But I'm going to knock that on the head before it starts, or my keyboard might end up wearing questionable shoes, large hats and dancing round in squares listening to country music. Because the newest venue has been unveiled in the big American state of Texas, which is famous for it's ranches and other old western cliches - kind of think I should be writing this up with a bottle of Sasparilla and shooting holes in the ceiling on the off chance it was feeling lucky. Dodgy stereotypes aside the Austin circuit is a completely modern facility specifically built for F1, like many of the other new tracks that have been erupting across the planet as Bernie perpetually wants to extend into new markets. However the states is not a new land for the series - we were last competing over there at the world famous Indianapolis motorspeedway, where the Indy 500 is held, but the infield track was for the most part pants. On the whole oval infield tracks generally are weaker due to the limitations of the outer track and the lack of undulation - but the Indy lap was a special case of dull plagued by two hideously pointless hairpins. On a first look the self proclaimed Circuit of the Americas is a massive amount better - and this time there shouldn't be 6 car races due to tyre failures.
During the two week break between here and the last chaotic race in Abu Dhabi not too much has happened in determining who gets to sit where when the contracts are completed before next season. But some hints have been dropped down at Sauber floating on, one would assume, a large quantity of money. As a rather influential investor in the team has implied that there will be two Mexicans on the grid next season, which would hint that Gutierrez is in the running to take Kobayashi's place in the team. Further upfront Vettel is rumoured to be secure at the team for the next five seasons, despite receiving some less than friendly comments from Jaques Villenueve - but the mad Canadian rants about most people so I wouldn't be too bothered about that. In the middle of the field Kimi's radio transmissions have become rather famous - the Lotus team have even printed T-shirts with "Leave me alone, I know what I'm doing" printed on them. Nice to see some people with a sense of humour, which wasn't the sort of responses the podium interview last time was met with, as complaints and fines were dished out at the end of such a mad race. But it is time to move on and look towards the US GP.
The Track
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| credit to the FIA for the map |
The track is bounded by three peaks, each one with a hairpin perched right on the crest, making the braking zones blind and complex, hopefully leading to a flurry of overtaking and contact. The bottom hairpin - turn 11 - on the map seems to have crest in the middle of the braking zone, which means the car goes light trying to slow down for the corner causing lock-ups and visits into the scenery. Of course that could just be a factor of the beta version of the layout used for the video this weekend, because that may have certain inaccuracies compared to the actual lap.
Then there is the matter of the stolen corners, sector one is mainly a replica of the maggots/beckets sequence from Silverstone - which can't complain there, because its a good sequence of corners and it means they get visited twice in a season. Further round the lap, the designers have tried to import the stadium section from the Hokkenheimring - which out of all the corners in the world to borrow also comes across as a little odd. To make matters worse the imitation that they have attempted is disappointing at best, it looks forced and clumsy on the diagram and on the virtual lap were dull. I thought we had escaped the crap double hairpin problem at Indy to gain something similar here... and we were doing so well up until that point on the lap. The final stolen element it a diluted version of Istanbul's turn 8, instead of the mega quadruple apexed monster in Turkey, this is a tri-apexed interpretation. The central corner of the turn is barely noticeable but it tightens for the final phase making the sequence its own - which worked at the beginning of the lap but failed in the stadium.
When faced with a completely new venue unleashing the video is even more relevant, anything to boost audiences frankly - however the people at codemasters decided to release the new version of the official F1 game which contains the track. Therefore I don't exactly have any unique content, and the estimation of the track they have is probably more accurate than the rFactor one floating round the internet. Nevertheless it is brand new for the blogmobile and an exploratory voyage into the unknown, captured once more in full HD, which took three hours to add to youtube... but it was not like I had anything else to do.
What to Expect
As this is a new venue for all concerned I should open that question to the floor and sit back and watch the confusion but the lap doesn't demonstrate anything specifically quirky that would cause a major upset in the natural order of things. The quantity of aero-dependant corner sequences especially in the opening sequence of the lap will only help Red Bull continue the dominant pace they have shown in the final stages of the season. Something that doesn't bode too well for Alonso as the Ferrari's have been dropping back on single lap pace, unlike Abu-Dhabi this looks like a track which is more determined by car pace rather than driver pace. So therefore McLaren will be more of a threat to the blue machines than the Italian outfit, perhaps Fernando can pull some additional pace from the car is certainly plausible but to defeat the German bloke may be asking too much.
Just to make matters more complicated for the Ferrari challenge, the likes of Lotus and Sauber could well play a part in this race, based on their strong pace at Spa and Hungary which shares some characteristics with Austin. Conversely the same properties could hinder Mercedes even further - only serving to instil more confidence in the car Hamilton will be moving to next season as the silvers are surpassed by more of the mid-field on a race by race basis competing with Force India and Williams. Rosberg was even battling for position with the HRT he ultimately ran over at the early stages of the last race. As the middle teams become closer and more competitive any mistakes further forward guessing setup on in unfamiliar playing field could shake up the lower end of the points positions.
A problem that will not really affect the bottom three teams because they are not exactly in contention for some points, it would take a significant quantity of madness to take out enough cars to allow that to happen. From a purely neutral perspective I am all for that amount of madness, Abu Dhabi provided a decent amount of it, but a lot more will be needed to get Caterham on the board, and if HRT get a point that achievement would almost hand them the bonus point championship - and if that isn't incentive enough I have no idea what is. However the little team at the bottom of the grid seem to be looking for buyers and investment to make it to the 2013 grid, so we'll wait and see on that front.
Blog Predictions
After cars coming from the pit lane to the podium, and sporadic safety cars - trying to make any kind of prediction completely fell apart last race, and this time in a new environment with no historical data to work off the chances of scoring any points are even more limited.
- Vettel
- Hamilton
- Alonso
- Webber
- Raikkonen
- Button
- Grosjean
- Massa
- Perez
- Hulkenberg
Qualifying
- Red Bull - Vettel
- Ferrari - Alonso
- McLaren - Hamilton
- Lotus - Raikkonen
- Mercedes - Rosberg
- Sauber - Kobayashi
- Force India - Hulkenberg
- Williams - Senna
- Torro Rosso - Ricciardo
- Caterham - Kovalainen
- Marussia - Pic
- HRT - De La Rosa
This weekend is a big step into the unknown, we have no idea how the track is going to perform or how the racing is going to play out as there have been no support races before this weekend to gauge whether the raised hairpins work as a concept. In the blogmobiles I was lapping in around 1:44s which is traditionally 10s off the pace off the actual times. So on that basis I can roughly estimate that laptimes will be somewhere around 1:30-33s across the weekend, and we'll see how close that guess comes when FP1 starts tomorrow afternoon. A new track always brings a large amount of anticipation and excitement, so I can only hope that the Circuit of the Americas lives up to that to produce another thrilling instalment in this late stage of the championship.
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