The 3.4km Hamilton circuit has all the elements to make this weekend's racing fast and furious. There are definite passing opportunities and because of the wide nature of the track, there'll be plenty of lunging under brakes into the slower corners.
Bravery will be rewarded around this street
course but make a mistake and those concrete barriers will make crash repairs an expensive business.
FROM THE GRID, drivers look at a short blast down into a 90-degree plus
elbow-type right-hand corner. The exit of TURN ONE veers slightly left before straightening out for the run down into turn two.
Drivers will reach about 200kph down the short straight before getting hard on the brakes into the right hand TURN TWO hairpin. Then it's a short run to left-handed TURN THREE, where drivers will go around the Founders Theatre roundabout the wrong way. There should be a lot of late breaking into here.
Getting hard on the gas, drivers head down the back straight to the TURN FOUR which is more of a right-left chicane, and one drivers will not be able to straighten unless they want to leave some of the car behind. Then it's back on the gas again quickly before slowing for the 90-degree right-hand TURN FIVE.
After the short straight and on the entrance to TURN SIX there's a right-left kink like an open mini esses before the right-hand turn six comes into play. The exit here is very wide and the cars will pass through a left-hand kink before the approach to
the tight right-hand TURN SEVEN.
From there the drivers will accelerate through a right-hand kink toward the final corner, turn eight.
The TURN EIGHT exit is wide and the drivers will drift right over to the wall to get the power early for the blast down the long-front straight where speeds up to 250kph could be reached.
Speed analysis charts suggest a lap time around the 1min 21sec mark and an average speed of approximately 140kph. However, event organiser Steve Vuleta has said the original speed curve analysis for the track may have been on the conservative side.
