To date there have been no Turkish F1 drivers, but Can Artam did race alongside former Toro Rosso driver Scott Speed in GP2 in 2005.
The Istanbul Park circuit (originally known as the Istanbul Otodrom) is located on the Asian side of the city, close to a newly constructed international airport and just off the TEM motorway linking Istanbul to Ankara. It is situated within a green belt area amid forest and cultivated green fields.
Some 1,450 workers and 40 heavy vehicles were employed during the construction of the track, which began in September 2003. Safety provisions include the installation of 124,000 tyre barriers, while there are two seven-story VIP towers and a state-of-the-art pit and paddock complex.
The total spectator capacity is 130,000, about 30,000 of whom can be housed in the main grandstand along the start/finish straight.
The 3.3-mile, 14-turn track was designed by F1’s favoured architect, Hermann Tilke, who was responsible for the Sepang (Malaysia), Sakhir (Bahrain) and Shanghai circuits as well as numerous revamps of long-standing European tracks.
It incorporates significant elevation changes and several blind crests, and is one of only two anti-clockwise circuits on the calendar (the other being Interlagos). The steepest slope is 8.145 percent.
F1 cars hit close to 200mph on the long back straight between turns 10 and 12, where they are flat-out for around 16 seconds (the right-hand kink of turn 11 being taken easily flat-out). The drivers spend 67 percent of the lap on full throttle.
The variety of corners, gradient and overtaking opportunities all received praise, but the feature that really set tongues wagging was turn eight, a thrilling, seemingly never-ending left-hander with four apexes, taken at 150mph in sixth gear.
Turn eight caught out the world's best drivers time and again in 2005. It accounted for Sauber's Jacques Villeneuve and the two BARs of Jenson Button and Takuma Sato in qualifying, and then in the closing stages of the race denied McLaren a much-needed 1-2. Juan Pablo Montoya ran wide at the corner, handing second place and an extra two points to Renault's championship-chasing Fernando Alonso.
But this action was almost 20s back from Montoya's team-mate Kimi Raikkonen who followed up taking the inaugural pole with the first Turkish GP victory.
Felipe Massa scored his maiden Formula 1 pole position and victory at last year's race, finishing ahead of world champions Fernando Alonso and Michael Schumacher.
Indeed Schumacher finished his career without adding the Turkish GP to his win tally. It went alongside South Africa, Mexico and Luxembourg as the only GPs he didn't win.
Juan Pablo Montoya holds the lap record at the circuit with a time of 1m24.770s set in the race's inaugural year.
Welcome
Guests: 590
Hidden: 0
Users: 0
