How to fix a Tilkedrome

[WhiteBlue]

Armchair enthusiasts know better than Tilke. Typical.

Wow

[Pandamasque]

"You approach the first turn at high speed and enter it flat-out but then the corner increasingly tightens up and you have to shift down to second gear. Making a clean exit will be even more interesting next year when we'll be driving without traction control again."

Now, contrast the many trajectories you can find in this curve at the meleé following the start of the race, compared with a regular curve and conclude something, please.

Try it on a simulator. In theory it's fun. And there's only 1 line through there. Driving Tilkedromes is constantly trying to find a single best line in an endless stadium of asphalt while making the car do awkward things like gradual braking and turning at the same time. That makes for very mentally exhausting tedious experience, given that the markers are usually harder to find.
- It's not pleasant to drive. Unlike something like Pouhon, Pflanzgarten II, Aqua Minerale, Copse or 130R.
- It doesn't promote overtaking. 1 quick line that constantly weaves along the track width.
- It doesn't look good on TV. Unlike narrow sweeping corners where cars look faster.

Tilke may be good at facilities and safety, but here in my armchair I feel qualified enough to tell what's exciting and what's not.

I agree. Tilke bashing has become a popular sport by people who don't know any better and are looking for someone to blame for the fact that f1 is not a perfect racing series.

Wrong. Have you seen FIA GT1 at Abu Dhabi? It was ridiculous! Those bangers seemed to have more racing room at blooming Zolder!
Tilke deserves all the bashing until he stops getting all the F1 contracts!

[Tim.Wright]

Wrong. Have you seen FIA GT1 at Abu Dhabi? It was ridiculous! Those bangers seemed to have more racing room at blooming Zolder!
Tilke deserves all the bashing until he stops getting all the F1 contracts!

This attitude is exactly what Im talking about. For whatever reason you think all the problems with the racing today is the fault of one man. Its not quite as simple as you would like to believe.

Tim

[andrew]

Armchair enthusiasts know better than Tilke. Typical.

Wow

Wow all you like but it's true.

[Tamburello]

Just today both Brundle and Coulthard were criticising the 'snail' of Shanghai as adding little to the driving experience; one call it 'fussy' and the other saying that it 'probably looked good on CAD'.

[Harvey]

Brundle also said he'd love to drive it though. I got the impression he thought a good corner to drive, but not necessarily to watch.

And that's a good point actually. Is a corner a "good" corner cos it creates a series of overtakes, or cos it is technically challenging to master. I love watching passes in F1, but I also love watching cars on the ragged edge on a corner which I know is tricky to get right. I for one like the turn1-2 "snail" in China, as it's easy to f**k up.

[Pandamasque]

Wrong. Have you seen FIA GT1 at Abu Dhabi? It was ridiculous! Those bangers seemed to have more racing room at blooming Zolder!
Tilke deserves all the bashing until he stops getting all the F1 contracts!

This attitude is exactly what Im talking about. For whatever reason you think all the problems with the racing today is the fault of one man. Its not quite as simple as you would like to believe.

Tim

That's because the same series produced amazing racing a few weeks afterwards in the tight Zolder circuit, which is hardly a fitting place for 600hp GT cars with no TC. Same happened in 2010 too, spectacular GT1 races all season long and a snorefest in Abu Dhabi. They were able to drive much closer than F1, essentially bumper to bumper. But as long as you move out of line a bit you loose tons of time. Not so elsewhere. Conclusion: there's nothing wrong with the cars.
And by the way both DC and Brundle made the same point today about corners that look good only on CAD.
At older circuits cars look like they actually go somewhere, in tilkedromes they look like doing a bit of autotest around the pitlane.
Having said that, there are some good corners in most of the Tilke's layouts, as an exception to the rule.

[Tamburello]

Brundle also said he'd love to drive it though. I got the impression he thought a good corner to drive, but not necessarily to watch.

He has driven the corner but not in an F1 car, obviously. He said that he found it 'fussy' (or some such word) but wondered how it was like in an F1 car, to which Coulthard replied that "it is probably one of those ideas that looked good on CAD but isn't so good out on track!" (paraphrase again).

