Foro Sol baseball Stadium (Mexico)
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in its original form was a fearsome beast. Complete with a sweeping set of left-right esses, a massive start-finish straight, and an unbanked 180-degree final corner that made up one part of an oval layout that could be used for IndyCar. Today, it’s still a great track, and even the Formula E layout is quite tasty for a Formula E track, featuring the whole of that mighty last corner – the Peraltada. But it does have one bonkers section: it races through the middle of a baseball stadium.
Now, lots of circuits have areas that have been nicknamed the ’stadium section’. Take Hockenheim for example. These are normally bowl-like areas with a few corners packed into a section surrounded by grandstands. But in Mexico city, the stadium section is a literal stadium. The stadium, called Foro Sol, was opened in 1993 and is used for concerts and (although not very often) baseball. For Formula 1 the cars enter from the side of one grandstand, before leaving through the middle of the main grandstand, entering the centre of the Peraltada. Packed out with Mexican fans waiting for Sergio Perez it has become one of the best atmospheres in F1. But it’s still the most advanced racing cars around flying through a baseball stadium.