do 12.07. slobodan pristup autosport plusu. hvala esso!
http://www.autosport.com/features/

http://www.autosport.com/premium/featur ... ing-enough

Ovo bi baš bilo krasno pročitati....

i ovo bi bilo baš krasno pročitat:
http://classicplus.autosport.com/premiu ... ockenheim/

Kuća časti


Formula 1 returns to Hockenheim this weekend after missing 2015, but the legacy of the iconic old layout looms large over not just the German Grand Prix, but the calendar as a whole 

 By Edd Straw Editor-in-Chief 


Hockenheim is used to existing in the shadow cast by another, greater track. After all, the fearsome original Nurburgring has been the spiritual home of racing in Germany ever since it opened in 1927.

But today, Hockenheim has a more pressing shadow to deal with, one cast by, well, itself. And it's a shadow that is cast over all of grand prix racing in these days of increasingly homogenised circuits.

Astonishingly, it's now 14 years since the 'new' Hockenheim hosted its first German Grand Prix. While plenty of its current 2.8-mile configuration is shared with the old 4.2-mile track, it lacks much of the character of its imposing predecessor.

That's not to say it's not a good track. It's challenging enough for the drivers, without being anything extraordinary, and the long run to the Turn 6 hairpin offers one of the best overtaking opportunities on the calendar.

It's produced some memorable races, which considering it has only been a part-timer on the calendar since the last of its annual races in 2006 in a good achievement. After all, it was here in 2008 that Nelson Piquet Jr came close to winning for Renault before being denied by the charging Lewis Hamilton, while in 2010 we had the infamous "Fernando is faster than you" Ferrari team orders race.

But it's difficult for the track to etch itself into the soul. The stadium section is imposing, arguably iconic, but more so back in the days of Michael Schumacher when it was packed to the rafters in a way that Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg don't have the pulling power to deliver. Beyond that, it's just another track with some pictureseque trees in the background.

The old Hockenheim, however, was different. Its defining parts are long gone, dug up when the track was reconfigured and allowed to be reclaimed by nature. You can still detect it, but if you didn't know it had existed, you wouldn't even know that anything had been built there at all.

Usually, when exploring defunct tracks, it's the corners you look for. But Hockenheim was one of an exclusive club of circuits - along with Le Mans - defined by its straights. Mention that name and it's the straights and Jim Clark, who lost his life in the Deutschland Trophy Formula 2 race in 1968 through no fault of his own, that spring to mind.

Clark's ghost haunts the old circuit, for the original memorial can still be found if you wade your way through what is now being reclaimed by the forest – a trip worth making to the spot of his death, rather than visiting the new memorial adjacent to the modern circuit.

In its final form, the longer Hockenheim comprised mighty straights connecting chicanes, with the stadium section at the end of the lap. What it offered, particularly as circuits started to become standardised through the 1990s and in the early years of the 21st century, was something very different.

Hockenheim was all about straightline speed, riding the kerbs at the chicane and then hanging on with trimmed-out downforce levels in the stadium section. It offered opportunities for some extreme technical solutions, such as when Tyrrell tried running with smaller front wheels on the rear to reduce drag in 1996.


This illustrates the fact that it created a different set of demands for the machinery. Even without such Tyrrell cleverness, a small team could have a punt on designing a very low-drag, low-downforce car in the hope of hitting it big at Hockenheim. Tracks like Monza and, if you could hang on in the middle part of the lap, Spa offered potential rewards, too.

Variety is essential in the appeal of the sport. There were valid reasons for cutting back Hockenheim to a more manageable length. Purely from the perspective of a fan in the stadium section, it turned it from a race when you got to see the cars 45 times to one where you get close to 70 bites of the cherry.

Hermann Tilke, of course, was responsible for the new track – cue gasps of horror at the mention of the modern bogeyman of track design.

But Tilke comes in for unfair criticism, for not only is he a fan of tracks like the Nordschleife (he's raced in the 24 Hours), but, had he had his way, he would have remodelled Hockenheim to modern safety standards using the original configuration.

Sadly, the need to give the fans more, and to let the forest thrive, took precedence. The result is a neat track that's decent enough for racing and retains the stadium section, but with only a hint of its old soul.

The old track was also capable of producing some memorable moments: Rubens Barrichello's maiden win, assisted by a track invader, in 2000; the great Mark Blundell-versus-Gerhard Berger scrap for third in 1993; Damon Hill losing his first win to a blowout with a lap-and-a-half to go in that same race – then three years later nicking victory when Berger's Renault engine blew... the list goes on.


But the key thing is that Hockenheim offered a unique challenge. It was something different for the drivers, for the cars and for the fans.

The need for this is something that ideally needs to be factored into circuit design. Plenty of tracks now are designed with overtaking opportunities in mind (although there are several schools of thought as to how best to achieve that), but less relevant is the desire to create variables.

