A lap at Watkins Glen

If I had to name just one thing that the IndyCar series has gotten right, it would be that they race at the legendary Watkins Glen circuit. In fact, they race on the same full-length "Grand Prix" layout previously used for the United States Grand Prix during the 1970s. I think Watkins Glen is easily the best driving circuit on the IndyCar schedule for some decades, even compared with the golden age of IndyCar during the 1990s and measured against the likes of Laguna Seca and Road America. It's fun, it's fast, and it's exciting. Here's my lap of Watkins Glen, completed in 1:27.517 (faster than the lap record of 1:29.192 set by Helio Castroneves in 2007).



Watkins Glen is relentless succession of very quick corners, reminiscent of Brands Hatch in England or Mosport Park in Canada. The corners look sharp on paper, but they are banked, making them much faster than you'd expect. At Turn 1, downshift a couple gears and follow the concrete patch to the exit of the corner. Now, you set up for the Esses, which is best described as the American response to Eau Rouge. It's a flat-out, uphill climb to the back straightaway. Now, there is a chicane at the end of this straightaway, but it's not like one of those European chicanes where you have to brake hard and break up your rhythm. For this one, called Bus Stop, you barely slow down, using as much of the curbs as possible to minimize turning, and then get back on the gas as soon as you can see the exit.

Right away, you dive into the Inner Loop, a fast banked turn that goes into the Grand Prix extension, also known as the Boot. Turns 8 and 9 both give generous banking. Turn 10 is a slow, blind corner that leads back onto the main circuit. Turn 11 can be taken nearly-flat (although I slowed down a bit too much in the video) and Turn 12 is another exercise in maintaining stability through the banked concrete patch. The car should probably be set up with an emphasis on maximum speed and stability upon exiting the fast corners.

Oh, by the way, FOTA should race here, too.

A lap at Richmond

At 0.75 miles, Richmond International Raceway is the smallest circuit in the IndyCar series. It is also one of the more difficult ovals from a car set-up perspective. After a hundred laps of testing, I still could not get my car set up properly, and recorded a lap of 18.270 seconds, or 147.783 mph. No matter what I did to it, the car seemed to want to understeer in Turn 1, oversteer in Turn 2, and understeer badly into Turn 3. If IndyCar wants to keep playing in front of a NASCAR audience, I'd say this race is probably worth keeping---seems like more of a challenge than circuits like Iowa.

FOTA negotiates victory for Bernie and Max

Deals like this make me lose faith in humanity. It is a victory for tyranny and greed. A defeat for courage, progress and democracy.

I believe people were paralyzed into inaction due to their fears of a CART-IRL death spiral, which I have repeatedly argued would not have been the case. Sadly, my opinion has only so much reach compared to fearmongers like Joe Saward who kept arguing that a split would "destroy" F1 up to the very end. Saward is an intelligent man who has earned his living covering the sport since the 1980s. Perhaps that is why he feels rather attached to the current state of things.

I am much younger and do not have any special affection for Ferrari and Monaco. I just want to see the fastest, most innovative cars on the best circuits, and I believe both of these have been denied from me since I started watching in 1998. I am unconvinced that people from my generation are seriously interested in Formula 1 the way that the older people are. The way things are going, I predict that within twenty years of lack of changes, Formula 1 will find itself catering primarily to a viewership of pensioners who only cling to "the good old days," having failed to keep the young people excited about the sport. And that's how it will end, not with a bang but a whimper.

I don't know why people think there is anything worth preserving in Formula 1. It's gone on for fifty years. It's proved its point, served its purpose. The cars have essentially not changed for the last fifteen years. Why not pack it up and start a new series? Why not make it exciting again? I watched the race at Silverstone over the weekend and I was thoroughly bored. It didn't seem like a race----it seemed like a game, played the same way over and over.

Formula 1 logo. Formation lap. A bunch of identical cars with identical engines, chassis and tires on the grid. Lights go on and off. Somebody loses a wing near the back. Speculation about who's on how many stops. They stop. They stop again. They are forced to change to another tire compound. Somebody wins. Podium ceremony, flags raised, national anthems played, trophies handed out in the same order as ever, champagne spraying, press conference.

