Team input "invaluable" to Indian circuit

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Organisers of next year’s inaugural Indian Grand Prix have announced they are taking input from the teams in designing the new circuit, with the aim of making it one of the most challenging and interesting tracks on the calendar.

Hermann Tilke – the architect behind several new circuits including Turkey and Abu Dhabi – crafted the initial design for the Jaypee Group Circuit.

According to Mark Hughes, vice president of JPSK Sports:

We have shared the design with some of the Formula One teams to put it into their simulators, and they have come back with some recommendations on how to modify it to make it a little more exciting.

I have been lucky to have worked in Bahrain and Abu Dhabi before, so I have a good relationship with the teams myself. I was able to go to some of them and ask them if they are able to give their input and the feedback has been invaluable.
Mark Hughes

Construction has already begun and the organisers say that they have moved four million cubic tons of earth to give the circuit plenty of undulation, with a 14 metre rise between turns one and three alone.

Inspiration is said to have been taken from Turkey’s turn eight, with a double-apex corner, slightly banked, forming part of a ‘mini-arena’ with room for 13,000 spectators.

"I think the drivers are going to find it a good challenge," added Hughes. "The track is quite unique, and hopefully the drivers and teams will not complain as they have given their own input. I don’t think that as a promoter and venue owner this has been done before."

Hughes predicts the track will be ready for FIA homologation in July next year, with the race organisers anticipating a late-season slot on the 2011 calendar.

45 comments on “Team input "invaluable" to Indian circuit”

  1. Ooh look! More shiny buildings!

    1. Holy lamas in a fishing contest!
      That was my first thought as well!

      1. Haha, and mine :D

  2. Shame there aren’t any Indian drivers in F1 or any decent ones waiting in the wings. Turnout is gonna be low at this race.

    1. Er… Karun Chandhok?

      1. Jarred Walmsley
        24th August 2010, 22:03

        Well, he’s not really in F1 is he, he hasn’t driven for ages thanks to the almighty dollar wielded by Yamamoto.

        1. Shame he lacks the almighty skill…

      2. He said ‘decent’.

    2. yeah and f1 ticket prices are usually very expensive. not very attractive in a developing country like india.

      1. heard of IPL??please research and comment regarding developing contry, sales, prices

  3. What’s the homologation thing exactly?

    1. You’ll get all of the details here:

      What Goes Into Homologating an International Race Circuit ?

      http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Goes-Into-Homologating-an-International-Race-Circuit?&id=4659084

      1. So hold on, where does it say the the overall track gradient is limited? The start/finish straight at 2% yes, but everyone always says “the gradient of the track is limited”. It doesn’t say that anywhere there.

        1. ExplosiveFace
          25th August 2010, 8:13

          It doesn’t say it in that article, but there is a special formula including corner speed, radius and gradient that the FIA use to deem new corners “safe”.

          http://www.fia.com/en-GB/sport/regulations/Pages/Circuits.aspx

          1. It’s designed to to the cars taking off over crests too.

            I think Mark Webber’s quite fond of those rules…

  4. Nobody cares about the buildings… Show us the track Tilke! The Track!!!!

    1. We’ve had a circuit layout for months. It looks like a duck. From Kyalami.

      1. It did not look anything much special though.

        Not sure the imput from those teams made them change a lot, but hopefully it helped make a good track.

        What’s with everyone trying to copy Turkey’s turn 8. Is that what we will have at each new Tilke track now?

  5. TheGreatCornholio
    24th August 2010, 21:54

    New track + Herman Tilke= PANTS. As 1st post it’ll be be Ooh look at the shiny buildings as far as the money mad midget is concerned, to hell with excitement for the spectators! More like excrement for the spectators:(. Rant over:)

    1. Once again another anti-Tilke rant from someone who has no idea what actually goes into creating a circuit … I give up.

  6. Shiny buildings, enough asphalt to repave 90% of all roads here in the netherlands AND team input to make it more exiting. /StillNotImpressed.

  7. It’s just a little bit funny that Tilke finds it so difficult to come up with new decent corners that he’s got to pay homage to his one decent one in Turkey turn 8.

    1. …what? ‘hes got to pay homage’? ‘He’ didn’t do anything. And he doesn’t HAVE to do anything.

      Making it out to be inspired by turn 8 is no different to making it out to be inspired by every other long, quick, corner in motor racing, what they call ‘carousels’ in America road racing.

      1. I was thinking earlier that Turkey Turn 8 could be seen as a homage to Pouhon at Spa – long, fast, downhill left…

      2. I was making a tongue in cheek reference to the line

        “Inspiration is said to have been taken from Turkey’s turn eight”.

  8. There is only so much that you can do with building the asphalt part f1 Track and i think by the sounds of it he has done everything he can.

    And if you went to an f1 track and you were sitting on an uncomfortable seat with no roof over your head to stop rain for 2 hours you would complain. and if the teams came to the circuit on a wednesday and found that they would be using sheds as pit boxes and the place looked like a dump they would complain.

    so in short if you don’t spend enough on the buildings then it will be hated be everyone. And yes i think tilke makes great tracks.

    1. And yet the spartan pit boxes never stopped the British GP being one of the Blue Riband events in F1, with huge numbers of people comeing to watch and staying in tents to do so. Even Brazil is a special event in the season.

      A brilliant track can make up for functional buildings. Brilliant buildings can never make up for a boring track.

