George from MD

Reminds me of Macau.....

JoeStrummer

I hate street courses in general but this one is really bad. No topography, no runoffs, no landmarks. MBS must have coughed up a lot of cash to make Liberty happy.

Matt Lane

In fairness, qualifying and the race here turned out to be much more exciting than many traditional racing circuits on the calendar produce.

No love for street circuits either, but you have to say Max's qualification lap was outstanding - in part because of the challenge of the circuit.

And the race had both contenders ultimately winded and fighting throughout. I personally didn't feel any mid-race longing for Spain or Paul Ricard instead

Cheers

Matt

ProCoach

Hermann Tilke’s kid.

This is crazy…

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/a...he-people-want

thuggo

I'll be honest I've not been impressed by the Tilke track I've been exposed to personally, AMP. I think its not a great track in a ****ty location. I mean...who the hell manages get a track built in GA in a location where the noise ordnance restricts it to 98db.

LuigiVampa

After watching the first practice session I think the only surprise is that the race was not even more of a $hit-show than it was. Who really thought that tremendously high speeds, plus almost no sightlines, yields a good track design?

I don't know how, but I believe they need to make substantial changes to the track before F1 can go back in 2022.

ProCoach

I read somewhere that KSA has a five-year contract with F1 but that this track will be used only this year and next year before a permanent circuit is built.

John H

I thought I head them say 9 years. Maybe they said 5 and I misheard. It's a Herman Tilke design. They interviewed him on the grid.

Mike Roblin

AMP is a sound limited track?!? Whelp, there goes my chance of driving it next year…

thuggo

98 db

LOL....lets just say the one time I took the clubsport out with there with race headers and straight pipes...if I even thought of going past 3500rpm I got black flagged for sound.

ProCoach

Carsten, Hermann's son, was the chief for this track.

KSA paid $90 million dollars to host this years race. And it only goes up…

LuigiVampa

This race merely highlighted the longstanding problem of a lack of permanent stewards and the inconsistency in applying the racing rules. When there is an ambiguity, the drivers will seek to exploit it.

And as much as I want to see this WDC decided by clean racing Hamilton is being disingenuous with his statements about how he always "liked to race". We just need to rewind back to 2016 and watch how he raced Nico Rosberg to know that this is not true.

Back in 2016 Hamilton drove against Nico like he was trying to steal the WDC from him. I think Hamilton is more secure and more mature now and he up against Max who is driving like Hamilton did in 2016.

I hope they both keep it clean and the stewards don't interfere too much in the race results.

ProCoach

+1,000

ProCoach

H/t to a friend of mine who posted a portion of Peter DeLorenzo's column in AutoExtremist this week.

Peter DeLorenzo pulling no punches (can't say I disagree): "I was not surprised by the in-race chaos at all, but the fact that the F1 officials were actively engaged in polling the teams about penalties during the race was simply ludicrous and untenable. I won't comment on the behavior of certain drivers in that race, but suffice to say, no other racing organization in the world would have tolerated what went on. I hope the finale in Abu Dhabi next weekend is a race worthy of the historical integrity of the sport, but the fact that F1 needs a total reinvention from top to bottom will not be addressed in our lifetimes. F1 is a diseased enterprise, likely to churn and burn in abject mediocrity indefinitely. -PMD"

roadie13

Hopefully, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that this year the championship will be decided on the narrowest slip, bump, or mechanical failure. A lot of factors have to line up to get a clean race.