F1 this weekend
 

Anyone have the lowdown on this weeks Azerbaijan/Baku street circuit?

I didn't realize we were going to a new track this year. Could be good or maybe not.
I know it's on the western side of the Caspian and east of Turkey, but that's all I know. It's in and among a lot of trouble spots (I think).

I guess we'll find out this weekend. GMT+4, so should be an early morning race for eastern seaboard right??

Well I guess I should have done a bit of research first, it's easy to find Baku F1 circuit
info and a virtual flying lap online and it looks interesting, very tight and quite long. Almost as long as Spa. Should be good.

9 hour time zone change between races. That's gotta be tough on the teams.

I heard the talking heads mention at the end of the Montreal race (post race show), that many drivers have spent some time with the Baku circuit via their simulators and they seem to like it. We'll see what reality brings...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1465927306.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1465927323.jpg

Turn one=lower right 90 corner CCW

I predict an upset not in the making. Mercedes, 1 and 2.

Circuits with square corners never look proper to me. The old Detroit or Dallas
tracks had sq corners, I think, and were not much to look at. And the races therein
were sh**y.. IMO

Another finger up the nose of the traditional F1 fan, from Bernie the *******.

A country nobody could find on a map without help.
No motorsports tradition, just a lot of oil money to throw around.

An uninteresting circuit design, with a section so narrow I think it may be really dangerous. I hope nobody gets hurt.

JR

Why call it The GP of Europe? It is in the asscrack of Europe and Asia. Just call it what it is, The Mo' Money for Bernie GP.

One nice thing about street courses is how close you can get to the cars at full speed. Also nice watching in the turns where you're close enough to see their eyes looking at the apex and then looking down track as they accelerate out of the turn, assuming there's a driver still using a clear shield

I'm always excited to see a new race in a different part of the world. Looking forward to it. This season has been pretty exciting. I hope Ricciardo can get a win soon. Or maybe Vettel.

This was thrown together rather quickly to keep drivers from competing at LeMans in my opinion.


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Now that makes some sense DaveE, this race had poped up suddenly and in nowhere.
Tho it may turn out to be an interesting place.

Strange track layout, especially the side by side section.

As a F 1 fan for a while now the decision making process does baffle at times like this.
The plan to create a schedule conflict with Le Mans so as to keep F 1 drivers away,
Does seem like something that Bernie would think up. Petty, selfish, shortsighted.

I thought the cross over of F 1 drivers to the endurance sports car world was good for both. Seemed like the drivers liked it too.

Cheers Richard

This race has nothing to do with Le Mans. Bernie could have scheduled another race on the calendar this weekend. He has plenty to pick from.

This is all about a country that has $40 million to put in Bernie's little brown sack every year. That's a little more than the going rate, so how could he resist? He has no integrity.

An F1 race in a country that probably didn't have cars 20 years ago...

JR

I'll give it a chance, it's a very different layout, for sure... The super long straight should lead to very low downforce setups, so no wings combined with close walls/barriers and no runoff... It *could* be interesting... Assuming they have cranes in baku !

I'd love a rematch of ROS/HAM at the first corner ;-) (followed by a win from someone else)

all while I have the ipad Fox sports Go playing Le mans 24h on my lap.

Thank God we get Le Mans. My favorite weekend of the year, by far.

Here's why I am concerned about Baku. In the interest of running part of the track through the old downtown, it will pass through the section in the photo below. It's ridiculous.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1466015111.jpg

A more recent view, during an inspection of the work done to the "circuit."

Apart from this being a place where the mother of all wrecks could occur, don't be surprised if there are problems with the new asphalt that was laid over the cobblestones. Temporay street circuits have often had such problems in the past.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1466015343.jpg

Looks narrow. I foresee some bad accidents on that long narrow front straight.


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EQgAET0KczI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Castle is at 1:45.

Man, that looks bad. I hope the drivers boycott the race. It's as bad as racing in Macau.

JR

But wait, there's more...

Because crooked Bernie always tries to arrange the race time so that it can be viewed live by his favorite part of the F1 audience in whatever time he feels it's most convenient for them, I offer this little addendum:

The start time has moved forward to 18:00 local, 13:00 GMT, believed to be to prevent a finish in full darkness.

If I were a driver, I'd be pissed that it's anywhere near that time of day, versus something like high noon.

JR

Well that doesn't seem right. It was scheduled for start @1700 hrs Baku time, so if they intend to avoid darkness they should go to 1600 hrs Baku time. Going to 1800 wont help. IMO

It's ridiculous. They start Australia late enough in the day that the drivers have a hard time with glare in certain parts of the track; they've started Malaysia late enough that a red flag caused enough of a delay that darkness became an issue...

Bernie is insane.

JR

I hope you have your DVR's set to record after the scheduled ending times for each session. There's a good chance of delays. Lots of yellows, VSC, a red flag... now GP2 qualifying is postponed because of track problems.

