With the news that three more races have been cancelled this year, F1 is looking for alternate ways to fill out the rest of the calendar. One of those solutions could be to have two races in Bahrain, and Ross Brawn has suggested that one of them could use a different track configuration.
Bahrain has many different layouts, including the utterly awful endurance configuration that was used in 2010, was hated by everyone, and thankfully never used again. One of the more interesting ones, however, is Bahrain’s outer loop – which Brawn has directly mentioned as a possible option. He told F1.com:
“One of the nice attractions of Bahrain is it has many configurations, so we could go to Bahrain and race on two different tracks there. There’s a nice sort of almost oval track that would be quite exciting, and all the layouts have a Grade 1 licence with the FIA, so that is an option in the pocket.
“Using two configurations involves quite a lot of work for the riggers – for example the timing needs setting up for two tracks so you need plenty of notice. That’s something we have to take into account.”
OK, so Brawn describing it as “almost oval” is using more than a pinch of creative license, but you get where he’s coming from – there are few corners and plenty of straights as the circuit cuts out the entire infield section. It’s a very short lap – almost as short as Monaco – and lap times would probably end up being less than a minute.
But it retains many of the normal circuit’s overtaking areas, and the long straights could end up making the race there a bit of a slipstream battle. It’s a funky layout that’s surely well worth a go. If we have to have two races at Bahrain this year, let’s at least make one of them completely different.
As long as it’s not the Endurance layout.
