Inside both the right and left hand curbs on the first monza chicane there’s these strips of gravel.

If you miss the turn like a lot of drivers were in practice you go straight over this strip.

My question is what is its purpose? I would have thought it was just cause loose gravel to be flung across the track when a driver goes over it, which creates other problems.

It’s not big enough to be a gravel trap or anything like that.

Hyped for the race, let’s go Oscar 💪💪🇦🇺🇦🇺

I first noticed this at Silverstone earlier this year, that a few of the exit kerbs had been changed or extended. Now I’ve noticed the same at Cota.

Is this just to make the white lines wider so the cars can use more of the track without violating track limits?

Have any other tracks made changes like this? Why is it only happening this year?

Clearly not gravel, but is that the same for all circuits?

This year the pole time came very close to beating the outright lap record set in 2019, and they are projected to beat it next year given the stable regs and the new C6 compound. But this feels a bit counter-intuitive. These are some of the heaviest cars in the sports history, and tend to be very stiffly sprung. The effect of this can be seen on a lot of other circuits where current cars don't match the performance of the previous generation cars in the low- and medium-speed corners. Monaco only has low- and medium-speed corners and yet they produce very competitive lap times. So, what is the explanation for this?

Redbull did pretty good in slow speed corners of monaco. Is it something to do with stress circuits. Can anyone throw some insights into this 🤝🤝

Apologies if this isn’t allowed.

Had the pleasure of going to Silverstone today, and saw this.

I have 16 solar panels, and with an air source heat pump + an ev, they still more than cover our yearly usage.

What is Silverstone, the track and its accompanying facilities, doing to require the equivalent of 27,000 solar panels?

not sure about the specifics on how those "panels" work or what material are they made of. the truck made two passes covering the whole track width on Saturday, just before the F1 qualifying.

New to F1 - why is it on most every F1 circuit the S/F line is right off the final corner, whereas in many other forms of motorsport the S/F line is often centered on the straight or even towards the turn 1 end of the straight?

I'm working on an algorithm that generates an optimal racing line (time minimal) for a given track, and I tested my alg today on a track and I got this weird ass looking line. Since I'm not an expert, I was wondering if this looks right or if I messed something up cuz this looks werid :(

With nearly every driver going over the limit at Austria and receiving penalties hours after the race ended, it's pretty clear that there needs to be a better way of enforcing track limits. One idea I thought up is having a relatively thin strip of gravel just beyond the curbs in order to instantly punish people who go wide, but then have concrete or asphalt behind that so that if someone really goes off, it will still be safer than purely gravel runoff. I'm sure in a solution this simple I am missing something glaringly obvious as to why it wouldn't work, and I'd love to see what others have to to say!

Title really. Was always curious.

I might be wrong but I’m starting to think chicanes that have straight lines in between tend to make overtakes more difficult. I can only point Imola, Monza and Spain specially. What I feel is that it makes the driver on the front have more advantage during the straight line. In the cases where a chicane is before the straight line, the driver in front would have better exit speeds, and for the cases of a straight line ending on a chicane, the driver in front can defend his position on the curve way more easier since its tighter and will always be faster at that curve. My best example is the chicane they took out on Spain where after they dropped it felt like drivers could get ahead more easily. But I might be biased by the f1 game haha. What are your thoughts on them?

I get that the circuit is not used year around and since the circuit is in the city there may be dust/debris from the city hustle. But why isn't there an effort to clean the track via street sweeps or run support series say the weekend before or the same week? I feel like with the altitude and cooling issues there is already enough challenges. Why don't F1 make a better effort to make sure the track is ready for these cars?

Just another idea to help differentiate the Sprint races/add some flavour;

• Only run Sprint races at tracks which have more than one track configuration; e.g. Silverstone, Interlagos and Abu Dhabi etc.
• Sprint race activities are on one specific day - any GP activities happen on different days.
• Barrier changing and other setup activities happen overnight to change the track config accordingly.

Are there any feasibility issues with this idea that would make this impossible?

If Sprint races are here to stay, running them on a different track config theoretically gives us two different tracks/races for the price and logistics of setting up one weekend. We often talk about how certain tracks suit certain cars. Rather than the sprint race being a direct shadow of the main race, having a completely different track layout could mean a truly different experience and pecking order and throw up completely different overtaking spots etc.

A bit off topic but i was wondering why they changed the name and lay-out of the gp on this circuit, after i believe 2020. Obviously, the track got longer, and in my opinion this is a better lay-out. And are there any car related reasons they did this? But why alsof change the name? Hope some of you can clearing things up for me.

In Eg. Mexico (and a hand full of other tracks)

P2 starts on the inside of Turn1, isn't that the better position to start in despite being a little further back, since all you need to do is stay alongside till the corner and should come out ahead.

After watching another street circuit race, just curious if there’s any rules regarding a certain width to allow for cars to be side by side. I think this is especially relevant in Monaco, otherwise overtaking would be impossible on certain circuits. Thanks!

We talk a lot about being ‘on the marbles’ and tracks ‘rubbering in’ and I know that rain washes rubber off the track, but my question (possibly quite naively) is… what happens to all that rubber that gets washed away? Does it just go into the sewers or into the waste water system? Is it an environmental issue for that much rubber to get washed into the environment? Additional thought… how much does all that rubber weigh?

I've noticed at Zanvoort that they will often pre-position cranes for car recovery on the inside of certain turns. This makes sense with so many ponds and such little working space inside the track ring on several parts of the circuit. During yesterday's race, I noticed that one turn (7 I believe) had three cranes all deployed abreast, but other turns didn't appear to have any coverage.

Does anyone know why they would place three cranes on this apex? One could likely reach into most of the gravel outside of turn 7 and back into turn 10. A second crane on the outside likely gives them a little more reach into turn 8 and the left side of 9, but I don't see a practical reason for a third crane in the middle.

I think if I were prepositioning cranes, I would have one on the apex of 7, another between the apex of 6 and the exit of 10, and the third near the apex of 9. That said, the T8-T9 area does look like it has a lot of limitations for placing heavy cranes inside or outside of the track.