After a long spring break at the end of the Austral-asian races the teams will be setting up back in Europe for the main phase of the season where teams will be closer to their factories and closer to a influx of new updated parts. This season things are a little different as the field isn't setting up camp in Barcelona as is the traditional norm for the first European race. The testing grounds are shuffled into second place on the Euro calender which could cause a two stage update process this year both at Turkey and at the next race in Spain.
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| Source: F1-Fansite.com |
This is the third consecutive Tilke designed circuit on the calender but fortunately does have less of the drawbacks of the last two. The Istanbul park circuit was designed to promote overtaking and offer a challenge in an era when the standard of cars was making some of the older corners on traditional courses too easy. It can be said that the plan of making it challenging didn't pan out too well only one corner presents any degree of intrigue is the now infamous turn 8. Which is an quadruple apexed high speed monster of a corner, but last years red bull was able to take it flat which was an illustration of the advantage they had.
Aside from the imaginatively named turn 8, the track does offer some overtaking opportunities, most obviously at the end of the back straight heading into the final complex. Which I'm guessing when Tilke came to the end of the layout he decided he hadn't used enough corners and stuck a fiddly little complex on the end of the lap which is slow and clumsy in an F1 car. The excuse for this combination of daft corners is that it allows a driver to pass into the first part but be re-passed into the second phase with the final position up for grabs in the last turn. But in reality it just results in slow stupid accidents when cars fail to allow racing room and decide to take each other out.
But now for the moment you haven't been waiting for, where instead of writing about the layout and where the corners are I get to show you - as I drive around the circuit rather badly and in a time that would be beaten be continental drift. But so far I am maintaining an average of being 10s off the pace of an HRT car - I have no reference point, as the indycars haven't visited the tracks on the F1 calender so no-one will ever know how far off the pace I actually am. Though later in the year there will likely be an alternate Blogmobile making an appearance.
What to expect
Well things could be very different this weekend because after the spring break many teams will be bringing substantial updates to the cars to optimise performance and improve their position within the field. This will have the greatest effect in the mid-field where the gaps are so small and so many teams are battling for the same section of the grid.
The likes of Mercedes and Renault will be looking to jump clear of the rest of the mid-field in an effort to close on Ferrari and Mclaren at the top end of the tree. Ferrari themselves will be hoping to put an end to the early season poor form to try and pull away from the two teams behind them and catch the lead cars. Red-Bull will be looking to extend their advantage and keep McLaren in check who in turn will want to reverse the balance of power.
The likely situation is that at the front the status-quo will be maintained as the main teams will be making the same gains and the relative position will remain the same. Things will shuffle about more mid-pack with Williams and Force India wanting to overturn previous form and haul in Torro Rosso and Sauber in front - the closing up of this section of the grid will make the second session of qualifying very close and unpredictable. But as demonstrated in China by Webber qualifying isn't that important any more as long as you have carspeed and fresh tyres clawing through the field becomes easy.
One zone of upset that may come into play is the possible improvement of Team Lotus as they have made marked progress so far - beating an established car on merit in Shanghai. With the updates in Istanbul Williams could start to look over their shoulder as the green cars start edging up on the established teams. HRT will also be looking to get off the final row of the grid as times in China were creeping closer to the back of the Virgin Racing cars, as the field as a whole begins to compress.
Overall things should remain roughly the same but there is a high chance of some surprise performances at all ends of the grid, with all sorts of different approaches to be taken into account after seeing the dramatic strategic decisions taken in China. This now makes qualifying and the race two very distance sessions with it's own strategy and permutations.
DRS and KERS
How will the array of gadgets be brought into the equation this weekend, the track does have a variety of options to use KERS to gain an advantage on a car in front to make an overtaking manoeuvreKERS and varying tyre condition will allow for an exciting race.
What is most interesting is where the DRS Activation line has been positioned - as the diagram shows it will be a distance after the exit of the chicane - into the long straight heading down to the hairpin at 12. But what is most interesting is that the DRS zone contains the slight curve at turn 11. Because whether a car can negotiate turn 11 with the wing open is unknown because rear downforce will be minimal resulting in instability throw in a high speed corner into the zone and things could get very interesting indeed. It's a good thing the amount of run-off space on the exit of 11 is big enough to declare independence from Europe because we could see some cars investigating it - especially teams with lower downforce designs to start off with.
So how is the weekend panning out, it's becoming an intriguing cauldron of strategy a whole range of updates for assuming all of the teams and now a DRS zone which is noticeably long and contains a fast full speed corner. Tyres will be very important as the conditions will likely be very warm so degradation could be higher resulting in a very China-esque race on Sunday. Will any one deliberately drop out of qualifying to take advantage of faster tyres in the race to imitate Webber's run last time out. There are so many variables and so much unknown in terms of new performance upgrades. This may be one of the poorest attended races on the calender with it existence threatened to be replaced by new races in Russia and USA on the horizon, but this years Turkish GP could be one of the most exiting so far.
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