Flins-Mureaux: the new home of the French Grand Prix revealed

[prisonermonkeys]

I'm surprised this hasn't come up already, given that the story as been circulating for two weeks now. Anyway, the French have settled on a circuit to host their Grand Prix to be built at Flins-Mureaux in the Yvelines deparment in the country's north. Significantly, Hermann Tilke has not been involved in the design.

Flins-Mureaux: France's Tilke-Free Track
16 March 2009 by Keith Collantine

New details about France’s potential new F1 track have emerged at Grandprix.com. It’s being built without the aid of Hermann Tilke, who has had something of a monopoly of F1 circuit design for more than a decade.

According to Grandprix.com: "The conseil general of the Yvelines departement, which is funding the circuit, asked for tenders for the design in the autumn and has now chosen the winning bid, presented by the French firm Wilmotte, which boasts offices in London, Paris and Cannes and employs 150 designers.

Wilmotte decided to ally with Britain’s Apex Circuit Design, headed by Clive Bowen, who has a list of circuit designs behind him including the Dubai Autodrome, the Eurasia Autodrome at Domodedovo in Russia, plus ongoing projects such as the Iceland MotoPark, the Eastern Creek Raceway in Australia, Hampton Downs in New Zealand and the new Alabama Motorsports Park in the United States. Apex has also designed international kart tracks for Bahrain and Abu Dhabi."

It has often been assumed that a pre-requisite from any track wanting to hold an F1 race is a visit from Hermann Tilke. Many fans have, perhaps unfairly, criticised Tilke for a lack of imagination in modern F1 track designs, though I have often wondered whether the restrictive rules have more to do with it.

The clockwise Flins-Mureaux design (see here for another picture) departs from Tilke convention in one clear way: there are no obvious pre-arranged ‘overtaking places’ where a tight corner leads onto a long straight and then another tight corner. Perhaps the designs have assumed that the new generation of F1 cars will be able to follow each other more closely than last year’s were, and so purpose-built overtaking zones can become a thing of the past.

At 4.5km (2.8 miles) this would be one of the shortest tracks in F1, longer only than Monte-Carlo, Interlagos and the Hungaroring.

Linky

And here is a plan of the circuit:

Oh, dear. This doesn't look particularly inspired at all. In fact, it strikes me as a carbon-copy of Magny-Cours; the only corner combination that looks remotely interesting is the one in the northern circuit that is not a part of the actual Grand Prix circuit and the corners immediately before and after it.

It seems the designers were more interested in addressing the problems associated with Magny-Cours by building its own road, rail and ferry connections rather than building an actual circuit conductive to good racing.

 

[Ardius]

The top half of the circuit looks exactly the same as Magny-Cours! I can easily see turn 1 and beyond in the top left, and it even goes around almost the same to the back straight. The only thing missing is the end chicane!

I'd rather see the British and German GP's secured before this.....make the French build a decent circuit again, they deserve a better one than this, Magny-Cours or Paul Ricard.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

They'll never go back to Paul Ricard. The circuit has a permanent "1T" designation, meaning it can only ever be used as a Formula One test circuit.

 

[Ardius]

No, I meant they deserve a circuit with a better design than these 3, not returning to either of those 2. I actually personally like driving Paul Ricard in Ferrari Challenge, but I accept its not a great circuit to watch.

They used to have some great street tracks like Rouen-Les-Essarts and Charade, they deserve better than these boring designs.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

I like Magny Cours. The only problem I remember people mentioning is that there were practically no overtaking opportunities, which could be fixed by making the circuit wider.

 

[senamic]

Rouen-Les-Essarts is the way to go. If only...

 

[Tired Tyres]

Good call. Shame it won't happen though.

 

[chrisbroughton]

It's probably just coincidence, but look. Turns 1 and 2 are like Brands Hatch, then you've got a Mangy-cours section. The second infield complex looks like the one from the A1 ring and then we've got the last three corners of Istanbul but mirrored.

Some serious unorigininality here!

Though they are all quite good sections so it doesn't look too bad.

 

[mipuumal]

I hope it's run clockwise, looks more interesting that way.

If it's counter-clockwise then S1 looks a lot like Singapore (boring).