JR

FP2 actually happened on time. Lots of problems with the curbs coming up and cutting tires. GP2 Qualifying was postponed so they could temporarily weld the curbs in place but at least one came loose in FP2.

I can see lots of places where biting off too much curb coming into a corner could pitch a car into a barrier. Worst case, you might see a pile-up. Pit entry looks bad.

Lots of places where a damaged or broken car might take forever to collect. God forbid more than one ends up in the run-off zones at a time. Backing out of the run-off near turn 8 (only option, it's too narrow for anything else) puts you backing up into oncoming traffic.

If they have much safety car time, or a red flag on Sunday, that late start time might bite them in the ass.

Another classic "European" GP.

JR

That would be interesting for a bicycle race (we used to call courses like that "crasheteriums"). An F1 race - probably not so much. Will either be carnage or a parade. Or a little from column A, a little from column B...

Yeah, strange looking race track, the whole place looks weird. I watched the entire practice 2 and can't recall seeing a single person or grandstands. Gothic, dark and sinister looking. IMO

Might be a great race, who knows?

That's the sad thing. Bernie just wants the money, the countries just want the publicity. Fans? Who cares?

I find it ironic that the "European GP" is next door to Iran. That moniker was always given to a GP that had questionable provenance. Need another GP in your country? Fine, we will schedule the "European GP" there... just pay us.

At least when they used to have the San Marino GP, most pundits thought San Marino was part of Italy...

It will be interesting to see if they can get through the race without a safety car or red flag. I'm hoping nobody gets hurt.

JR

That looks like one helluva dangerous race. If no one gets killed, then it'll be great.

F1 needs the revenue. Remember, racing costs money. The money FOM receives is split with the teams.

You can't have F1 races as charity events at sentimental old tracks that don't pay. If it doesn't make a commercial success, then the whole thing just goes away. I know some guys will ***** and say "ok it should go away". Well, then don't watch.

Maybe you don't understand that the teams only get around half. Nearly a billion dollars goes to the "owners" of F1. Imagine how much better it could be if they didn't need to charge such high sanctioning fees to pay the owners. That works out to about $40MM per race, if you do the math.

JR

Maybe you don't understand half equals 50%?

You are free to watch other racing series, since you don't want to start your own. May I recommend Formula E, Nascar, GP2.....

Who do you think pays for the fuel, the safety staffing, etc. These races do not run themselves.

I'm just saying that the owners don't add anything to F1 and if you didn't have to pay them that enormous amount of money, like in the old days, you could go to better tracks, have more fans attend the races, etc.

It's like a tax. Nothing good comes of it.

JR

I predict a safety car. There, I've said it!

It wouldn't surprise me to see a safety car on lap 1. One thing I though was odd was how little running there was with two or more cars in close proximity. If they don't practice that a little, lap one will get interesting.

The other things was how much faster they were running than the official trap speeds shown. They were north of 350Kph.

JR

A Quote from Hambone:

It’s really bumpy down the main straight, and you can’t really see Turn 1 that well, because the car’s vibrating, so it’s really hard. :D

JR

The question is, what color will the flags be : yellow, or red?

The track was slippery yesterday. Hopefully GP2 lays down some serious rubber and it gets properly run in.

Right, I saw very few cars also. Looks ghostly. Such a big (long) track. Too long really for a street track. Over 6 Km I think. Not sure why it's so long. Odd, but I'm no expert. Maybe it's all for the better. We shall see on fathers day.

So...Happy fathers day to you all (Ya'll) Take time to enjoy your family!

Wow. Watching that video, I was struck by how many gaps there seem to be in the concrete walls lining the track. Like they didn't have enough K-rails to fully make it around the place, so they spread the ones they had put a bit. Lots of hard corners to hit in the event of a crash. And that metal crowd control railing on the inside of turn 1 doesn't look like setting I'd want to hit, either.

Looks like a video game track, where you expect there to be big cartoon arrows in the corners telling you which way to go.

Interesting quali quotes
 

Hamilton as always "balls to the wall" in more ways than one. "And Alonso whose just come from the carpet factory museum, was unable to weave his way through traffic"

"Bottas has learned some of Vettel's flowery language" "Seriously WTF is he doing" (Bottas on Max's driving)

I hope no one gets hurt in tomorrows race.

I think there's a pretty good chance of a red flag on lap 1. For sure, this circuit has got to have the greatest likelihood of a safety car period, as there are so few cranes around the circuit. If somebody bites off too much of the curb into turn 8, you could have a pileup. Turn 1 might be interesting, too.

Very few stands and very few butts in the stands. There are supposed to be only 28,000 tickets for the weekend; today's attendance looked like a few thousand. Even the numerous free balconies were mostly empty. Obviously the locals could give a crap and maybe nobody wanted to travel to this race. Russians, maybe?

All in all, a weird event. Sad to think we have this and we are on the cusp of losing Brazil and Monza for next year.

JR

My prediction: 3 safety cars, 2 red flags, and a Bottas victory. All bets are off if it rains :D