Turkish Grand Prix – Istanbul Park (2005-2011)
Formula One raced seven times at the Istanbul Park but there are probably few who mourn the fact that there wasn’t an eighth or a ninth instalment of the race – except maybe for three-time Turkish Grand Prix-winner Felipe Massa, who probably still cries himself to sleep at night pining for the delights of Turn 8.
Indeed, apart from Massa’s three wins and the lovely multi-apex Turn 8 the most memorable thing about Istanbul Park was the traffic.
In the first year of the race most of F1 made the schoolboy error of presuming that a circuit named Istanbul Park would be in a city called Istanbul and booked hotels accordingly.
The track, however, was a bit like one of those Ryanair airports called Berlin East or somesuch, which is actually located in a remote part of Poland. Istanbul Park was some 80km east of the city in an unlovely semi-industrial part of the city close to the low-cost airport no one flew into.
The error resulted in people staying in the beautiful old town or in the near environs and then being faced with Istanbul’s morning commute across the Bosphorus, which is akin to a stock car race conducted at either 200mph or 4mph depending on traffic flow, all while your competitors are trying to go from lane seven to lane one in under two seconds. Average journey time from city to circuit was about three hours each way.
By year two everyone was flying into Sabiha Gökçen airport on the Asian side of the city but the gloss had worn off and despite the organisers doing the right thing by building a circuit into the side of a hill, with some great changes of elevation and some excellent corners, the race was not popular with many in F1, except of course Felipe Massa.
It didn’t prove enormously popular with fans either and each year the attendance seemed to wither. When it eventually fell off the calendar for 2012, few heard it fall.
