ORIGINAL: DSCBoy
....and as for corner I mean the one onto the new pit straight... with the intimidating wall on the inside!
Which has already collected quite a few cars since it opened! I will be sitting next to a client in our Elise there on the south circuit on Friday, which is looking like it's going to be a bit damp, so I'm going to be a bit wary of Club! I did the new south crcuit a few weeks ago and two cars went in the wall on that day - and that was in the dry!
ORIGINAL: Melv
Nurries Rick
-that entry to Bridge is gonna be
fast..........
Plan of GP cct below, showing the 'historic' short-cuts at Vale/Club and Abbey.....
Of course, that layout is "historic" really only in name (because it's used for historic events), much of the current layout being only 19 years old - the true historic layout isn't possible anymore because the track has been changed so much, many of the original pieces of tarmac no longer exist. I drove the original GP circuit back in the seventies, we did most of our training on the National circuit, but occasionally they let us loose on the GP circuit. But I also watched quite a few races on the original layout including the '71 and '73 Grands Prix and the '71 International Trophy (non-championship F1 race). Back then Copse was a faster corner being more of a traditional curve than the current chamferred off version, Becketts was a little bit tighter, Stowe was also faster as it didn't come back on you as it does now and the following straight went straight down to Club, which was also much faster because of the entry speed (Vale didn't exist, so the approach to it was very fast, preceeded by the fast Stowe corner). Abbey was the flat-out kink that it is on the current historic layout, which meant, as there was no Bridge, Priory, Brooklands nor Luffield, that even early 1970's F1 cars were arriving at Woodcote flat out at around 185mph or more having been accelerating all the way from Club. Woodcote was awesome then, taken at in excess of 160mph, often sideways! As demonstrated here by the late great Francois Cevert in the '73 GP...
This is how it looked then...
Here's a video of the start and first lap of the 1973 British GP, Raymond Baxter commentating, note the 3-2-3 grid format. This is the first lap that ended in disaster and wiped out eight cars after Jody Scheckter lost his McLaren at Woodcote and was collected by most of the latter half of the grid... before that though Stewart can be seen drifting his Tyrell through Woodcote at 160mph...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R_XId0YabQ
And the restart:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giC70-9vRaI
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