Sepang – Oleg Karpov
It’s ironic to think that some welcomed the return of the Istanbul track to the calendar on the basis that F1 was going back to ‘historical’ venues – because Hermann Tilke and his company were commonly blamed for creating lookalike circuits. The only real basis for that argument is that all Tilke tracks are, indeed, the same in the sense that they feature straights and left- and right-hand corners. But the Istanbul track has a unique character – and the same is true for many of Tilke’s creations.
