The WORST Race Track Ever?

[Music] the sochiata drum hasn't hosted a Formula One Grand Prix for a couple of years now and to that I say good freaking riddance I appalled this track with every fiber of my being I hate it with the fire of a hundred thousand suns it is devoid of Soul of character of of everything that makes a race track good never mind this may occasionally throw up a digestible race once in a blue moon no one enjoys it when the Grand Prix circus rocks up here is it the worst formula one track of all time well maybe but that's a story for another time if we're talking the worst race track in the entire world of all time ever however this is not it there has been worse much much worse you want an example all right let's go back to 2005. by this time the American champcast series was dying but that didn't stop them from attempting aggressive expansion and so the newest addition to the calendar wasn't San Jose California they designed a track that looked relatively mid on paper but turned out to be a thousand times worse in practice firstly the circuit ran over tram tracks and so created the comical display of cars bouncing violently through the two Kinks thereby answering the question as to why insurance premiums were racing drivers there's noticeably more than it is for an Ax Murderer then again an ax murderer would be safer than this track a temporary chicane was put up to slow the cars down and it was rubbish it had a section of truck which was barely wide enough for one car which was even more rubbish and those that paid for premium seats in the grandstands had their views blocked by some palm trees this was such a poorly thought out track that everyone hated us and nobody cried when it left the schedule having said that while the event died out so did the series itself champka was gone a sad ending to what was once a great series but for all of its feelings this wasn't the worst track of all time because after all it did still function as a race track Billy and really all of these problems held in comparison to a track which was used around about the same time on the other side of the world and in a very different series [Music] while the champcast series was on the way out the A1 Grand Prix series was just breathing into life a series unlike any other Nation against Nation the World Cup of Motorsport and Corruption the championship toured the world from chechi to Malaysia from Indonesia to New Zealand from South Africa to the UK the one we're concentrating on however the main culprit that makes San Jose look like a well-oiled machine is the third round in Beijing China based in the suburb of Yi zhuang the track was designed by the one that they call Hermann tilkey ironically the same man who designed the Sochi formula one track now immediately this would have stricken fear into the hearts of F1 dihas who knew him as the guy who designed boring characterless tracks that have been dubbed tokidrones despite the fact that he did design tracks such as sapang the pilsterburg and Istanbul but this track wouldn't be like any of those that have come before or since sure it would turn out to be boring but not in the way that you may think none of us were really prepared for the abject horror that was to come the track layout was simple enough looking at it on paper there wasn't anything that immediately stuck out as Troublesome but heading into the weekend they were fears that this event would be canceled but not for a reason such as a strike I mean we're not in France after all the reason was due to the track itself there were doubts that this track would be approved for racing at all with the Dual carriageway used as the back straight being called into question however it was eventually given the all clear by Charlie Whiting and the FIA and the A1 Grand Prix circus arrived to go racing immediately it was apparent that the circuit was shall we say poorly thought out there was little in the way of overtaking opportunities most Corners just not possible for moose to be made the only real way to pass here was through mistakes that last Corner complex was particularly bad it was barely wide enough for one car which paired with the pit straight which was anything but strange meant that the race starts which were normally double file rolling starts would have to be a single file rolling Stars although that wasn't the only reason the first Corner harbored two bumps it was so bad the cars were being heated several inches into the air every time that coupled with a somewhat violent curb and Orchid radius meant that the single file starts were brought in so already this racetrack was struggling to function as a race track and I haven't even gotten to the really good stuff yet this hip and Corner seems pretty atypical doesn't seem to be too much wrong with it but on the first lap of practice on Friday it would turn out to be a slightly massive problem now a Formula E car can turn around this corner perfectly fine a road Car 2 could do the trick but these were A1 Grand Prix cars and they had the turning radius of Jupiter and as a result when drivers tried to negotiate this turn they got stuck when Nico hulkenberg was the first to discover this inconvenience it caused a log Jam behind where everyone was queuing whilst