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Originally posted by CorsAsh
Compared to the present day:

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Originally posted by jr
there not rips of rich very rare some of the stuff

great pics ash

[Edited on 08-04-2009 by jr]

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Originally posted by jr
there not rips of rich very rare some of the stuff

great pics ash

[Edited on 08-04-2009 by jr]

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Originally posted by VXR
JR, lookup Spa, see how long the original circuit was. 9 miles I think.

A lot of the "old" tracks used today used to be much longer, and theres still loads of pics online.

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Last friday was a sunny, and not too cold, and I had a day off, so I decided to take one of my bikes out for a ride, just to let her know that winter is almost gone.
But where to go? The sea would have been nice, but a bit too far for these still short days (you don't want to be riding after sunset in february), so I decided to go visit a park. The park of a royal villa. Just a bit north-east of the (ugly) city of Milan. In a place called Monza.

In this park, about the same time when the Nordschleife was built, the Automobile Club of Milan decided to build a permanent circuit for motor racing.
And it's still there. Like the Nordschleife.
Unlike the Nordschleife, it is still used for world class racing, like Formula 1, or World Superbikes.
But, which of the two is in better shape?

I did go check.



I'm a law abiding citizen, so I went to the official, main entrance to the circuit. There was a sign, and a very bored guard, who told me I had to pay 5 euros to get in. Not on the circuit, of course. Just to get in and "spectate" at the empty track. Which I found a bit expensive, specially when, once inside, I realized that there were many other unguarded entrances from which other people were peacefully walking, or biking, in.

Monza was built for speed.
That was the main attractive of it.
It had very long straights. A corner called "Curva grande" (great corner), so wide it is still difficult to tell it is a corner, with its 400 meter radius.



It even had (still has) a high-speed oval (added in 1955), whose corner have a banking of 38 degrees, and the oval could be used together with the road circuit, for a total length of about 10 km.
In 1957 (1957!!) the fast lap of a race on the high-speed oval averaged 283 km/h (283!!).
This is the abandoned oval today:



It has been saved from demolition, by a popular petition. Look at the single armco at the top, partly held by steel supports, and partly by wooden poles, and if you jumped that, you would be flying in the air. Like in John Frankenheimer's "Grand Prix".
Sport cars like Ferrari 512 and 312P, Porsche 917 and Ford GT 40 raced on the oval til 1969: chicanes had already been added at the entrance of each of the banked corners, to slow down such powerful cars.

Speed was the main attractive of Monza, but, in time, speed became way too dangerous until, in my view, it spoiled the place forever.
In 1961, on the second lap of the last F1 GP raced on the complete circuit (including the oval), Jim Clark and Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips collided just before the entrance of the Parabolica corner. Von Trips' Ferrari hit the fence and killed 14 spectators, before bouncing back on the track and killing von Trips himself, who was very much likely going to become world champion.
This is the place today:



In the late '60s, some F1 drivers were beginning to claim that they were doing the Curva grande flat out, and flat out after a 1.5 km straight (out of a fast corner) meant more than 300 km/h (at that time, the Curva grande had the same kind of run-off area as miss-hit-miss today: 1 meter of grass).

In 1970, at about the same spot of the Clark-von Trips crash, approximately here:



during practice for the F1 GP, Jochen Rindt's Lotus had a suspension failure, hit the armco sideways and killed his pilot, who was he only one to become world champion after his death.

In 1973, at the Curva grande, on the first lap of the 250cc race of the italian moto grand prix, the great Renzo Pasolini and Jarno Saarinen were killed in a crash that involved 14 riders at a speed of over 200 km/h. Pasolini had been the first one to average more than 200 km/h in a lap of the road circuit (not including the oval) on a 250 cc.
A few weeks later, in the same corner, another three bikers were killed during a national championship race.
This is Curva grande today:



A few trees has been cut and a gravel trap has been put in their place, but it is still narrow and cannot be extended (the wall at the end of it is actually the limit of the park: there's a public road behind it), so it is a little bit banked, to help reduce speed of a vehicle going off.

So, in the '70s the speed was becoming too high, and they had to start spoiling the place.
A not-so-slow chicane was introduced to break the main straight and reduce the approach speed to Curva grande.
A second chicane was built after the Curva grande, to reduce speed into the Lesmo corners. This is its entrance:



and this is its exit:



Before the chicane, in its place there was just a flat out left kink, and the first Lesmo corner was approached at full speed.

These are the Lesmo corners today. First:







and second:





Not much run-off area here, either, but in the '70s there used to be a tribune on the outside. With people sitting there, just waiting for a car to jump out and kill them.

The Ascari corner, a sweeping left hander whose speed had become unbearable, was transformed in this chicane:





One can still guess where the original track went, and imagine the speed on such a corner today.
Notice the non-existent run-off area on the left, and all the tyre marks going towards it:



In the years, some run-off area has been added outside a few corners, the radius of some corner has been reduced and chicanes have been made sharper, to further reduce speed, This is the first chicane today:





World superbikes riders claim that according to their datalogs, the speed on the first chicane goes down to 35-40 km/h (from about 300 km/h of the main straight).
The abandoned high speed oval nearby is most probably horrified by a 35 km/h corner.



The only corner still untouched is the one that was originally the slowest (and is a medium-fast corner today: the Parabolica:



So they ended up with yet another spoiled circuit, in the name of safety, and yet it is still too fast (Montoya's top speed, in 2005, was measured at 369 km/h) and too narrow to be safe.

Now this bike has been to the Nurburgring (for about 300 laps) and to Monza (for a few hundred meters on the abandoned oval): one is not used for top class racing anymore, the other is a Formula 1 and Superbikes world championship track, but to me there is no doubt about which of the two carries its age better and is more alive today.



Stelvio.

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