This weekend saw the inaugural Madrid Grand Prix and being a brand new street circuit someone at the FIA actually signed off on this track. The track putting it bluntly was not fit for purpose and is not a race track.
The chicane at corners 5 and 6 backs up traffic and when you have lapped cars to bypass makes the undercut at this circuit very powerful. An undercut for those that do not know is when you pit earlier than the car in front and even if that car in front pits the following lap you can gain an advantage of up to or around 2 seconds so you should overtake your opponent without actually having to overtake on the track.
I had not watched ant qualifying or pre practice sessions so the race itself was my first view of this circuit. What was clear was the track needed to be wider and the opportunities for overtaking was very limited.
Ranking Madrid against the worst overtaking track being Monaco, Madrid comes dead last and was a terrible bore for all racing fans. The problem is the "overtaking boost" can be nullified by the car in front if they keep boost in their batteries for certain parts of the circuit. Once you know where to deploy the boost then you can block any attempt of an over take.
The organisers of the Madrid Grand Prix have faced criticism and this is all justified because this is a shocking spectacle. The FIA have discussed getting rid of boring Monaco yet give us something worse. Whoever is behind planning these racing circuits needs to be fired because they are obviously not up to the standards expected.
Barcelona which is the track that has been replaced by Madrid had 50 overtakes in their last race and should never have been replaced until a new track had been proven of a higher standard. The problem with Madrid and Monaco is they are both street circuits and there is no room for a run off area and the track is already tight. We saw many cars having their tyres glancing the side walls of the barriers and moving from Barcelona to Madrid is crazy until they can guarantee a decent race track.
Just because your city has the finances to pay the hosting fees does not necessarily guarantee you can host a race if there is no obvious street layout to create a racing spectacle. Looking at the Google Earth image they could incorporate a couple of the freeways creating a far better layout which may require some special infrastructure built.
One had to feel for Lando Norris bad luck over the weekend having finished 3rd after having such a big lead at one point. A virtual safety car allowed others to pit and change tyres and he just missed out due to poor timing as the virtual safety car ended too soon. This gave an extra 15 seconds to all his rivals who managed to change tyres and where the race turned on it's head. This was where the overtaking kind of happened and not on the track which is a shame for all the racing fans.
Posted Using INLEO