burning their clutches to ashes most drivers plucked it into reverse flick spun it to complete the turn and very quickly realized yeah this isn't gonna work it was immediately apparent that this needed fixing I mean there may be 30 odd gear changes during a single lap but reverse shouldn't really be one of them overnight urgent meetings were held and eventually they came to a solution which would solve all of their problems that they were having with that corner they realized that in order to save this track they would need to acquire the services off surf shark yeah yeah this may sound like a typical blur but you know as well as I do that our Reliance on online stuff has been rapidly increasing from streaming to keeping in touch with our loved ones to online banking we would like to think our information is safe but as our online footprint increases so does the knees for proper security and this is where surfshark comes in it's a VPN service that protects your information by encrypting all the data that you sent through the internet thereby keeping prying eyes and getting at it like seriously you want your stuff to be exposed yeah I don't think so but slow down here but that's not all surf shark's about there is a bit more to this thing like have you at all noticed that content can be restricted based on your location well with surfshark you can solve that problem by simply changing your location not only is this good for people who want to keep up with their favorite shows but it can also be a vital tool for those who live in countries that heavily censor their people for whatever their reasons may be it ain't quite teleportation but it is about as close as we're gonna get right now so check out this offer by using my link in the description and using the promo code Josh Revel you can get surshak VPN for an exclusive offer and three extra months for free which means for something like a couple of bucks a month you have the protection of Lance trolls races plus you're gonna get those three free months and a 30 day money back guarantee as well so what the bloody hell are you waiting for surf shark be the way to go though I will admit that wasn't how the A1 Grand Prix organizers solve the problem with The Hairpin I'll tell you how it actually went when the sun rose on Saturday morning the teams and drivers arrive Trackside to see that the weight that they fixed the corner was by getting rid of it or rather it was moved several hundred yards up the road to a place where more room could be spared thus opening the corner up and solving all of the problems that they had sort of see where this happened was situated also happened to be with a pit Lane entry was so the corner was still rather acute and meant that the drivers really had to hustle in order to avoid running into the pit entry barrier an experience which I'm sure wouldn't have been nice so even with the solution that they had there were still problems you'd love to see it but hey at least cars were able to run through there without getting stuck it allowed for the third practitioners get underway and thus allow for the other problems to rear their heads manhole covers around the track were being sucked out of the ground by the high downforce of these formula cars this was somewhat dangerous it must be sad advertising banners around the track were being ripped out of the walls and almost every corner was being of complete utter nuisance to the drivers there were bumps everywhere some of which were throwing drivers down the Escape roads thus requiring drivers to temper their approach into the corners and nullifying any potential overtaking opportunities this meant that the hour long practice session was red flagged after only 25 minutes but that's okay because the qualifying session to be held after that practice session was canceled so instead of roughly three hours of on-track running these drivers had 40 minutes maybe not even that the grid for the first race would be set by time set and what little practice that they had and now there were drivers at a position on a track where you cannot pass which had paint peeling off the walls manhole covers being ripped out of the ground and bumps that had the urge to throw any unsuspecting driver into Mongolia oh yeah throw in a Mickey Mouse chicane on the back straight for good measure and also this wasn't a last minute Edition this was as Herman tilkey intended brilliant Sunday came about and everyone just wanted to get racing or get out of Dodge depending upon how the weekend was going there would be a Sprint race and a feature race as was the case and A1 Grand Prix so the first one got underway with your own Blake Mullen leaving from Salvador Duran Enrico tocachelello James Hinchcliffe and Nico hulkenberg or to Netherlands team Mexico team Italy team Canada and team Germany as the commentators were commissioned to call them it was really weird anyway that's how they started and that's how they would end the track was just ridiculous to pass on only really possible if you were way faster than the person ahead of you or if you missed your break marker or if you had a death wish the race was scheduled for 20 laps but after Adrian zarg of South Africa spun at the last corner on lap 3 it effectively blocked the track