Sunday, November 18, 2012

Eating Crow (2012 U.S. GP)

Well... Circuit of the Americas will certainly do, and I withdraw my "cookie cutter" post of a few days back.  The "uphill" into Turn 1 is very challenging, a sucker bend.  The decreasing-radius esses provide a like challenge.  (They remind me of Virginia International Raceway except way faster.)   The long straight puts a premium on top speed.  This circuit is hard to engineer a GP car for.  And, if need be, one or more turns can be removed from the twisty bits just before the pit straight, to make it an even faster circuit.  How the promotors managed to find or make as many elevation changes as this circuit has remains a mystery.

And it was a fine race.  Lewis Hamilton chased down Sebastian Vettel twice, and passed him once.  Fernando Alonso must have a Cuisinart.  He turned the lemons of a 7th-place qualifying run into a lemonade 3rd-place finish, keeping his hopes to win the WDC alive until next weekend at Brazil.  Go Fernando!

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