Why do I even bother anymore? It's the same freaking race, every race, every season. But they can't mix it up, because the races are centrally governed and the procedures are hard-coded into the FIA regulations. I am not afraid to tell you on this blog that I don't actually watch all of the races because they happen at 4:30am for me. And if I (a relatively knowledgeable fan who blogs) am not watching it, what hope is there that Formula 1 will entice the general public to watch, when there's so much other stuff to do in the world?

A renewal of the Concorde Agreement is a renewal of "more of the same." It's a renewal of the fact that people like me will find it harder and harder to get up in the morning to watch Formula 1. And Max Mosley will stay in power indefinitely and Bernie Ecclestone will continue to steal money from the teams and promoters.

At least my blog will stay in business, as I will continue to have many things to complain about.

Update: Max Mosley has announced that he will finally retire in October. But I'll believe it when I see it. There remains the possibility that he might be replaced with a worse dictator. And there is nothing in the agreement about the removal of Bernie Ecclestone or fairer distribution of wealth. All the press is saying this is a win for the sport, but I am still skeptical.

FOTA Should Race Here, Vol. 3: Zandvoort

Designed by John "the anti-Tilke" Hugenholtz, Zandvoort is one of the few circuits that has retained much of its original design even after decades of racing. Although it underwent a significant reprofiling in the 1990s, the best parts of the circuit have remained unaltered, and the new parts have actually stayed in character with the original circuit. Zandvoort is still about big, fast turns, elevation changes, and banked corners.

I took my McLaren out for a drive and clocked a 1:17.588, which beats Luca Badoer's lap record of 1:19.880 set in a Ferrari F1 car in 2001. Not the cleanest lap, though. I'm sure you can do better.



First turn is the Tarzan corner, a banked hairpin quite unlike anything else on the Formula 1 calendar. You can brake very deep into it and still get around with no problem. Then, you guide your car over the hill (Gerlach corner) before braking for Hugenholtz corner. From here, it's a wild, flat out ride through the dunes, and you won't be doing much braking until at least four sweeping turns later, when you finally arrive at the Renault corner, which requires a slight tap on the brakes and a downshift or two. However, the circuit becomes very wide, so you have more space on the exit than you think. This is also the "new" part of the circuit, but it still feels old-school. After the anachronistically-named Vodafone corner, you'll come to a fairly long straight, before having to negotiate the obligatory chicane. Having cleared that, you'll be heading back to the "old" circuit, completing the lap with two very fast right-handers, similar to the way the Barcelona circuit used to end.

I like this circuit because it challenges you and your car, and yet it doesn't bore you the way that Hermann Tilke's circuits do. Zandvoort is actually fun to drive on. You look forward to the sweeping corners lap after lap. It doesn't feel like a chore. FOTA should race here.

I leave you with a video of Alain Prost at the old Zandvoort layout.



Past editions of FOTA Should Race Here:
Vol. 2: Brands Hatch
Vol. 1: Laguna Seca

FOTA-FIA is more like CART-USAC than CART-IRL

Qwerty over at Motor Racing Journal has written a great post on why we should not assume that the Formula 1 split will end up like the open-wheel split in America.

[T]he biggest mistake of all was then that both series went spec. A single specification series absolutely killed it for me. It was absolute nonsense. To me, any attempt by Formula 1 to head down the spec route would be the thing that kills it.

This analysis is spot-on. It wasn't the split that killed open-wheel racing in America, it was the decision by one series to institute a "chassis-freeze" and the other series to hand-pick the chassis constructors. These policies turned both of the series into spec formula racing instead of playgrounds for innovation.

Don't forget there was an open-wheel "split" in 1979 that was highly successful and began under circumstances very similar to the FOTA-FIA war. Let me just quote from the Wikipedia article:

The split from USAC in 1978 (first race in 1979) was spurred by a group of activist car owners who had grown disenchanted with what they saw as an inept sanctioning body. Complaining of poor promotion and small purses, this group coalesced around Dan Gurney who, in early 1978, wrote what came to be known as the "Gurney White Paper," the blueprint for an organization called Championship Auto Racing Teams. Gurney took his inspiration from the improvements Bernie Ecclestone had forced on Formula One with his creation of the Formula One Constructors Association. The White Paper called for the owners to form CART as an advocacy group to promote USAC's national championship, doing the job where the sanctioning body would not. The group would also work to negotiate television rights and race purses, and ideally hold seats on USAC's governing body.