and brought out the seitika the track was even further blocked thanks to its deliberately obtuse tow truck driver and after having struggled to find a way to heave the car off the track the race was reduced to time certainty and and that's when it got back underway we only got a couple of laps before the whole thing was over so that was a mess and really hardly a race at all only way it could have been less of a race is if it were Spa 2021 the feature race should have been just as dull however Salvador Duran of Team Mexico got bored slapped the outside wall and gave himself a car half as lousy as the track he was racing on cars began to line up for a move all around the circus including one Nico hulkenberg who decided to be brave into the hairpin and the sheer awkwardness of trying to pass into that corner demonstrated that despite having redesigned that corner twice and even under the best of circumstances passing dead was about as much fun as drowning in wallpaper paste for much of the race nothing much happened other than the occasional crashing out of cars as well as Christian Murchison of Singapore providing a mid-race stunt show complete with donuts thanks to the fact that no one really could pass on this track and to half the grid being out of sequence the field ended up being one long train with little disruption so Hockenberg who was effectively in second was gonna need a little bit of help if he was going to take the lead from Netherlands and Enrico tocachelo behind and the team Italy cast started praying via direct comms to the Vatican and remarkably this worked like him Allen spun off and took the Dutch car out of the race hulkenberg was also out thanks to a faulty gearbox all of this happening within a couple of Corners the seemingly impeccable German engineering was um pickable after all wow story of his F1 career in it in the pantheon of chaos this left the Italians in command but of course thanks to all of this chaos the safety car was out once again and having been out for so long the race was reduced to time certainty again however that didn't stop the last lap from descending into a complete flea circus with Alex Young destroying team Malaysia's efforts and James Hinchcliffe throwing Team Canada's car into four and a half tons of prime Beijing Concrete in all of this nonsense Italia ran home the victors Ali Jarvis was second for Great Britain and the fireball Carl Ridler who is now the Formula One medical card driver as it turns out took third position for the Aussies but now for one second let any of the for you into thinking that this race or track was exciting in any way because if you took away the crashing this race was a disaster in fact both races were a disaster you know what the whole weekend was a disaster it was a complete fast so what the hell happened whose fault was it exactly some pointed toward the local Motor Racing Organization saying that the quality issues with the track the bumps the manhole covers the banners were all signs of ineptitude but honestly apart from the fact that China was relatively new to the motor racing scene their first ever permanent racetrack being built in 1996. these types of issues are prevalent in pretty much every single country that has ever hosted a street race and really hindsight doobie 2020 sure there are things that could have been done better but that on its own makes it no worse than the San Jose track or even the Baku Formula One Track you cannot lay the blame solely at the feet of the organizers because there were a couple of people that deserved a more critical eye the first is the track designer himself Herman tilke now look I understand the he was constrained with what he had to work with there were only certain roads that could be used and he had to make the most of them but some of the design choices were inexcusable especially for someone so experienced in track design the guy when it came to designing the top facilities in the world and yet he bestowed the world with that unusable happen the Mickey Mouse chicane and a section of track which made double file starts a practical impossibility having said that Charlie Whiting and the FIA did sign off in it the A1 Grand Prix organizers were okay with it the people that should have known didn't actually know they allowed this to ensue and so with all of these factors going against it what we ended up with was the worst race track in the entire history of the world sure there are perhaps more boring tracks there are some in more Awkward areas some tracks hardly allow overtaking some tracks have teething problems but the one in Beijing is different even in Monaco's Darkest Days an overtake isn't out of the Realms of possibility and track quality is never called into question and sure Suchi has less of a soul than a banker but at least it does function as a race track Beijing didn't do that and to not be able to do do that as the biggest insult of all this track was only used once was never used again and to that I say good freaking riddance [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Josh Revell

Views: 834,578

Keywords: f1, formula 1, a1gp, a1 grand prix, a1gp beijing, a1 grand prix beijing, worst race track

Id: 2Q41S3raZbM

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2023