About Montjuich

First, let me point out this “guide” is written with the 1969 cars in mind. You might get something useful out of it to use with the 65, 66, or 67 cars, but since no one probably ever gets much out of these guides anyway, don’t count on it. Just remember if I mention going full throttle someplace, you may not be able to do that in the older, non-winged cars.

So is it Monjuice? Montjuic? Montjuich? I never can remember which one it is. I did some exhaustive research (looking at the Speedgeezer’s Montjuich web site for three minutes) and have come to the conclusion it is Montjuich as far as Paul Jackson and the guys were concerned. Taking it further and going that extra mile (two minutes spent at Wikipedia), I found that Montjuich is the Spanish spelling while Montjuic is the Catalan spelling meaning “hill of the Jews”. Since I refuse to do religious jokes, you’ll have to either insert your own jokes here or be insulted someone else maybe doing so at this very moment. Whew, I’m spent.

I was fortunate enough to get a copy of the track shortly before it’s release. It took me a few laps to figure out where I was going. My first thoughts were of the guardrails (armco for you Euro’s). It’s everyplace. That part of it along with some of the very tight turns remind me a bit of modern Monaco. The difference is that you’re moving in the opposite direction (counterclockwise versus clockwise) and there are some very, very fast turns in the last half of the track. They remind me a little of Zandvoort and the feeling you get going through the last few are almost Spa-like in the amount of nerve it takes to do what must be done; put your foot on the floor and hang on. It’s a really cool layout that flows nicely and is extremely fun to hot lap. Racing will be another matter though as the first few turns will be an absolute nightmare with a full field of “duh, me can win on lap 1 from 16th place, whooohooo” mental patients. You know, the same type of drivers that were in the 2006 USGP. Extreme caution and some give and take will be the key, especially going into the very, very tight first turn right after getting airborne.

As far as setups go, even with the fast turns, I find allot of down-force helps more than it hurts. You gain allot more than you lose. Therefore, crank those wings up as far as they can go and move down from there as you work on your setup. I also prefer a pretty stiff chassis here.

Oh, one other thing you’ll notice is the animated gifs. I thought this would be a nifty way of making it clear which section of the track I was describing as well as illustrate the point a little. Hope you like them.

- more to come -

By Steve Cloyd