Day 3 – Circuit of the Americas

1500 acres and I think we walked all of it!

Circuit of The Americas is the only purpose-built facility in the United States designed to host the premier motorsports championships in the world, including Formula 1, MotoGP, Indycar, and NASCAR. Set on 1,500 acres in the rolling hills just outside Downtown Austin. At its heart is a 3.41-mile racetrack with 20 turns and significant elevation change. There’s also a go cart track out front and several amusement park type rides. They put on quite the spectacle!

Race tracks have become very colorful all around the world. This photo is from 2012 while under construction.

Don and I made our 9th MotoGP event! The Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosted a round for 8 years using an infield road course track. We loved Indy, but it really didn’t work well. The riders hated it and it eventually didn’t meet the safety requirements for MotoGP and Formula 1. MotoGP requires a lot of run off space. Riders frequently hit the ground but serious injury isn’t common provided there’s room to slide without hitting anything solid. Paved area is important as gravel traps are great at stopping cars and sliding bikes, but riders tend to tumble in the gravel and injury is much more likely.

The amount of elevation change around the track surprised us. Doesn’t look like much in the picture or on TV, but this is a pretty big hill with a hairpin turn at the top.

First practice of the day. The skyline of Austin became visible in the background as the clouds cleared.

And for those of you unfamiliar with MotoGP, top speeds at COTA are over 220 mph! Faster than Formula 1 at this track although F1 cars do turn significantly faster lap times thanks to a lot of rubber to grip through the turns. And lean angles are hard to believe, but we’ll leave that for tomorrow.