Hermann Hugo Tilke (born 31 December 1954) is a German engineer, racing driver and circuit designer, who has designed numerous Formula One motor racing circuits. His son is architect Carsten Tilke.

Racing During the 1980s, Tilke competed in touring car racing, mainly on the old Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit. He also competed in VLN endurance racing and the 24 Hours Nürburgring. He and Dirk Adorf won some VLN races with a V8Star Series in 2003 and 2004.

Tilke also raced in the 2002 and 2003 Bathurst 24 Hour races at the famous Mount Panorama Circuit in Australia. He placed 14th outright and third in Class 9 driving a Honda S2000 for the races promotor Ross Palmer alongside Peter Hansen and Australian female racer Melinda Price. Tilke returned to The Mountain in 2003 with British GT team Cirtek Motorsport in a Porsche 996 GT3-RS alongside Melinda Price and British drivers Tim Harvey and Jonathan Rowland, but their race ended with engine failure just before dawn on the Sunday morning (the race started on Saturday at 2 PM local time) after completing 325 laps of the 6.213 km (3.861 mi) road circuit (the race winning Holden Monaro 427C covered 527 laps).

Civil engineering After completing his civil engineering degree with specialization in transport and traffic management at Fachhochschule Aachen, Tilke established Tilke Engineering in 1984, combining skills in architecture, civil engineering and electronic engineering to provide complete solutions for motor racing and waste disposal projects.

Formula One Tilke is one of four designers recognised by the FIA but has, with the exception of the Silverstone redesign in 2010, been one of the designers to be commissioned to design Formula One tracks. One of his first minor tasks was to design and build a short access road at the Nürburgring, earned due to contacts made by his racing efforts there. His first major job was the transformation of the fast Österreichring to the much shorter A1-Ring in Austria, in the 1990s.

Tilke was involved in the radical overhauls of European circuits, such as the Hockenheimring, Circuit de Catalunya and Nürburgring, as well as Fuji Speedway in Japan.

Tilke secured the contracts to design many high-profile new world circuits from scratch, mainly in Asia but also in eastern Europe. He designed Sepang International Circuit, Bahrain International Circuit, Shanghai International Circuit, Istanbul Park Racing Circuit, Valencia Street Circuit, Marina Bay Street Circuit, Yas Marina Circuit, Korea International Circuit and the Buddh International Circuit. Tilke also designed the new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas, where F1 made its return to the United States in 2012. Tilke's latest designs include Sochi Autodrom which hosted its first race in 2014 with the debut of Russia in F1, Kuwait Motor Town (Kuwait) which opened officially in 2019, and the Hanoi Street Circuit which was set for an inaugural race in April 2020 but got cancelled due to COVID-19.

Tilke has designed every track with several other engineers from Tilke Engineering, as well as F1's former commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone. After viewing the track site and "once factors such as topography, wind direction, infrastructure and soil quality are known" the design work can begin. Tilke focuses on "conceiving dramatic architecture that reflects the host country, like Sepang's lotus-leaf grandstands in Malaysia", while also aiming for spectator comfort and clear viewing. He "build[s] corners that promise a fast and interesting race but avoid pulling the field apart".

In 2025, IFEMA appointed companies in the Tilke group to continue the Madring project after terminating contract 24/219 with Dromo Circuit Design, which concerned construction support. In 2026, the Cologne Regional Court granted Dromo interim relief limited to Germany, prohibiting Tilke GmbH & Co. KG and Tilke Verwaltung GmbH from reproducing, in whole or in part, Dromo's protected Madring circuit design or from having third parties carry out those acts.Landgericht Köln, case 14 O 62/26, judgment in interim proceedings, pp. 1–4 and 61–64 (redacted German copy). The court recorded that a court-appointed expert had found corresponding Dromo documents stored on the respondents' computer systems as early as February 2025, with later copies including modified versions. It also noted that the separate licence agreement had not been expressly terminated and held, for the purposes of the German interim proceedings, that termination of contract 24/219 did not authorise the reproductions at issue. The order was preliminary, applied only in Germany and did not determine the wider contractual dispute in Spain.

Criticism Tilke's track designs have been the subject of criticism. A 2009 profile in The Guardian noted that Tilke "has been accused of penning boring tracks and, even worse, of butchering legendary ones like Hockenheim." Russian Formula One commentator Alexey Popov coined the term "Tilkedrome" to emphasize the characteristic ennui of tracks designed by Tilke.

