Tilke-Designed Circuits

[Purist]

With all the talk about the race venues lately, I thought we'd have a look at the Tilke tracks. We've had some time with them (11 seasons in the case of Sepang), and seven fresh-sheet-of-paper designs from him on the schedule. There are at least two more looking relatively likely to join in the next few seasons as well: India and Korea.

For a starter, which of the seven from-scratch designs do you think is the best, or just the least painful?

Perhaps more importantly though, what features from the tracks do you like? What are the main problems that you see in their designs? What trends do you see in what works and what doesn't? Here, it would be fine, and in fact encouraged, to look at features from non-Tilke tracks to establish broader patterns or to draw examples from.

Before I let you guys have at it, there are two items I have literally just found out about. First, there are apparently only four track designers recognized by the FIA. Though the article I read this in did not specifically mention all of them, I have a pretty darn good idea of who they are: Tilke Engineering (Hermann Tilke), Apex Circuit Design (Clive Bowen), Wilson Motorsport (Alan Wilson), and D3 Motorsport Development (Ron Dickson).

The second item ought to shed some light on things, sounds rather damning, and will probably tick some people off at some level. The website for the Tilke-designed MotoGP circuit in Kazakhstan includes an interesting bit of information. Apparently, Hermann Tilke's designs receive automatic certification by the FIA; everyone else must have their designs exposed to intense scrutiny by the FIA before they may be approved.

(P.S. I intended there to be a poll with this, but I've seen no options to add one at any stage, and yes, I checked the FAQ. A little help here? Thanks.)