The South Africans (I'm proudly not one - I'm Bulgarian) could have made a better track though - it didn't have any actual corner sequences but was simply straight, corner, straight, corner, straight, corner, straight, corner etc etc.
Funny how in about an hour and a half, a driver can go from zero to hero...
He should never have stuck it on the outside in the sprint race, and I cursed him for that stupid move... Then in the feature, he did the same thing at the same spot at the same lap (the final one), and pulled it off, and guess what? It was a brilliant move now :P
Track sucked though...
It's a silly excuse for a circuit, even a street one.
The only wide spaces are completely useless because they give you no opportunity to overtake, and the places that allow overtaking end up in a bottleneck making every attempt at passing overly risky.
Sole exception being the hairpin at the end of the s/f straight.
The race was eventful, I'll give them that. But being held up by team Lebanon, because blocking here only takes about 10cm of deviating from your line, has to be something nobody likes very much.
Next season they should go to Kyalami or Welkom in SA, and add a different street circuit to the calendar. I've always been a fan of Long Beach for some reason.
I don't think that the Lebanise driver was that much of a roadblock. Most everyone got past him or collided with him eventually. Either way good entertainment
What I wanna know is why the swiss team was so slow on the last lap/how did Jos get past them so easily?
it was (again) great watching, both races had plenty of action
loads of people say that Jos ****ed up in the sprint race but i love his thinking, " hey look a there, a gap, i can fit it, hmm i'm 2nd, don't like that, i want to win, ok here i'll go" to bad that he came on the dirty side of the track and gave to much throttle but atleast he tried
Street circuits are like that though. Monaco used to be the same, but is almost a roadcourse these days. It reminded me of the old Monaco in places in fact. It created a good impression of speed and I saw overtaking at several corners. The track was a success IMO.
Good point. It's not that it didn't look good on TV though. There was more overtaking in this race than in most of the F1 season combined, but that's not the point. The point is that overtaking on this track was overly risky, and that several potential overtaking spots were ruined by so-called speed-limiting chicanes. The first chicane reminded me of the Surfer's Paradise double chicane on the backstretch, but without a useful purpose. I can see how it was needed in Australia, but in South Africa the speeds at the point of the chicane were about 90mph slower. And that's the feeling I got from the track. Several good spots for overtaking ruined because the track was made single file at them. Which is a shame.
I love streetcircuits though. Including the concrete walls. Armco looks cheap in comparison. So I vote for more street circuits, but please... On bigger streets, and with less artificial chicanes/apex's.
Kyalami rules. There is a BMW vs Cobra club day there on the 25th - looking forward to it . With any luck I'll get a ride in an E36 with a 3.0l M Turbo (1.4bar) when I'm there . I think Kyalami will be perfect for A1 GP.
There used to be a video stream on media.a1gp.com but they removed it...
Just to let you dutch guys know, A1 is supposed to be coming to Zandvoort in October not confirmed yet but it's looking good