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on a long trip, have some time to kill. has a modification of a circuit ever significantly improved the on track action, or even made it more challenging to drive ?

Silverstone - remodelled Maggots/Becketts.
Monza - Ascari chicane (the only chicane to improve the layout).
Hungaroring - extended start/finish straight to allow more overtaking into a tighter t1.
Montreal - last sector remodelling which brought us the wall of champions chicane.

New Hockenheim. The old one was dull as hell until they got to the stadium.

Apparently Montreal originally ran the other way round (and the pits were on the long back straight)

Both the Bridge complex layout and the new layout of Silverstone are both pretty good.

I suppose Francorchamps was a special case; it had been abandoned as too dangerous in its original form. And too long at some 14km. So the cut across the valley was made into a technical section, with the help of Jacky Ickx. It changed the nature of the track completely, but many now consider it the best track in the world, so in this case it worked.

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Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota

Isn't Sao Paulo supposed to be a lot better now?

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Disclaimer: The above post maybe tongue in cheek.

"I thought I'd get your theories, mock them, then embrace my own. The usual."

Hockenheimring is now substantially better than it was before. It used to be that the guy with the best engine won. Now you can overtake (eg. Hamiltn '08) and actually have a race.

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"Where are all the good men dead, in the heart or in the head?"

Give 'em hell Dani!

British Driver Supporter (and Daniel Ricciardo)

I think only few tracks recently build from scratch survived without at least one layout change. Layout change is essential part of track lifecycle. The original character of all classic track is long gone. Any future change won't kill it, because it's already gone.

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Renault!

2012 Planet F1 Prediction Competition Champion

I think it worked on all the German tracks even though we'd all want the old variants backs.

Laguna Seca was supposed to be retooled some years ago to bring it to the 21st Century and there was take about possibly extending it a tad but it seems they were not able to procure the additional land and funds to do so and it seems to have gone by the wayside. Either way the track itself is quite nice and challenging, though it's a bit deceiving in that it feels like a shorter track even though it's 2.3+ miles long. I think it needs to be modernized a bit more to have greater run-off areas and generally bring it up to todays's safety standards across the board.

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Second place is the first loser!