History
The circuit was designed by German designer Hermann Tilke, who would subsequently design the new facilities in Shanghai, Bahrain, Turkey, Valencia, Singapore, Korea and India.
The circuit was officially inaugurated by the 4th Prime Minister of Malaysia's Tun Doktor Mahathir Bin Mohamad on 7 March 1999 at 20:30 MST (UTC+08:00). He subsequently went on to inaugurate the first Moto GP Malaysian Grand Prix on 20 April 1999 (see 1999 Malaysian motorcycle Grand Prix) and the first Formula One Petronas Malaysian Grand Prix on 17 October 1999 (see 1999 Malaysian Grand Prix).
On October 23, 2011, on the second lap of the 2011 Malaysian motorcycle Grand Prix, the Italian motorcycle racer Marco Simoncelli died following a crash in turn 11. The race was cancelled following the accident.
Read more about this topic: Sepang International Circuit
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“We said that the history of mankind depicts man; in the same way one can maintain that the history of science is science itself.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)