to the back of the footpath. To prevent damage to wheels we filled in the curb to make a FISA type race curb, for which more than one team thanked us for the money we saved them. This lead to problems we had not foreseen. The only piece of track we had problems with was the footpath at the Rundle Street corner, where Rosberg for instance had more of the car on the footpath than the road!
Talking of street tracks, Le Mans started yesterday and the Peugeot's were quick straight out of the box. Under the qualifying times from last year while the track was still cleaning up from being a public road. Audi are going to have to pray for rain, which it looks like they might get. I mentioned Radio Le Mans, and if you are not listening you are missing out. These guys know their stuff. No fluff, know the history, know the cars and drivers, and are on top of what is happening 100% In some ways it is better than TV, as the TV tends to concentrate on one or two cars or teams, while these guys have enough people to be able to capture anything that is happening as it happens, in whatever class. And they paint great word pictures. The description of the Ferrari that came in on the back of a truck during the Qualifying session was classic. I am going to tune in to their commentary during the race rather than listen to the Speed guys. No offence, but they actually know something and do not keep going off into which motel they stayed at when they raced here 20 years ago.
The Jaguar is living down to it's expectations. It ran 6 laps in four hours during practice, and did not manage much more in the two hour qualifying. It has some pace, not enough, when it is going, but whoever in the Jaguar marketing department thought this was a good idea needs to be fired. They have always made great looking cars that are fun to drive, but have been plagued with a reputation for being unreliable. The latest designs are so good I could even be tempted to buy one, but this debacle is not convincing anyone that they have resolved the reliability issues, even though I have not heard of problems with the latest road cars.
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