SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Preview: 2004 British Grand Prix

I will be taking the course during the 2004 season using EA's F1 Challenge '99-'02. To make it more contemporary I will be applying Ralph Hummerich's excellent carset to it as soon as it is ready. I have chosen Ralph's carset as, in addition to him being a thoroughly top notch person, in my opinion his carsets are the best available and it is an honor for SimHQ to have an exclusive WIP version to be able to use for its screenshots. Many thanks Ralph! If you wish to try his 2003 add on please use this link to his page.

Silverstone: The Home of British Motor Racing

Originally an airfield circuit, it hosted the first very first World Championship Grand Prix in 1950 and has been transformed several times since then.

Silverstone briefly became notorious for track invasions at the height of ‘Mansell-Mania’ in the early 1990’s, but the atmosphere has since calmed down. Damon Hill fans used to dominate, even though Hill has only once won his home race.

The first corner at Copse was tightened in 1995 but returned to its former high-speed glory in 2000. It leads on to the series of curves at Becketts that have become a real challenge.

The Becketts sweeps are crucial to the set-up of the car to get a fast lap.

The long Hangar straight leads in to the re-profiled Stowe corner, which is much faster and more derivable than it was in 1995 and provide the driver with quite a challenge.

From Stowe the track drops away into the tight left-hander at Vale before a short blast into Club, which opens out into a power slide onto the fast run up to Abbey. Abbey used to be a flat-out left-land bend but the chicane was put in to slow cars down in the aftermath of Pedro Lamy's enormous crash in 1994. The rear wing of Lamy’s Lotus came off in the middle of the corner and he ended up in the spectator tunnel.

Bridge corner is a blind right-hander and leads into the low-speed complex section where Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher collided in 1995 .

The combination of the fast Hangar straight and slow complex section mean that set-up is always going to be a compromise between speed and downforce. This leads to varying solutions which can mean cars with differing characteristics in terms of cornering and straight-line speed.

A Lap of the Silverstone Circuit

Coming down the start/finish straight you brake lightly for Copse (a fast right hander taken at about 150 mph) you then accelerate past the exit of the pit lane (on your right into the Becketts complex which is a complex consisting of right and left sweeps). This is one of the best places to see just how fast a modern grand prix car goes as they are taken at fairly high speed.

Entering the complex you take Maggotts at about 165mph before going down a gear and 20mph for Becketts and then braking down to 125mph for Chapel which then opens out to the left to lead onto the Hangar Straight. It is along here that you get above 190mph (easily the fastest part of the track) going slightly downhill as you approach Stowe corner. As you can imagine this is the heaviest braking point on the track and the number of potential lines you can take in and out of the corner means that it is one of the best overtaking points of all on the circuits which the grand prix cars visit. This is taken at just over 100 mph in 4th gear.

You'll briefly accelerate before braking for the tight left hander at Vale (taken at 65mph in 2nd gear) before accelerating hard through Club (a right hander that tempers the acceleration rather than anything else) you then accelerate back uphill until you reach Abbey (a tight left taken at 65mph in 2nd gear).

You flick right through Farm (Abbey and Farm are the two parts of a left-right chicane) you then accelerate again passing under a bridge before turning left and lightly braking for Bridge corner. This used to be taken more or less flat but now is taken at 155mph in 5th gear (still pretty fast!).

Then you accelerate towards the complex (a series of low speed corners that finish the lap). You must then break for Priory (a left hander taken at 100mph in 3rd gear) before briefly accelerating and then braking for Brooklands (another left hander this time taken in 2nd gear at 55mph and then accelerating slightly for Luffield and Woodcote (a two part right hander taken at about 70mph in 2nd gear and then opening out up to 100mph or so in 3rd gear) as the drivers accelerate onto the curbing and past the pit entrance on the right and around the gentle right hand sweep that leads onto the start/finish straight.

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