I love this street circuit....fast corners and a looooooooong straight from T16 thru T20. Hoping Pirelli tires don't blow up down the long straight. Image Unavailable, Please Login
I love this super long straight. Verstappen vs Ricciardo fight comes to mind. Will we have more of that?
Horner was to blame for that mess. Max had ERS issues and his car would "fizzle" out. Horner should have done a "Max, Ricciardo is faster than you" and switched both drivers.......but he didn't and the inevitable happened.
I know, but it was entertaining. I was not exactly referring to inter team battle, but between drivers.
I agree, it's a great track. Come to think of it I can't think of an actual bad part? Even the really narrow section, critical to get right for quali, done. Many other places to overtake. Great track.
I think very 50/50. Ferrari launches out of the 90 degree corners like crazy but red bull will close on the straights. Quali I'd say advantage Ferrari (or Charles, rather). Race...probably red bull.
Copy that. Agreed. Coming down that long straight at over 200+mph there wasn't any barrier separating the pit lane entry and the track......hopefully track organizers and the FIA have put something in place for 2022.
Even before the massive Max shunt (that could've ended very differently had he hit that wall) Excellent news
It could have been another Le Mans 55 had a car with wheel(s) missing gone spinning skating out of control at full speed into that pitlane. They are doing 350KPH down that straight. Reminds me of my local kart track in Mantes la Jolie west of Paris. In 1985 the club wanted a volunteer to assess safety there, I raised my arm and gave my little speech then was entrusted with the task at 21. The main danger was that while there was a pitlane with safe ingress and egress the paddock was at the end of a fast straight: wide open. Someone out of control would just shoot in there with people, vans, karts on trolleys, tool boxes...so I had the fence lengthened to block 80% of the paddock entrance and huge foam blocks half the size of a car each put in place, problem solved. A girl had actually tried a friend's kart and shot into the paddock, breaking her arm against a car... The main other thing was high speed esses with tall dirt banks right along the edges so you could not see an incident ahead until you were on it, too late. So I had a bulldozer digger push back the banks to open visibility without touching the design of those brilliant esses at all.
Nice work on that kart track safety fix! I don't think Baku 2021 would've been a 1955 Le Mans repeat, because there is a kink on the entrance that would prevent that...however, had Max veered left instead of right (like what happened to stroll, who blew the same tyre, albeit Stroll a bit earlier). The damage to Max would likely be season ending if not worse. Someone actually made a 3d animation with Max's crash mirrored exactly where it failed. Verstappen 3D Crash Animation - F1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix 2021 - YouTube
