From The Library: How to design a race track

With the second half of the F1 season well under way, I thought it would be a good opportunity to do a column about race tracks – inspired, in part, by Zandvoort. The fast, narrow circuit through the dunes is a fantastic challenge for the drivers. It’s a track that rewards bravery and precision while punishing any driver lacking confidence or any car with inherent deficiencies. It’s an ‘old school’ track which everyone enjoys. But why?

The range of tracks that makes up the F1 World Championship has evolved a great deal over the past few decades. Of course the cars have changed, the scale of the teams has changed, the levels of fitness and preparation of the drivers have changed but perhaps the most visible difference to the sport has been the circuits themselves. When Sepang in Malaysia opened in 1999, it was the first of the modern tracks built in a way that vastly raised the bar in terms of safety, grandstands and paddock facilities. Crucially it was also a brilliant track that I personally loved racing on and so did most other drivers too.

Drivers love circuits that are challenging and have character. If you want examples of how to get it right and wrong, Sochi in Russia was pretty rubbish for a driver, made up of 90-degree corners with several frustrating off-camber corners while Bahrain is a brilliant track for racing and spectating and we get loads of wheel to wheel action. It’s a good track for testing too as it has a decent range of corners; yet it never makes the top of any driver’s list as a favourite. If I think of my personal top five favourite tracks – Suzuka, Silverstone, Monaco, Le Mans and Macau – what they all have in common is that they’re flowing, challenging and therefore rewarding when you put in a decent lap.