Former driver and team owner Jackie Stewart was critical of Tilke in a 2011 piece in The Daily Telegraph, blaming his designs for the lack of overtaking and excitement at many Formula One races, saying they "are largely carbon copies of each other". Stewart, while praising the vast improvement the designs have brought to the sport's safety as well as "bringing fantastic amenities and luxuries to the sport", argued that the tracks have "gone too far the other way" in terms of safety. His primary complaint was that the large tarmac run-off areas fail to "penalise mistakes"; he cited the 2010 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, where Mark Webber was unable to pass Fernando Alonso, despite the latter running wide on four occasions, because the track's run-off areas did not impede him. Stewart suggested that the run-offs be made of a substance that slowed the cars down and thus punished drivers' mistakes. Webber echoed Stewart's views, stating that he was "spot on". 1980 world champion Alan Jones described Tilke's designs as "just one constant-radius corner after another" and "boring".

Others have defended him. Driver and commentator Anthony Davidson said that Tilke "understands the demands of the modern cars...he gives us run-off areas and it's all well thought out. They are enjoyable to race on because they suit modern F1 cars. At a track like Silverstone you do not get as much overtaking because it was designed for cars that were slower and did not depend on downforce for speed. But the circuits designed in recent years have a long straight and bigger braking zone." He particularly praised Turn Eight of Istanbul Park.

List of circuits Tilke has secured contracts to design many new circuits. + KeyHighlightingColourMeaningBlueCircuit was not developedPinkCircuit renovatedGreyCircuit abandoned +YearCircuitLocation1996 A1 Ring Spielberg, Styria, Austria1999 Sepang International CircuitSepang District, Selangor, Malaysia2001 Sachsenring Hohenstein-Ernstthal, Saxony, Germany2002 Nürburgring Nürburg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany Hockenheimring Hockenheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany2004 Bahrain International CircuitSakhir, Southern Governorate, Bahrain Shanghai International CircuitJiading District, Shanghai, China2005 Fuji Speedway Oyama, Suntō District, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan Istanbul ParkTuzla, Istanbul, Marmara region, Turkey2006 Cancún Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico Jingkai Street Circuit Yizhuang, Beijing, China2007 Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya Montmeló, Catalonia, Spain Bucharest Ring Bucharest, Romania Colorado Motorsports Country Club Circuit Colorado, United States2008 Marina Bay Street CircuitMarina Bay, Singapore Kandavas KartodromsKandava, Latvia Valencia Street Circuit Valencia, Spain2009 Lippo Village International Formula Circuit Lippo Karawaci, Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia Yas Marina CircuitYas Island, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Ciudad del Motor de AragónAlcañiz, Aragon, Spain2010 Kyiv Race Track Kalynivka, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine Dublin Street Circuit Dublin, Ireland Korea International CircuitYeongam, South Jeolla Province, Honam, South Korea Kazakhstan Motorcity Kazakhstan Atlanta Motorsports ParkDawson County, Georgia, United States Oslofjord Panoramic Racepark Oslofjord, Oslo, Eastern Norway, Norway2011 Rudskogen Motorpark Rakkestad, Østfold, Norway Buddh International Circuit Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India2012 Moscow RacewayVolokolamsk, Moscow Oblast, Russia Circuit of the AmericasAustin, Texas, United States Sibirian Ring Novosibirsk, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia2013 Crimea Grand Prix Circuit Suvorovske, Crimea, Ukraine Port Imperial Street Circuit New Jersey, United States Autódromo y Centro Cultural MotorparkSantiago, Chile Bilster BergBad Driburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany2014 Sochi AutodromSochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia Osijek - Tvrđa Osijek and Tvrđa, Croatia Bistra - Zagreb Bistra and Zagreb, Croatia Chang International CircuitBuriram, Thailand2015 Mercedes-Benz Arena Temporary TrackStuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez Mexico City, Mexico2016 Vancouver Island Motorsport CircuitDuncan, British Columbia, Canada Circuit International Automobile Moulay El Hassan Marrakesh, Marrakesh-Safi, Morocco Baku City CircuitAzadliq Square, Baku, Azerbaijan2017 Jakabaring International Circuit Palembang, South Sumatra, Indonesia Sentul International Circuit Bogor, West Java, Indonesia2018 Pradera Verde Racing CircuitLubao, Pampanga, Central Luzon, Philippines V1 Auto World TianjinTianjin, China2019 Kuwait Motor TownAli Sabah Al Salem, Ahmadi Governorate, Kuwait Igora DrivePriozersk, Leningrad Oblast, Russia2020 Hanoi Street CircuitNam Từ Liêm, Hanoi, Vietnam Jakarta Monument Street Circuit Jakarta, Indonesia2021 Jeddah Corniche CircuitJeddah Corniche, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia 2023 Sokol International RacetrackSokol, Almaty, Kazakhstan Las Vegas Strip CircuitLas Vegas, Nevada, United States

References

External links https://web.archive.org/web/20070927185142/http://emagazine.credit-suisse.com/app/article/index.cfm?fuseaction=OpenArticle&aoid=46257&coid=88&lang=EN http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19865.html Work on the street circuit in Valencia Tilke Engineering Kazakhstan Motor City