Vettel: I am a big fan of street circuits

Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel is fired up to race on the spanking new Baku Street Circuit which hosts the eighth round of the 2016 Formula 1 World Championship.

The F1 circus rushes from Canada to Azerbaijan in a race against time as the European Grand Prix which finds its slot back in the racing calendar, where it was missing since 2012 (Valencia).

Speaking ahead of the weekend in Baku, Vettel said, "I don’t know much about Azerbaijan, but I’m really looking forward to getting there, as I’ve heard a lot of good things about it. I’ve heard that the track is very exciting, with parts leading through the whole town and narrow in places. So, I think it should be exciting."

"I am a big fan of street circuits. Usually, they are very tricky, bumpy, rough, very narrow places. So, hopefully Baku fulfills these expectations and goes in line with other street circuit classics," added Vettel.

The Tilke developed track has thus far had mixed reaction from the Formula 1 world, but in truth only when F1 cars are let loose in anger will the true verdict emerge.

"So far we have seen this track only on the simulator," said Vettel’s race engineer Riccardo Adami. "We did a specific session to understand the characteristics of this track. It is a challenge because it features a very difficult sequence of corners and one long straight and then you go through the town with the famous turn 8, a peculiar turn of this track, where all of a sudden the course becomes very narrow."

Baku is known as the City of Winds and this could well impact proceedings during the course of three days of action.

"It will be very different from Canada, we’re expecting warmer weather and even hot conditions. Normally, in this place, it should be quite windy. So, it will be a challenge for us to tackle properly the set up to find the right balance between the long straight and the slow speed corners and the braking," added Adami.

The Baku Grand Prix is the first new entry since the Russian race was introduced in 2014. The 6.007 kilometer street track in the downtown section of the capital city is the second longest after Spa-Francorchamps (7.004 km).

So far, only a virtual analysis of the track has been possible, but it looks like Baku will be the fastest street race ever, featuring a 2.2 Km long straight juxtaposed to a sequence of corners (Turns 8, 9 and 10) where the course is just over seven meters wide.