  9. A banked Karousel-type corner would be a first since the Norschleife was last used—unique and interesting. There are better examples of difficulty and character than Turn 8. We need Suzuka esses and Corkscrews and Spoon curves that you simply must get correct or lose heaps and heaps of time, or fly off the road.

    But it’s not just the corners per se, which is what Tilke doesn’t seem to get. It’s the flow, the sense of linked spaces, and of going somewhere. See the run down the Aqua Minerale, over a blind curve, with grass on the side to welcome those who can’t hold the line, and with the following run straight up the hill back the other way.

    Also enough with the technicolor run-offs. We know its just asphault, even if its green, or blue. Where there is enough room, there should be grass, as in Interlagos (Where Trulli’s dumb move on Sutil was appropriately punished by the lack of gratuitous asphault run off). In fact, there should be more walls of champions here and there to snatch up the inattentive and where the impact would not be so massive.

    Natural landscaping also makes the track seem like it is someplace, rather than on the totally paved over carcass of some long abandoned industrial park. Motorsport is based on the competition among road cars and so they should look like they are on roads, rather than on airport taxi-ways with bright colors. Posh over the thp hotels and Lotus-shaped grandstands only remove the scene from “racing” even more. Finally, for god’s sake do not make it 6 miles long with a 30 second straight. I can’t take another Shanghai.

    1. “Motorsport is based on the competition among road cars and so they should look like they are on roads, rather than on airport taxi-ways with bright colors.”

      So true. So many of the new tracks simply lack character, which I think is subconsciously very important to fans watching.

    2. You had me at banked karousel :-)

      Great comment, I agree with every word of it, I can’t see it happening any time soon though. Which is such a shame considering the amount of money that’s been spent building new international circuits in recent years.

  10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jaypee_Group_Circuit.svg

    There’s a picture of the layout here. It doesn’t look too bad if you look at he mid-section. Just one too many trademark Tilke flow-cutting hairpins for my liking. There doesn’t need to be any more than one, at most two on a track. What about some longer, sweeping hairpins if there has to be one? alá Parabolica, Tarzan etc

    1. TI Circuit Aidia

    2. What about some longer, sweeping hairpins if there has to be one?

      He did that across the back of Shanghai.

    3. I think turns 5, 6 and 7 look quite good. It looks as if 5 and 6 might almost be able to be taken as a double apex, with aquick flick to the right for turn 7, maybe even straight through turn 7. The sequence should look quite good on TV if they get the camera angle right. Additionally it would be pretty rewarding in terms of lap times for drivers that can nail these corners.

      I don’t mind harpins, they increase the chances of overtaking, which apprarently everyone is concerned about. Also harpins are quite spectator friendly, enabling people at the circuit to witness the cars brake from 300km/h to 70km/h in seconds, then turn, and then accelerate back to 300km/h in a matter of seconds.

    4. Its very like Kyalami. A friend of mine (who happens to be a former SA Superbike Champion) notes that Kyalami is essentially a boring circuit but the things that make it interesting are the flowing nature and the gradient change. You hurtle downhill and then uphill thorugh the esses and then head up the hill to a hairpin which is built on a shelf and then literally plummet down the “mineshaft” straight into a fast left hand sweeper. 14 meters of gradient change, while pushing the boundaries of the circuit design regulations, isn’t actually all that much.

      That said I do quite like the look of the circuit, its a lot less fiddly than some of Tilke’s other efforts, and I’m hoping the “slightly banked double-apex” corner turns out alright.

      1. Turns 1 and 2 look like turns 1 and 2 at Istanbul in reverse.

  11. Hopefully the teams can give proper advice. The classic Tilke design does not really lend it self to any proper racing as some of the other more classic tracks.

  12. I am a bit optimistic but next to Turkey I think this will be one of the best Tilke track, hope we see some good racing there in 2011.

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  15. ExplosiveFace
    25th August 2010, 8:08

    “Construction has already begun and the organisers say that they have moved four million cubic tons of earth to give the circuit plenty of undulation, with a 14 metre rise between turns one and three alone.”

    :D

    1. http://www.formula1.com/news/headlines/2010/8/11150.html

      looks pretty sweet from the 3d layout, might even be better than Turkey.

  16. TheGreatCornholio
    25th August 2010, 10:33

    Apologies for the anti-Tilke rant last nite, slightly irrational! Just a little fed up with him seemingly being the only track designer that gets a look in when it comes to F1 tracks. Why not put it out to tender and get some fan, driver and team involvement? Better still just nick some track designs from Gran Turismo! Lol. I’d love to see Grand Valley track built in real life! I guess i simply long for the days when drivers really wanted to drive certain tracks due to the challenge they represent!

  17. Hmm… I could get excited… but I won’t.

    The 3D image looks quite cool.
    But remember that this is yet another wide car park style circuit I imagine with more asphalt than rural Australia. don’t for a second imaging the cars racing through a forest, let alone somewhat near grass.

    Atmosphere is what Tilke lacks, Atmosphere doesn’t come from big shiny buildings, it’s the exact opposite.

    The fast banked turn, I think, we should not get too excited about, The section before it makes me think it will be nothing but single file.

    Also, has anyone noticed Tilke splits his tracks into sections? There is two here, the long straits with sharp corners section, and the weaving follow the leader section.

    Also that the undulation on this track is quite repetitive? breaking uphill into a corner and the leaving it on the decline? … … Must be a reason he has done that. Ideas?

    I should be optimistic, but Valencia’s taste is still in my mouth.

  18. I hope its a Track…not a Nightmare…
    I’ll going for this race…..

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