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Nurburgring goes up for Sale

The iconic motor racing circuit has been put up for sale. The Eiffel regional government which owns the facility is expecting to receive about £100m for the Formula 1 venue, the Nordschleife and associated facilities. The debts to be written of prior to the sale are £338m

Constructed for the 1927 the circuit had 174 corners (prior to 1971 changes), and averaged 8 to 9 metres in width. The fastest time ever around the full Gesamtstrecke was by Louis Chiron, at an average speed of 112.31 km/h (72 mph) in his Bugatti.

During practice for the 1961 German Grand Prix, Phil Hill became the first person to complete a lap of the Nordschleife in under 9 minutes, with a lap of 8 minutes 55.2 seconds (153.4 km/h or 95.3 mph) in the Ferrari 156 “Sharknose” Formula One car.

Over half a century later, the highest-performing road cars have difficulty breaking 8 minutes without a professional race driver or one very familiar with the track. A professional German lady driver attempted to complete a circuit of the track in a diesel van and just failed to beat 9 minutes for top gear.

The ‘Green Hell’ fell into bankruptcy last July and the track has been in need of a buyer since then. The new owner will take over 300 employees and 12.8 miles of tarmac famed for its danger and risk.

Commentator’s confused by Spanish GP

This chart may suggest plenty of people knew what was going on throughout the race. I know I for one did.

The paradox

Whilst discussing Ecclestone’s possible fate yesterday, I threw out a conundrum/paradox for you to peruse. There were some interesting attempts and to be fair it was not easy. Here was the story.

The Judge informs a convicted criminal that they will be hanged at noon on a weekday during the following week. He adds though that the execution will be a surprise to the prisoner. Until the executioner knocks on the door at midday, he will not know the day of the hanging.

Having reflected on his sentence, the prisoner draws the conclusion that he will escape from the hanging (1). His reasoning is in several parts. He begins by concluding that the “surprise hanging” can’t be on Friday, as if he hasn’t been hanged by Thursday, there is only one day left – and so it won’t be a surprise if he’s hanged on Friday. Since the judge’s sentence stipulated that the hanging would be a surprise to him, he concludes it cannot occur on Friday.

He then reasons that the surprise hanging cannot be on Thursday either, because Friday has already been eliminated and if he hasn’t been hanged by Wednesday night, the hanging must occur on Thursday, making a Thursday hanging not a surprise either. By similar reasoning he concludes that the hanging can also not occur on Wednesday, Tuesday or Monday. Joyfully he retires to his cell confident that the hanging will not occur at all.

So what happened?

Well before we get to that, the tale can be interestingly spun a little differently. If we stop the question at (1) and create in our prisoner had an extreme case of paranoia, then he could be certain in his mind that on Monday at midday that the executioner would arrive.  The same would occur on Tuesday, Wednesday and so on.

This ensures that every day Mr. E is not hanged really is a “surprise” to him, but that the day of his hanging he was indeed expecting to be hanged and therefore he wasn’t.

The actual answer to the version of the tale I set is as follows.

The next week, the executioner knocks on the prisoner’s door at noon on Wednesday — which, despite all Mr. E’s reasoning, was an utter surprise to him. Everything the judge said came true.

Today’s task is to apply this logical school of thinking to some of the current issues in F1…

The perfect lap

This was something we posted just after Barcelona testing. It kind of explains why Alonso had no choice but to 4 stop and there are some interesting predictions of how the tyres will fare during the up coming races. The Perfect Lap