F1 cars will hit 298kph in Craner Curves at the new Donington Park in 2010

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2010 Donington Park F1 circuit (click to enlarge)
When – or if – the British Grand Prix moves to Donington Park in 2010 the new circuit will take Silverstone’s place as the fourth quickest circuit regularly used by Formula 1.

Documents submitted by the circuit owners to North West Leicestershire District Council projects an average lap speed of 220.75kph with cars hitting a maximum of 316kph on the revised start/finish straight.

But even more excitingly, they’ll reach almost 300kph in the thrilling, downhill Craner Curves.

The following current F1 tracks are faster: Monza (average lap sped 254kph), Spa-Francorchamps (234kph), Suzuka (233kph) and Silverstone (228kph).

The estimated lap time is put at 1’17.27. The track length is 4.738km, so assuming the maximum race distance remains 305km we can expect the race to be 65 laps long.

A lap of the new Donington Park

From the new start/finish line the cars will hit the top speed of 316kph before braking down to 94kph for the slowest corner on the track, which is presently called the Adelaide hairpin.

The new section of track follows, with the cars deccelerating from 285kph to 234kph in a long left-hander, then braking for the second-slowest corner on the track, a 99kph left-hand hairpin.

A 190kph right-hander will bring them back onto the present track, and the cars will hit 292kph on the approach to Redgate.

Redgate, which today is the first corner on the track, will be taken at 186kph. The fabulous Craner Curves are apparently going to be untouched, and the cars will be doing 298kph as they exit them and head towards Old Hairpin. There they’ll ease off to 229kph.

The cars will be back up to 296kph before McLeans, where they’ll have to brake down to 196kph. The final corner will be the third slowest on the track at 142kph, and will hopefully allows cars to follow each other closely onto the main straight.

But will it happen?

The new circuit looks promising – but with the source of funding for the multi-million pound project unclear even before the credit crunch started to bite, I just hope we have a British Grand prix at all in 2010.

Bernie Ecclestone recently said that Lewis Hamilton’s world championship victory did not guarantee the future of the British Grand Prix.

In 1993, when the circuit was last used by F1, Alain Prost set a pole position time of 1’10.458 (205.552kph) in his Williams-Renault FW15C on the 4.023km track.

Thanks to Chris for the link to all the Donington Park planning documents.

2010 Donington Park F1 circuit (click to enlarge)

More on the 2010 British Grand Prix at Donington Park

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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14 comments on “F1 cars will hit 298kph in Craner Curves at the new Donington Park in 2010”

  1. ain’t holdin’ my breath

  2. I dont trust those numbers.

  3. If – IF – it happens it could be epic. If…

  4. So where is everyone parking? In the airport over the road?

  5. Bernie keeps threatening the British GP, but the fact remains that when Schumacher-mania was at it’s height we had 2 GP’s in Germany, now with Alonso at the top of the sport we have 2 in Spain. I will be gob-smacked if we don’t have a British GP somewhere in 2010. I personally hope it’s Donington as it’s a lot nearer to me and is a fantastic circuit, but if not then I wouldn’t bet against Silverstone.

    Bernie goes where the money is. With Lewis doing so well (and fingers crossed Button doing better) the sport will be back to it’s most popular in UK in the next few years so people will pay for tickets to see the GP even if the price went up to cover Bernie’s stupid fees.

    I still can’t help but wonder whether this isn’t all a power-play by him to try and get the contract as race promoter to make even more money…

    Edited to add: I’ve just realised something…with all the modifications to the track, looks like we’ll be losing one of (to me) the iconic parts of Donington, the Dunlop footbridge….

  6. Bernie is just dropping the british gp lets face it. Instead of putting abit of extra money into silverstone he starting all over again with donnington which he knows will not be completed in time which makes a perfect excuse not to have a gp here and go to somewhere like dubai which has the dosh to pay.

  7. Surely the first corner is the Melbourne Hairpin, not Adelaide. Got your Auzzie GP venues mixed up Keith!

    And why am I seeing no main grandstand opposite the pitlane? Surely a MAJOR oversight right there.

  8. Well, if it happens then the craner curves are going to be fantastic and I’ll definately be there!

    Just one thing, Keith, you’ve used the wrong units for the track length ie. kph instead of Km.

  9. In the present economic climate, that heading should have been ……..”F1 cars may hit 298kph in Craner Curves at the new Donington Park in 2010″

  10. HounslowBusGarage
    17th November 2008, 14:11

    If they do go that fast through Craner, is there enough run-off area at the Old Hairpin?
    Actually, since the track from the current start straight to Macleans is not being altered, it would be interesting to test an F1 car on the track in its current form to see if the projected speeds are matched by actual speeds. Wonder if they’ve tried that?

  11. Seedy – Fixed, ta.

    Oliver – I did write in the intro that it’s far from certain this will actually happen.

    Hounslow – Given the amount of working they’ll need to do there in the meantime, they might not have chance. And in its current guise it might not have a high enough FIA safety rating for F1 cars to lap it.

    However Cars International have a 2004-spec Jaguar R5 they use for F1 driving experiences and it did a lap of 55.5s in March. Marc Hynes drove.

  12. Adrian, I agree with you. I think that given Bernie’s history with Silverstone, he is waiting for them to go on their knees begging him to buy them out.
    Lets see how far down the line Donington get before Bernie refuses to race there, as hes already threatened. If he waits till the last minute after all the money is spent then I definately won’t bother wasting my money to help his little circus out of debt!

  13. Night race at Rockingham, ideal second race to Donington.

  14. Is it just me or does anyone else see large corner similarities of the donington circuit to the nurburgring f1 circuit?

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