This particular "split" turned into a series that, within 15 years, had several ex-World Champions, multiple chassis, engine and tire constructors, had an excellent safety record, and was considered a serious threat to Formula 1.

In the meantime, the original series (USAC IndyCar) continued for only one more full season before losing out to CART. Just like the FIA's Formula 1 series, the USAC IndyCar series boasted only one legitimate contender after the split (A.J. Foyt).

If the Formula 1 split continues, I believe it is more likely that we will see the death of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship within a season or two, and that the FOTA World Championship (whatever it is called) will usher in a golden age for Formula 1-style racing, as CART did for Indy cars for over 15 years.

Fear not the breakaway series!

I congratulate FOTA on their announcement of a breakaway series.

The announcement should not be seen as a move to damage Formula 1. This is, instead, a long-overdue rejection of the authoritarian leadership of Max Mosley and the greed of Bernie Ecclestone. Any other solution involving "compromise" with these individuals would have amounted to a continuation of a grossly unjust institution that has been responsible for so many of the scandals and "dumbing-down" of the sport in recent years, not to mention the outsourcing of the races to exotic locations with no motor sport history and the arbitrary cancellation of the more classic races.

To correct many years of injustice is never easy. We cannot fear the pain of having two series in 2010, if it means that we will ultimately have a series that is properly governed and will be economically fair to all competitors involved. It is easy to say that we should give up and fight another day. But as I have said many times over, there is nothing left to lose, nothing worth preserving, in the current Formula 1. It is time to start over.

Had a compromise been made between FOTA and Max Mosley, I would have lost faith in the sport. Instead, I am now excited about the prospect of a series in which the competitors can govern themselves, and perhaps more importantly, benefit financially in a fair manner. I am excited to see that people can stand up to tyranny. This is, without a doubt, the best news I have heard coming out of Formula 1 since I started watching in 1998.

For more on my position on the FOTA-FIA war, please refer to my earlier posts, "FOTA should "split" from the sinking ship!" and "FOTA can create a new golden age for motorsport."

A lap at Iowa Speedway

All too easy. This is a video of me within ten minutes of driving on Iowa for the first time, using my trusty Milwaukee setup. Lap speed: 184.859 mph (easily beating the actual lap record of 178.490 mph). Didn't have to brake, didn't have to lift. All I needed to do was to turn left and make a slight correction in Turn 4 for oversteer. IndyCar needs to get rid of these ovals which pose no driving challenge.

A lap at Silverstone

This year's British Grand Prix might be the last one to take place at Silverstone, site of the first Formula 1 race back in 1950. It's a shame, because Silverstone is one of the last circuits to feature some really awe-inspiring corners, despite being progressively mutilated with chicanes and slow corners since the late 1970s. Nonetheless, Silverstone is one of the few circuits that can legitimately claim to link modern Formula 1 with its colorful past.

Let's have a tour of the circuit. Here's another last-row effort from me: a 1:22.663 in a car that should be about 3 seconds faster.



Earlier, I was raving to you about how fast Brands Hatch is, and similarly I shall rave about the sensation of speed you can get from Silverstone, particularly its first few corners. Copse is an incredible, flat out, 6th gear corner which lines you up for Maggotts, a flat-out slight left and right (like some kind of super fast chicane), and Becketts, only a slightly slower left-right complex. Whew! The circuit rewards you for your hard work by giving you a break all the way down Hangar Straight, but then it's another very fast, slightly-banked corner called Stowe. I don't get this one right in the video, so expect to go significantly quicker with practice.

Then, here comes the part of the circuit I don't understand. Suddenly, you are forced to drive through some slow corners (The Vale, Club, Abbey) even though you can use the curbs without much consequence. Bridge (a fast right) is a nice reprise of the earlier corners, but it dumps you into some agonizingly slow corners (Priory, Brooklands, and Luffield). Ironic that one of the slowest corners on the circuit (Brooklands) should be named after the world's first high-speed oval. And Luffield just takes forever to get around, but at least you come out of it looking forward to the start/finish straight and the breathtaking Copse corner.