Motorsport Analytics

(Part 1)

Corners should have names. FE’s don’t

I like corner names. I often struggle to match turns up to their numbers even if I can remember the general characteristic of a corner – even by going around the circuit I’ll often miss one out (and it really doesn’t help that sometimes different series disagree on the numbering, either). Also, frankly, they’re more evocative. It sounds cooler to make a daring last-lap move around the outside at the Peraltada than it does to do the same thing at Turn 17 (as it is in the F1 layout at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez).

Anyway. Point is, I like corner names, and Formula E tracks, mostly, don’t have them. Perhaps I should elaborate on that:

Race	Track	Does it have corner names?
Mexico City	Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez	Not really (see below)
Ad Diriyah	Riyadh Street Circuit	No
Sao Paolo	Anhembi Street Circuit	Sort of (see below)
Tokyo	Tokyo Street Circuit	No
Misano	Misano World Circuit Mario Simonelli	Yes
Monaco	Circuit de Monaco	Yes
Berlin	Templehof Airport Circuit	No
Shanghai	Shanghai International Circuit	No (possibly “not in English”)
Portland	Portland International Raceway	No
London	London ExCeL Circuit	No

Obviously the only thing to do is to invent names for all the tracks that don’t have them. And make a blog post about it, obviously. Actually, since that’s a lot of corners to name, I’m going to make two posts about it. This one covers up to Berlin; I’ll do Shanghai, Portland and London later in the year (hopefully after somebody’s done a map of the Shanghai circuit, which doesn’t seem to have been entirely confirmed yet though it’s probably the Long West version of the track).

A Formula E corner (Turn 3 at London). It doesn’t have a name.

Mexico City

Now, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez does have named corners. However, most of them apply to the F1 circuit, and the FE circuit uses almost none of them. So here’s some of my own:

Turn 1: “Straight On” is a bit of an odd name for a corner, but it reflects that a) the F1 circuit does indeed go straight on here and b) so do quite a lot of FE drivers in most sessions. 
Turn 2: A simple enough name based on it being the top turn of the Oval configuration
Turn 3: A couple of corners on the main circuit are named after Mexican F1 drivers, so I thought Checo rated at least an FE corner…
Turns 4, 7 and especially 8 I’m pretty sure are flat so I’m not dignifying them names.
Turns 5 and 6: Jake Dennis has screwed up his qualifying here in both of the last two years; on the Ernst Degner principle that gets the corner named after him. And since I’m using the Degner principle we can have First Dennis and Second Dennis.
Turns 9, 10 & 11 have been added to the circuit simply to allow another opportunity to charge the battery so I’ve given them an appropriate name…in general I’ll be giving chicanes a single name since that’s how they’re usually named (eg, the Triangle at Suzuka or the Bus Stop at either Spa or Daytona) even though number-wise they’re generally several corners.
Turn 12 is more-or-less common with the F1 circuit and shares the name (it’s named after Adrian Fernández)
Turns 13-17 are already called the Foro Sol (after the baseball stadium they’re inside of) by everyone so I’m not going to try and change that.
I’ve called Turn 18 “Exit” both because you’re leaving the stadium and because if people talk about it at all they’re saying how it’s important to get a good exit as it leads out into the Peraltada, speaking of which…
Turn 19 I’m going with “Peraltada”; the official name of the last turn in the F1 design is now “Mansell” but a) it’s not the same corner and b) everyone still calls it Peraltada.

Ad Diriyah

Turns 1-14: This sequence is frequently called the “Bobsleigh Run” by commentators, drivers etc, so I’ve named all the corners after cities which have hosted the Winter Olympics
Turn 15: The Saudi Ministry of Culture’s on the inside of this turn.
Turns 16-17 are as close as the track gets to the historic city of Diriyah that the cameras like to take shots of.
Turns 18-19: The Imam Abdul Aziz bin Mohammed bin Saud Mosque is on the inside of this chicane.
Turn 20 is also approximately where drivers peel off to pit in.
On the outside of turn 21 is a large car park.