[Terrible3]

I hate to sound like a broken record but a lot of tracks today lack elevation change. I think the hallmarks of a lot of the famous tracks are how the typography adds depth and challenge to otherwise uninteresting track features. Imagine for a second Laguna Seca, Road Atlanta, Monaco and Spa if they were all paved on a single flat plane like many of the modern tracks. I am pretty sure the corkscrew would be indistinguishable from many of the modern chicanes and would present far less passing opportunities.

In terms of providing a higher chance of passing I find it interesting that sometimes Tilke gets some turns completely spot on and then on others a complete miss. For example at Yas Marina the needlessly complex series of turns 5-7 ruin the hairpin and really any overtaking opportunity. I think Tilke's logic was to introduce turns 5-6 to slow the cars down enough that the grandstands could be placed very close to the hairpin at turn 7. With the speeds entering the hairpin being so low it meant that next to no runoff area was required. I just feel he should have made it a proper hairpin (See Canadian GP) rather than that clumsy mess.

I think Tilke did a fantastic job with turns 1,2 and 15 at Sepang. The first two turns allow for a compromise turn where when defending the inside of the faster turn one the outside line allows for better track position into turn two. If for example turns 1 and 2 were more like 7 and 8 there would be no compromise and it would be an easy case of defending the inside line. I think turn 15 despite being a simple turn is done rather well. The grandstand is positioned on the inside of the turn so the seats are close to the action. The track width is wide enough that there is an alternate line to take when the driver in front is defending. Several times last week I saw the defending driver take a more traditional apex in order to defend and the attacking driver take the late apex to setup a good run into turn one.

[Tamburello]

Nice analysis.

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, after watching yesterday's Chinese GP, I think the track showed how good it is and how important is to have a wide track, with curves that are different from "the rest". Many driver errors, many wrong racing lines I saw yesterday.

I wonder if any overtaking record was broke. After all, this track has had this record (for a dry race, of course) for some years now.

I've always wondered also if the TV camera director is the single most important thing to make a track look good... Apparently FIA has learned to show replays! That's an incredible technological advance that appeared recently... if I'm not mistaken.

I agree heartily with Terrible3. Sharp vertical curves are hard to design well. There must be a coincidence of vertexes between horizontal and vertical curves.



Finally, to say the truth, in regular roads you try not to make long straights. I wonder what would people say if you presented a track with no straights, as modern design prefers (lower right part in the previous image). When you do this, there are fewer water puddles because all the road has good drainage (it hasn't the flat parts that horizontal straights create).

Also it would be interesting to create a track with no circular curves at all, only spirals. THAT would be a nightmare for some drivers (look, ma! No sharply defined apexes!).

Tumbarello, I will answer your question (in other thread) about good track design practices. As soon as I finish the answer, I'll create a thread for that: good design. Thanks, writing it has been entertaining (if slow).

[Tamburello]

Looking forward to it, Ciro!

[Pandamasque]

Have we watched the same race? Most of the overtaking happened on the straights before the hairpin before entering T1. Mostly due to cars being in a different phase of tyre degradation and different strategies (something I've been hoping to see for a long time).

PS: shame on you for mentioning overtaking 'records' after a race under DRS rules

[Jeffsvilleusa]

I used to bash Tilke, but I saw a documentary on him and how he looked to the Nordschleife for inspiration, and how he translated his inspiration to Istanbul Park, and my respect for him grew. Also I found that drivers favored a lot of his tracks: Korea got rave reviews, on F1.com the initial reactions of all the drivers after the first practice for Valencia were favorable and Malaysia is also well spoken of by drivers. I kind of agree with Ciro that Tilke is an artist, trying to do his best, and not always able to come through.

Ciro also mentioned Hamilton's super circuit which is more like a list of his favorite turns, but it seems Tilke is making a little Frankensteins monster of his own at Austin which looks like a 'best of' circuit design- time will tell.

For me the issue is to let someone else have a go! Someone asked for other contemporary circuits, does Portimao Circuit qualify? I think Singapore was based on a Tilke design, but another group handled the project, and it certainly brings a different character to the racing. Anyway, it doesn't seem likely.

[Giblet]

DO what the Austin people are doing, and not allow him to have full design reign of the tracks. The Texas people made it very clear to Tilke, that he was building the track they wanted, not what he thought they wanted.

Of course he has some artistic license, but his design scope has been limited this time around.