Being won over by the Red Bull Ring

Regular readers of this particular site will know by now that I've not always been the world's greatest fan of the A1/Red Bull Ring. To say the least.

The A1/Red Bull Ring returned - and I actually thought
it was pretty good
Photo: Octane Photography

This is not because I consider anything especially objectionable about the track in itself - which is perfectly acceptable within the modern Zeitgeist - it instead is due overwhelmingly to what it replaced. Namely the wonderful, fearsome Österreichring - all fast corners, blind brows, plunges and climbs. Had they only built the new track up the hillside or something (as ironically they did with the original Österreichring which usurped the previous 'Zeltweg' track) then you probably wouldn't hear a peep out of me.

Having watched over the weekend just passed a re-run on TV of the highlights of the last Grand Prix at the old place, from 1987, it brought home that the modern formula is in some ways unrecognisable even compared with that relatively recent history. Of the fearsome fast corners referenced all but one had literally zero run off, instead being lined on the outside by barriers. And curiously much of the track looked built on something of a ha-ha, which meant that leaving the track even where there wasn't a barrier would probably result in gravity sucking your car directly to meet something solid. One was put in mind of Stirling Moss's analogy of doing a tightrope walk two feet above the ground as opposed to doing it over the Grand Canyon. The skill is the same; the challenge is not.

Red Bull Ring Preview: Long time, no see

What we have this weekend is very different. And not just because what is now known as the Red Bull Ring in Austria represents one of only two countries on the this year's F1 calendar not on the 2013 one.

F1 returns to what is now known as the Red Bull Ring
after an absence since 2003

It is also because in this modern age it is habitual that a change to the itinerary involves pitching up at a gleaming new Herman Tilke-designed facility. It often too is in an uncharted territory (literally) for the sport; new European rounds have become as rare as hen's teeth. And equally habitual is that when the fraternity turns its back on a venue for whatever reason it slams the door on the way out and never so much as considers a backwards glance let alone a tail-between-legs return.

Even on the rare occasions that the sport reacquaints with an old partner it has tended to involve a heavily revised layout; the sport rocking up to Fuji in 2007 after 30 years away, to find a very different track, is one such example. Indeed even before the peculiarities of the age in which we live it tended to be the case that any circuit returned to was revised heavily compared with the one left: see Buenos Aires, Interlagos, Spa, Nurburgring, and even this Austrian circuit itself in previous life forms.

Austrian Grand Prix To Return: What This Means For Your Formula One Calendar - a guest post by Adam Stevens

The Austrian Grand Prix, last won by the legendary Michael Schumacher in 2003, is set to return after 11 years out of the calendar.

This will help make the Formula One calendar host 22 races in 2014, something which fans will be delighted with but will leave racing teams horrified. Teams have been worried that the amount of races will reduce the quality of the races and have been hoping to have one or two races dropped from the calendar.

Bernie Ecclestone, president and CEO of Formula One Management, has previously said that 20 races is a sensible limit for F1, which implies his intention to drop races from the packed calendar for 2014.

Austria will host the return of their Grand Prix race on the 22nd June 2014 at the former A1-Ring, now Red Bull Ring, in Spielberg.

Österreichring - a matter of perspective

There is a joke that psychologists like to tell. Two psychologists, who are old friends, happen upon each other in the street. Psychologist one asks psychologist two: 'How's your wife?' Psychologist two replies: 'Compared to what?'

I won't give up the day job.

But there is a reason that psychologists like to tell this joke. In psychology, as in everything, all is a matter of perspective, a matter of relativity. Nothing can be judged in a vacuum; everything must be judged in comparison with what is around it.

And so it is with the A1-Ring (or the Red Bull Ring to give its latest moniker), which the Red Bull company announced recently is to return to the F1 calendar next year. In itself, the A1/Red Bull Ring is a perfectly acceptable motor racing venue of the modern sort. It's set in fine, scenic surroundings; there is plenty of welcome (and perhaps increasingly rare) use of gradient. The Austrian Grands Prix it hosted between 1997 and 2003 tended to give us diverting races, with rather a lot of overtaking, in an age which usually didn't give us much of either. And set as it is in central Europe it is within relatively easy reach of large numbers of much of the sport's latent following - a following that's had the sport turn its back on it to a rather absurd extent in recent times, in preference for venues wherein local interest can be meagre. To be a little more brutal however, while the A1-Ring wasn't a grand feast of a track perhaps if you're used to a diet of workhouse gruel something a bit more appetising than that will always be welcome.

The A1/Red Bull Ring is back by the looks of things,
but I'm not too excited

And judging by the views of F1 fans that I've spoken to as well as those discerned from reading internet comments the track's return is a welcome one, I'd imagine for the reasons outlined above. But I've never been at ease with the A1-Ring entirely. I'd much rather, if it had to exist, that they'd built it somewhere else. Because when it was created it trampled on something really rather wonderful, about as grand a feast as the sport has offered in its long history. This was a track known as the Österreichring, which itself had been an F1 stop-off between 1970 and 1987.

Sadly, the creation of the new-fangled Austrian circuit meant the magnificent Österreichring was consigned to the history books and film reels forever. And, rather like the new Nurburgring and very much unlike the new Spa, the new layout - mainly straights separated by second and third gear corners - didn't begin to capture the spirit of the old (though at least they didn't commit the same act of heresy as the Nurburgring and give the Ersatz version the same blimming name).