Adelaide Street Circuit

The streets of Adelaide were once home to the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Australia. It even played host to the "Race of a Thousand Years" in 2000 for the American Le Mans Series. Adelaide is now best known for the Clipsal 500 of the Australian V8 Supercar Series. Regardless, one thing is for certain- Adelaide is NOT easy. This track is actually vastly respected among temporary courses. If you think of street courses are concrete walled nightmares with little or no speed thrills, you'd be dead wrong here. This track is actually quite fast and seems more like a proper racing track with high walls than a hot mess of city streets that somehow form a race track. I was two years old when this track was first raced in 1985. Many F1 Grands Prix have taken place at Adelaide before the honor of racing in Australia for F1 racing moved on to Melbourne.

This blog post is all about Adelaide's urban motor racing gem. By the way, I heard this track is also called the Adelaide Parklands Circuit.

--- Adelaide Street Course ---

This is the Adelaide Street course:


^ from: onlineracingacademy.com - Today's Adelaide along with the Adelaide long course (in gray).

Adelaide is really the only city I know best in the Australian state of South Australia. I still regret not being able to see that Race of a Thousand Years in the American Le Mans Series back in 2000, perhaps most notable for the crocodile-liveried Audi R8 that raced on the streets of Adelaide. That race on New Year's Eve was my first real taste of the Adelaide Street Circuit. Nowadays, the biggest race I know of around Adelaide is the Clipsal 500 with the Australian V8 Supercars. This track is a greatly unconventional street circuit with its many depths and details that make it every bit as challenging as any proper racing circuit. The V8 Supercar circuit comes in at 2 miles (3.219 kilometers), and the Grand Prix course comes in at 2.349 miles (3.780 kilometers).

Adelaide is a very technical course. The Senna Chicane comes up about as suddenly as Eau Rouge at Spa-Francorchamps. The series of 90° corners that follow are pretty tough. Going full-speed down Bartels Road and the Brabham Straight is a big time thrill. After the Dequetteville Hairpin, the rest of the course heading to the Start/Finish line looks and feels even more like a proper race track. In fact, the roads after Dequetteville Hairpin is referred to as the Race Course. It is a punishing course. This configuration is the current configuration mostly used by the Australian V8 Supercars.

The long course doesn't use Bartels Road. Instead, the road after Turn 6 (after Flinders Street) is longer. Hutt Street and Rundle Road in Adelaide are used in making for a longer blast down Dequetteville Terrace. Adelaide's longer course was meant to suit series like Formula 1 and the ALMS among others.

Video Laps.

Here are two video laps to share. The first video is the current Adelaide, and the second video is a look at the Adelaide long course.


^ Adelaide (V8 Supercar Course)


^ Adelaide (Grand Prix course, 1993)

Lap Records.

The lap records are as accurate as the date of this blog post and from Wikipedia. Today's Adelaide (raced by the Australian V8 Supercar Series) is 1:18.601, set by Earl Bamber in 2008 racing a Dallara F307. The Grand Prix course lap record is 1:15.381, set by Damon Hill racing for Williams-Renault in 1993.





The 2011 Clipsal 500 wrapped up earlier this month. Congratulations to the winners of each race around Adelaide for the 2011 Clipsal 500. Thank you for reading!

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