Is Modern Formula One Track Design Too Boring for the Fans?
F1 track design is either amazing or terrible depending on who you ask, however, the similarities between the tracks are too obvious to ignore.
As we make our way into the middle of the 2019 F1 season, with Mercedes leading in full force, its always nice to look back and understand how some of these racing circuits have come to be. There are tracks that have existed in F1 since the early 1950’s, such as Monaco, Spa Francorchamps, Silverstone, and Monza. These tracks are some of the most recognizable during the regular season and usually make the cut when the next season’s track line up is announced. Of all of these, Monaco seems to be the track most undisturbed, mainly due to the fact that it is a street circuit and it was designed around a city, not the other way around. This creates for viciously unforgiving barriers and almost ridiculously tight racing. However, fans often complain that tracks like Monaco lose a certain level of excitement due to the fact that overtaking is nearly impossible throughout the track, thus, making the racing uneventful outside of qualifying.
Enter Hermann Tilke, the designer and architect of the majority of all modern F1 tracks. Thanks to Chain Bear F1, a very popular F1-based YouTube channel, we will hear some explanations of how Hermann Tilke tried to solve some of F1’s track layout issues. Obviously, this ordeal didn’t come without controversy and we will see if Tilke’s ideas and innovation helped or hurt the sport.
Remember how fans thought old tracks like Monaco were too tight? Tilke tried to solve this problem by creating the Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia in 1999, a track so wide, you could fit nearly 10 F1 cars side by side on the front straight. This track would become a cornerstone in modern F1 track layout and would create a recipe that nearly every single track Tilke designed after it would mimic almost to a tee.
This was the recipe Tilke cooked up and would apply it nearly every single track after Sepang. However, after two or three iterations of the exact same design concept, things start to get old, fast. The culmination of this stagnation came to be in the design of Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi. Chain Bear describes this best as “cookie cutter, lazy, uninspired design with too many dollars shifted to shiny buildings instead of to a few minutes thinking about the racing” and “F1 could sell your own Herman Tilke circuit from a box with about 5 different shapes”.
Not all is to be despised about Tilke’s modern tracks though, as the U.S. Grand Prix featuring the Tilke designed Circuit of the Americas was both a smash hit with spectators and drivers. Seemingly, you either love it or hate it. We will leave which side you guys pick up to you.
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