São Paulo

While the current São Paulo circuit doesn’t have corner names, the old Anhembi circuit that IndyCar used did, so I can start there. All I’ve really done to the original corner names here is moved “S for Samba” from being the first S of a pair of S-bends with Air Base being the second. Since that’s now just a chicane I’ve called it Air Base and re-used S for Samba for a different S bend.

Tokyo

I think the Tokyo Street Circuit’s still subject to homologation, so it might not look like this once it happens, but this is the current plan:

Turns 1, 2 and 3: I’ve called this “Grandstand” since based on the ticket website this is the start of the stadium section.
Turns 4-8: This bit of the track looks like a hat. Well, I think looks like a hat anyway, so I’ve named the corners after the parts of the hat they’d be if it was a hat.
Turn 9: A tribute to Suzuka and the most famous corner in Japan. It may not quite be a constant radius corner but that’s OK, 130R isn’t any more either. (130R is so named because, at least before it was remodelled in 2002, it was a corner with a constant radius of 130 metres).
Turns 10 and 11: Hey, it’s my blog and I’ll name a chicane after my favourite Japanese driver if I want to.
Turn 12: Named after the railway line that is on the outside of this corner.
Turn 13: Normally I wouldn’t bother dignifying such a non-corner with a name but given there’s literally a bridge here it seemed obvious enough.
Turn 15: It’s the Big Sight (the convention centre the race is run around)’s East Terminal, but it’s also the sort of South End of the track so I think it’s appropriate in two ways.
Turn 16: The reason the track turns at this point is that if it went straight on it’d be in the sea, and we’re in the warehouse/harbour area, so….
Turns 17/18: This chicane runs by the Big Sight’s New East Halls.

Misano

Has perfectly good corner names already. Well, I say “perfectly good” I’m not sure about having a corner with the same name as the circuit:

Unchanged from Wikimedia Commons, by Will Pittenger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Monaco

Probably the best-known set of corner names in existence. Lewis Hamilton once told Bono to stop using the corner numbers here because he only really knew the corners by the names. Except technically these days turn 6 is the Fairmont Hairpin since the Hotel’s changed hands again, but if you’re old school enough you could just call it the Station Hairpin (or even just the Hairpin, it’s not like there’s another one on the track) as that’s what it was originally.

Unchanged from Wikimedia commons by Will Pittenger – Own work (Author’s note: This is the more accurate but less complete version of my Monte Carlo map.), CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

Berlin

The Templehof circuit’s one of the trickier ones to give corner names to, since it’s literally created out of crash barriers on an expanse of concrete that used to be the airport’s apron. Also, the small number of landmarks there used to be are somewhat confused by the fact that Formula E have completely redone the layout for 2024 anyway so it’s not clear if they’ll be in the same places or not. Anyway, here’s my best attempt:

Turns 1/2: Turn 1 doesn’t really count so I’ve not bothered to name it. Assuming I’ve guessed right, Turn 2 is probably where the C-54 Skymaster that’s at Turn 6 on the previous layout will be situated.
Turns 3-7: The reason the Skymaster’s there is to commemorate Templehof’s role in the Berlin Airlift, so, taking the cue from that, these turns are also named after aircraft that partipicated in the Airlift (6/7 is the same complex, so we’re going to have “First Sunderland” and “Second Sunderland”).
Turn 9: This section reminds me of the switchbacks common on European mountain passes, so I’ve named it after one in the Bavarian Alps known for its hairpins.
Turns 10 and 11 aren’t really, so I’ve not bothered to name them.
Turn 12 is the start (if you don’t count 10-11) of a sequence of left-handers, so I’ve named it after West Germany’s first SPD (ie, left-wing) chancellor as a sort of pun.
Turn 13 makes this whole section look like a chevron on the track map so I was just being descriptive.
Turn 14 is the fifth left hander, so it just gets called “fifth” in German, because it’s hard to get good ideas when you’re staring at blank concrete.
Turn 15 is the pit entrance, and since the Germans call pits boxes….