The Jingkai Street Circuit, also known as the Beijing International Street Circuit, was a

street circuit A street circuit is a motorsport race track, racing circuit composed of temporarily closed-off public roads of a city, town or village, used in motor racing, motor races. Airport Runway, runways and Taxiway, taxiways are also sometimes part of ...

in Yizhuang, a

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area. They are oftentimes where most of a metropolitan areas jobs are located with some being predominantly residential. They can either be denser or less densely populated ...

10 miles (15 km) to the south-east of central

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, China. It was first used on the weekend of 10–12 November 2006 for the

third round Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system Places * 3rd Street (di ...

of the

A1GP A1 Grand Prix Operations Ltd. operated as A1 Grand Prix (A1GP) was a "single-make" open-wheel auto racing series that ran from 2005 until 2009. It was unique in its field in that competitors solely represented their nation as opposed to themsel ...

. China became the only country to host two events in the 2006–07 A1 Grand Prix series. It was announced in the ''

Shanghai Daily ''Shanghai Daily'' () is an English-language newspaper founded in 1999 and owned by the Shanghai United Media Group, a state media company under the control of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. It was the first dail ...

'' on March 23, 2007 that, due to lack of funding, no further A1 Grand Prix races were scheduled to be held in Beijing. The report suggested that preparing the street circuit for the race cost about 20 million yuan ($2.6 million).

Safety issues

The FIA expressed safety concerns about the dual carriageway on this track before the event, so it was feared that it could have led to a "last minute" cancellation decision. However, clearance was given on the morning of November 10 for the use of the circuit for racing purposes. The tight hairpin at the end of the dual carriageway and also the backstraight was a 180 degree left turn. Later during the event, the turn was found to be far too tight for the race cars. They tried to negotiate safely by running wide but were still stopping at the mid corner, therefore the sessions were red flagged. During qualifying, manhole covers on the roads were coming undone due to the racing cars' high downforce and low ride height. Some advertising banners also came loose around the circuit. It was announced the races would start behind the safety car, as the first corner was also deemed unsafe.

Circuit layout changes

As a result of safety issues and difficulties experienced during the first practice session for the inaugural race at the circuit—the A1GP cars found it difficult to negotiate the tight 180-degree Turn 8 hairpin—the circuit was revised overnight prior to practice on November 11, 2006. The straight leading up to Turn 8 was shortened and the turn was made less tight. The shorter circuit, down from , was created and creating another less tight hairpin halfway up the straight, bypassing most of the old straight. However, this corner was still not ideal as drivers ran wide despite the corner being wider, and had to avoid the pitlane entry barrier.

References

{{A1 Grand Prix circuits A1 Grand Prix circuits Defunct motorsport venues Motorsport venues in Beijing Racing circuits designed by Hermann Tilke