FEBRUARY 17, 2006

The redesign of Silverstone

The details of the redevelopment of Silverstone are yet to be made public but already there is talk that some of the famous corners at the track will be axed when the track is rebuilt. This is not surprising. The most logical development would be to axe the Club, Abbey and Bridge sections of the circuit and move the circuit to the east.

While some complain about losing classic corners, the reality is that Bridge did not exist before 1991 and both Club and Abbey have both been completely revised and have completely different characters to the original corners and thus removing them from the circuit would not be quite the disaster that some would claim.

It would also mean that the land at Silverstone could be used much more effectively as at the moment there is a lot of empty land in the centre of the circuit, which is used for helicopter landing. Moving the circuit to the east would give developers much more land to work with and would offer circuit designers the chance to come up with some more challenging corners sections in what is now the unused infield. This would mean that the circuit will probably turn to the right at Vale and cut across the infield through a series of corners before linking up with the National Circuit straight taking the track back to the Priory-Brooklands-Luffield complex. It would be entirely possible for there to be a corner very similar to Bridge (a fast lefthander rather than a fast righthander) to take the track into this "stadium" area where grandstands already exist and spectators can see a great deal of the action. The other advantage of this is that it would have very little effect on the parking capacity of the track. Traditionalists would still have the pits area, Copse, Maggotts, Becketts, Hangar Straight and Stowe unchanged which would mean that the character of the circuit would in some part be unchanged.