I would love to write something substantial in this thread, but frankly I don't have the time until July...
However, some quick notes:
First, tracks are the root of all joy to me.
I don't see how you can blame Tilke.
He had introduced new tools for road design into my world... I wait until more road designers are accostumed to them before I start critizicing his designs.
What I complain of is that tracks are underdeveloped. A few chicanes are the only investment on many old tracks, while cars have underwent major changes during the last
decades.
For example, people complains freely about Canada being out of the calendar. Tell me, people, when did they change the track to reflect the changes in cars? Cars change every
week. For the love of Pete,
at Canada they were repaving three days before the GP a few years ago, and then only because drivers complained of the asphalt disintegrating under their feet!
Where is the constant flow of money toward track design? Where is the money for research? Tracks have to survive based ONLY on the tickets and most GP are money losers, aren't they? Now, you tell me that Tilke, a guy investing in new technology on his own, can survive without FOM subsidizing him... let me smile.
As I see it, most people nag him but they are like persons complaining about 80's F1 car designs without understanding what ground effect is.
Frankly,
nobody I know has the time or the patience to learn what an envolvent of trajectories is, and they prefer to desing based on old rules devised during the 1950's. It's the XXIth century!
I try to say that to my colleagues, but they don't want to invest extra time and extra effort and
extra money into something nobody notices. Altough some of them agree with me that good designs in road engineering are not noticed: that's what makes them good.
You should read
track regulations to understand Tilke's predicaments, or, just by the fun of it, spend the time designing a track under the rules.
Most of the tracks I see in simulator games are horrible, impractical, just lines drawn on a paper, attending only to the experience of the driver. The same way you could design a flat track on Pike's Peak.
At least,
why don't you check track regulations? It can explain to some why the tracks are similar. We have had some threads about them.
Nobody complains about all F1 cars being the same profile, with minute differences. Why are they similar? Because of regulations, duh.
It's the same for tracks, altough Max Mosley, thanks heaven, hasn't taken track regulations and changed them every year: that, I concede.
However,
track rules underwent serious changes in the 1990's. Nobody I know said a word, while most analyze to boredom the minimal changes in diffusers, down to the centimeter.
Does anybody here know what are the minimum and maximum length of straights, before pontificating about them?
Now, Tilke works with local contractors. At least, I know the guy in Turkey. What do you think designers do?
Move the cranes and the bulldozers from Germany to China and back? How can you build anything at the other side of the world if you don't work with locals?
Now, show me a dozen architechts or civil engineers that race in this world and I'll show you Tilke's competitors. There are three or four firms that I know specialized in track design. Wilsons and Tilke's are the outstanding ones.
It's
harder to design a flat road than a hilly one. It's easier to cook a dish with many species, it's much harder to cook something with subtle taste.
The friends of xpensive were doing
what a good driver does. Actually, I do not walk tracks, I
ride them in a bike, the only way to find if you have a 2% slope. You won't notice that by walking.
It's also hard to modify a current flat track and convert it into a bumpy one, you have serious restrictions about the length of vertical curves: you HAVE to provide visibiliy. I wouldn't like to be an unconscious driver in a car in a track with blind spots.
I won't mention
drainage nor
transitions in sideslopes, it would be boring for many.
Well, I have to go. If this I write without having the time, in one step, imagine if I had more...
Armchair engineers... hrumph...
) than the F1 standards coverage of the 'subtle' dish of asphalt, concrete and armco at Valencia that made many TV viewers (hardcore F1 fans) fall asleep literally 
