By Phil Huff (13/05/2003)
May 14 2003

After failing to finish the Spanish Grand Prix two weeks ago, BAR Honda driver Jacques Villeneuve is hoping to go better this weekend and make it into the top eight, securing valuable points for Honda. Here he describes a lap of the Austrian track and how he plans to attack it this weekend. "When I was a kid, I went to the old Österreichring as a spectator and I can remember sitting in the grandstands. It's a shame they had to replace it. The current track bears no resemblance to what used to be here! The A1-Ring is an easy track to learn. You turn right three times, left twice, then right and right again, and you've finished your lap. After two laps you know exactly where you are. The rhythm of the circuit is good though because you have a corner followed by a straight, then another corner followed by a straight.

"The first two corners feel as if they've just cut the straight and put a bend in it! They're very harsh. Castrol Kurve, the first corner, is taken in second gear under heavy braking. On exit, you accelerate up to sixth gear and then brake hard again for the Remus Kurve. In fact, you have to brake heavily almost everywhere around the A1-Ring. Remus is a very slow hairpin; you take it almost as slow as you can go. However the next turn, Gosser Kurve, is interesting. You brake while descending down the hill and then start your turn-in. It's not a very fast corner but it's hard to get right.

"Then you accelerate away for the two downhill left-handers, Niki Lauda Kurve and Power Horse Kurve. You don't see where the apex of the corner is for the first and because of the downforce we run, you pull quite a lot of Gs through here. They're both pretty straightforward third gear corners though.

"Then it's up to top gear again, accelerating to the very fast turn 7, which is nothing more than a kink. You then drop down the hill for the final two corners which are really strange. As you turn in to Jochen Rindt Kurve, the track falls away. However, on the apex of the corner the track levels out again. The car goes from feeling very light to very heavy in just a second. But this makes these final turns interesting.

"Generally the A1-Ring is good for racing because you have a lot of straights followed by some heavy braking areas. But if I have one criticism it would be that the straights aren't really long enough. From a driver's perspective, this is not a particularly demanding circuit to learn or to drive. Set-up around this circuit is constant too - usually you'll have a compromised set-up that works well in certain areas of the track but not in others. You don't really have that problem here. However, because the track is quite short, traffic can be an issue."