'Track sensitivities' is the phrase that matters here. While it sounds like some kind of anthropomorphised race circuit, what it actually refers to is the kinds of characteristics that add up to performance. So, for example, in Monaco low-speed grip is a major track sensitivity whereas straightline speed isn't.

If all circuits are the same, with the same balance of sensitivities, then the competitive order will be the same. While it's wrong to suggest that the track sensitivities don't vary in F1 because the difference between Monaco at one end and Monza at the other is significant, there's an argument for making more of the differences.

While there are some outliers at the extremities of that spectrum, there is inevitably a cluster of circuits in the middle of the range. And small shifts in the track sensitivity balance are only small variables. If you are in a Mercedes that's half-a-second quicker than the rest and go to a track that doesn't suit you, losing a tenth isn't a major problem.

To demand greater variety in tracks is a very easy thing to say, but circuit designers have a vastly bigger range of considerations than 'what would be nice' when it comes to producing them. That includes the space available, the budget, the topography of the area... the list is almost endless.

That, combined with the many rules and regulations that exist for very good reasons, means that track design is not as free as many would like. And there is a risk that it breeds 'identikit' circuits – certainly when it comes to regulations governing factors such as maximum straight length.

That's not to say there isn't innovation going on in track design. Recent additions to the calendar work hard to give the circuits real character. So Baku has a castle, Austin has the steep climb to the iconic Turn 1. And there are plenty of lower-profile tracks outside of F1 that are very well conceived.

Even an unpopular and shortlived venue like Yeongam's Korea International Circuit had some decent corners, and might have been a success if the city and marina plan had not been overambitious in a landscape best described as a 'wasteland'.

But the variation isn't quite there to the extent that it once was. By offering such variation you increase the chance for interesting races (variables breed racing), as well as giving the fans something to get excited about even if the racing is flat. That doesn't just mean running a track through a baseball stadium in Mexico City, but creating a configuration that will provide a lasting impression and good racing.

And this doesn't necessarily mean that tracks have to be, like the old Hockenheim when compared to its successor, longer. After all, as great as the old Osterreichring was, the modern version of the circuit – the Red Bull Ring – is actually better for racing and, in many ways, a more interesting challenge for drivers.

But it does mean that the shackles – as far as is practical within the bounds of budget, geography and safety standards – need to come off, which should be possible with the track building expertise that's out there. There's a need to ram home the message that F1 races 21 times at various countries around the world – even if some of those tracks look very similar to the untrained eye, no matter what the particular intrigue of a certain corner radius.

Perhaps that's the lesson that can be learned by anyone peering into the trees at what is currently the second corner – where grand prix cars once kept the throttle fully open rather than braking and jinking to the right as they do today.

After all, the main lesson of the Nurburgring is that you can create by design a track that has the authenticity required to be considered the greatest 'natural' road course in the world.

fala vetma, ovo je bilo brzo.
dobar članak koji ide u očekivanom smjeru.

može ovaj?
http://www.autosport.com/premium/featur ... s-so-bleak

Dakle.... totalno sam zbunjola trenutno.... 100% sam siguran da sam prije koji dan mogao skinuti bilo koji Motor Sport magazine sa njihove stranice (ispravka.... bilo koji osim par cca 3-4 zadnja broja). Sad tražim u arhivi lijepo poredane magazine po mjesecima i ne mogu ih naći. Još su ovih par imali lokot (da ih se ne može skinuti), ali ovi ostali su bili otključani.... I sad mi ništa nije jasno.

ja to nikad ne bi skido, nego čitam što objave na fb stranici. otale onoliko datuma smrti na stranici povijest.

Molio bih nekoga... Gary: Why Verstappen did nothing wrong
http://www.autosport.com/premium/featur ... hing-wrong

fala vetma!
nisam zadovoljan garyevim viđenjem situacije nakon prvog kruga.

Grande Ante

Niti ja nisam zadovoljan, ne slažem se s njegovim mišljenjem i s tim mogu živjeti, ali mi se ne sviđa kako je posložio misli. 'Analizirao' je prvi zavoj, a za ostale incidente samo rekao "keep it up, love your style" i prebacio se na Red Bullov i Ferrarijev boks. To ne može tako, razočaran sam.

Felipe je napisao/la:Grande Ante

Niti ja nisam zadovoljan, ne slažem se s njegovim mišljenjem i s tim mogu živjeti, ali mi se ne sviđa kako je posložio misli. 'Analizirao' je prvi zavoj, a za ostale incidente samo rekao "keep it up, love your style" i prebacio se na Red Bullov i Ferrarijev boks. To ne može tako, razočaran sam.

Pa nije on David Vidović.

Frantic je napisao/la: Pa nije on David Vidović.

Da znaš kako si me sada slatko nasmijao ali i obradovao