Circuits with Circuits: Cookie Cutter Tracks

“A long pit straight leading to a tight 70 degree left hander, there will be a series of meaningless esses, then there will be at least one decreasing radius corner and lastly another long straight with a tight 180 degree hairpin at the end.”^[1] Ask a racing fan to identify the track described above and you will get a myriad of responses; Bahrain, Circuit of the Americas, Sepang, Buddh International Circuit, etc. Unfortunately, they would all be correct.  Modern race tracks have become formulaic and lack the personalities that makes racing at classic circuits such as Suzuka, Spa, Monza so wonderful.

In fairness track designers such as Herman Tilke (responsible for half of the tracks on the F1 calendar) have a lot of restrictions to deal with in terms of safety and fan accessibility. However this doesn’t excuse the cookie cutter approach they use to designing race tracks. For example, when addressing the problem of overtaking, Tilke said, “We try to create corners where overtaking is possible. The simplest way is a long straight followed by a sharp corner, which creates a long brake zone.”^[2] This suggests that rather than trying to come up with new and unique solutions to track design, Tilke uses the same tried and tested corners and sequences to design his race tracks.

To counteract this lack of imagination, I want to use computational tools to inject some creativity into the track design process. A great race track has a unique character, flows naturally from one corner to the next, and provides good racing. Balancing all three factors is a tough ask and currently designers can only use their intuitions to make decisions in the early part of the design process. I can create tools that analyze track designs from a different perspective and potentially highlight new opportunities. My goal is to break the mundanity of modern track design and allow Mr. Tilke and co. to create circuits that are worthy of the great classics.

Sources

1. http://jalopnik.com/how-not-to-design-a-great-race-track-1450318119
2. http://www.f1fanatic.co.uk/2015/07/16/tilke-says-rules-not-tracks-make-overtaking-hard/