What is a chicane? Why circuits add them, and how to design one that isn't a bottleneck
Every chicane is an admission. Somewhere on that circuit, at some point in its history, somebody decided the track was too fast, too dangerous, or too boring in a straight line — and the fix was to make cars slow down and change direction twice. Some chicanes became beloved landmarks. Others are the corners drivers complain about every year.
This guide covers what a chicane actually is, why circuits add them, the famous ones and the stories behind them, why several circuits have recently ripped theirs out, and the design choices that decide whether a chicane produces overtaking or a queue.
What is a chicane?
A chicane is a short sequence of tight corners in alternating directions — a left followed immediately by a right, or a right followed by a left — placed on a circuit to slow cars down. It turns a straight path into a brief zigzag, forcing every car to brake, change direction, and accelerate again.
The word comes from French, where it originally meant a quibble or a trick — the same root as "chicanery." It came to describe any obstacle designed to slow traffic down, and motor racing borrowed it for the zigzags it began adding to circuits in the second half of the twentieth century.
What distinguishes a chicane from any other pair of corners is intent. Two linked corners on a flowing section exist because the land or the design called for them. A chicane exists because, without it, the track would be faster than somebody wanted it to be.
Why circuits add chicanes
Safety: cutting speed before a dangerous section
Most chicanes were added to existing circuits as cars got faster. A long straight that was safe in 1955 can deliver cars to the next corner at speeds its run-off was never designed to handle. Rebuilding the corner or buying more land is expensive. Inserting a chicane is cheap and effective: it resets the speed at which the field arrives at the danger.
Monza is the clearest case. In the early 1970s the circuit was an almost uninterrupted series of flat-out blasts, and the 1971 Italian Grand Prix was won at an average speed above 240 km/h, with the first five cars separated by less than a second. The chicanes that followed through the 1970s — the Variante del Rettifilo, the Variante della Roggia and the Variante Ascari — turned Monza from a slipstreaming lottery into a circuit with real braking zones, while keeping its identity as Formula 1's fastest venue.
Imola went the same way after the tragic 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. The flat-out Tamburello and the fast Villeneuve kink, where Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger lost their lives that weekend, were both converted into chicanes for 1995.
Racing: creating a braking zone
The other reason is competitive. A long straight followed by a fast corner gives the car behind a slipstream but nowhere to use it. Insert a chicane at the end of that straight and you create a heavy braking zone — the most reliable place to overtake in motorsport. The first chicane at Monza is now one of the busiest overtaking spots in Formula 1 for exactly this reason. Our article on overtaking zone design covers the underlying physics.
Practicality: pit entries, crossings and noise
Some chicanes serve neither safety nor racing directly. They slow cars before the pit entry, stop them reaching dangerous speeds on a section with limited run-off, or — on street circuits — turn a straight boulevard into something with enough corners to be a racing circuit at all.
Famous chicanes and what they teach
The Bus Stop, Spa-Francorchamps
The final chicane at Spa takes its name from the bus shelter that once stood near the spot on the old public-road circuit. It has been reshaped several times over the decades, most significantly in the mid-2000s. It is a heavy braking zone at the end of a long, fast section and a classic last-lap overtaking chance — but its history of revisions shows how hard it is to get a chicane right first time.
The final chicane, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve
Montreal's final chicane is probably the most famous in Formula 1, mostly because of the wall on its exit. In 1999, three world champions — Damon Hill, Michael Schumacher and Jacques Villeneuve — all crashed into it during the race, and the barrier has been known as the Wall of Champions ever since. The lesson is that the exit of a chicane is as important as the entry. Drivers attack the second kerb hard to get a run onto the following straight, and any wall placed where they land will eventually be hit.
The Nouvelle Chicane, Monaco
Coming out of the tunnel at Monaco, the cars brake into a tight left-right at the harbourside. It is one of the very few realistic overtaking points on the circuit — and it shows that on a street circuit, a chicane might be the only place a pass is possible at all. Our piece on designing Monaco from scratch explains why the rest of the lap offers so few chances.
The Casio Triangle, Suzuka
Suzuka's final chicane slows cars before the last corner and the pit straight, and it has been the scene of some of the sport's most notorious collisions — most famously Senna and Prost in 1989. Good chicanes concentrate the racing into one place. That also concentrates the incidents.
Why some circuits remove chicanes
The modern trend has partly reversed. With better run-off, barriers and car construction, some chicanes no longer earn their place.
The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya added a slow chicane before its final corner in 2007 to reduce speeds there. For years it was blamed for making it harder to follow another car onto the main straight, and in 2023 the circuit removed it and restored the original fast final corner. Yas Marina in Abu Dhabi made similar changes for 2021, removing the chicane before its hairpin and replacing a sequence of slow corners with a single, faster banked turn, both aimed at helping cars follow each other more closely.
Both changes point to the same flaw: a slow chicane placed before a straight can be worse for overtaking than no chicane at all. It bunches cars up through the slow section, and the tight exits make it hard for a following car to stay close enough to use the straight. A chicane should be the place where a pass happens, not the place that prevents the next one.
How to design a chicane that works
Put the braking zone where the straight already is
The best chicanes sit at the end of a long straight, where cars arrive at high speed and drivers can brake side by side. The length of the straight sets the speed difference; the speed difference creates the braking zone; the braking zone creates the pass. A chicane in the middle of a slow section creates none of that.
Make the first apex the decisive one
A good chicane is really one decisive corner followed by a quick correction. If the first corner is too gentle, the braking zone is short and there is no space to attack. If the second corner is sharper than the first, the car that passed on the brakes can be re-passed on the exit, which tends to produce hesitant, follow-the-leader driving. The strongest designs make the entry the hard part.
Leave room for two cars
A chicane that can only be taken in single file produces collisions or processions. The entry needs enough width for two cars to brake alongside each other, and the chicane needs a line through it that the car on the outside can survive. Our guide to race track width covers how much space that takes.
Decide what happens when someone cuts it
Every chicane will be cut. A driver who locks up on entry will run straight across the middle, and if doing that is faster than taking the corner, others will do it on purpose. Designers handle this with high or "sausage" kerbs that discourage shortcuts, an escape road with a marked rejoin route that costs time, or gravel instead of asphalt run-off. Monza's first chicane has an escape route with a marker that cars must go around if they miss the braking point, so cutting the corner is always slower than taking it. Our article on gravel traps versus tarmac run-off covers the trade-offs in detail.
Don't use it to hide a bad layout
If a design needs three chicanes to be safe, the problem is usually the layout, not the lack of chicanes. Chicanes added to fix a problem tend to look added, and drivers can feel the difference. Our list of race track design mistakes covers several layouts that tried to solve their problems this way.
Try it in the designer
The fastest way to understand what a chicane does to a lap is to add one and compare. Open RaceTrackDesigner, draw a simple layout with one long straight, close the loop, and note the lap time and the speeds in the analysis. Then add a quick left-right partway down the straight and run it again.
The lap gets slower, as expected. The interesting part is what happens around it. Move the chicane closer to the end of the straight and watch the braking zone grow. Move it earlier and see how much speed the cars rebuild before the next corner. Tighten it and the top speed into the following section drops. Each version tells you something different about the circuit you are building — and whether that chicane is creating racing or just slowing everybody down.