I love street circuits, even though we will probably never see them again in F1, apart from Monaco. They are impractical, dangerous and lack passing places, a sure combination to prevent their ever being tried again by the sport. But they are also atmospheric, dramatic, somehow produce good races, and enable the spectators to get closer to the sound and sight and smell of F1 cars than anywhere else.

Just the sound should be enough to convert anyone: experience this video of a Red Bull doing a demonstration run on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil – then tell me that the scream of that engine echoing off the buildings does not stir your blood. And the roads were drenched with rain – the driver was holding back!

My favorite of those street circuits that have gone is Long Beach. The sight of the cars streaming down to the hairpin after the start was one never to be forgotten. And there were always dramatic races at Long Beach; it was the one circuit where you could guarantee that uncompetitive cars suddenly came to the fore, where there were tussles between unlikely competitors and drivers in underpowered cars had a chance to make their mark.

Actually, that last statement is true of most street circuits. It was Detroit where John Watson earned his reputation as the only driver who could overtake on street circuits. And Detroit was a place where nobody could pass! Unfortunately, I could not find a decent picture of the circuit so you will just have to take my word for it that the photo of Senna up there was taken at Detroit.

Even the strange aberration of the circuit in a car park in Las Vegas gave us some great races. It was artificial and a poor excuse for a street circuit but it did let us get close to the action.

Notice that all these places are in the States. It was the only country that Bernie Ecclestone was so desperate to get into that he would accept such circuits. Now that seems to have changed (the money has moved elsewhere) and Bernie asserts boldly that F1 doesn’t really need a race in the USA at all.

So our chances of new street circuits coming along are non-existent. We must content ourselves with the annual and glorious experience that is Monaco – and fight tooth and nail to prevent it ever being taken off the calendar. It may be dangerous, cramped, outdated and whatever else its critics throw at it; but it is also the last reminder of a time when the public could experience F1 close up and the drivers had never heard of such a thing as safety.

It’s that man Senna in the lead again – but there’s something else interesting about this photo. Starting from the front, we have a McLaren, a Tyrrell (!), two Williams, a Benetton, a McLaren and two Ferraris. Then come a Jordan and another Benetton, but what are those two red cars behind them? They sure look like two more Ferraris to me.

Just to round it off, there are a Tyrrell, a March and a Minardi after that. But those red cars have me wondering. I suppose I could dig in the records and find out but I thought it might be more interesting to see if anyone has a better memory than I do – can you help me out?

Now that Michael Schumacher has retired, the discussions on whether he was the greatest driver ever have started. Some would doubt that he deserves to be amongst the truly great, others point at his record as incontestable proof of his superiority. There being little of note happening in the F1 world today, I thought it would be a good opportunity to take another look at the man who set the standard for the modern champion. Before we assert anything about Michael, we really need to remember Ayrton.

Let’s start with a short video that illustrates something any champion needs to be called “great” – character. Here is Senna’s reaction to Erik Comas’ nasty accident in a practice session. And then there’s dealing with adversity – as in Ayrton’s explanation of the facts of life to a young Michael Schumacher who has just taken him out of the race.

Everyone knows the story of the wet race at Donington in 1993 where Ayrton demonstrated how to drive in the wet – but do we remember how he struggled that year in a McLaren vastly inferior to the Benettons and Williams? Here is how a great champion does his utmost to hold faster cars back in such circumstances.

It is even true that greatness rubs off on others at times – if you could pass Ayrton, you made yourself an immediate reputation. Consider the case of Jean Alesi, whose passing manouver over Ayrton in Phoenix gave him a reputation for speed that was not to fade until his days with Ferrari. Everyone quickly forgot that Alesi was being lapped and really shouldn’t have been messing with the leaders at all.

Most of all, however, we want our champions to be human. Here is a tribute video to Ayrton in which he is caught laughing (yes, actually laughing!) on several occasions. The flag-waving is what got that form of celebration banned in the end, of course!

That was Ayrton Senna – Brazil’s finest but also F1′s, a fierce competitor and yet a man of character and compassion. In his day he was the fastest man on the track, even in cars that were less than the best. His record may not be as impressive as Schumacher’s but the statistics do not tell all. Enough said.

In previous posts in this blog, I have wondered just how good a driver Fernando Alonso is. New evidence as to his abilities emerges all the time, but the Renault team have now released some thoughts on the matter. Fernando’s race engineer, Rod Nelson, had this to say about Alonso’s battle with Schumacher in Turkey:

“Fernando knew that the only passing opportunities were on the back of the circuit after turn 8, and he was saving his high revs for the two straights between turns 8 and 12 – literally turning the engine up and back down around the lap.”

“His engine engineer (Remi Taffin) and I were discussing what revs he had available to use, when we saw he was managing the situation already. It was typical Fernando – always thinking ahead, working his way around problems and delivering the goods. He was calm in the car – but I was pretty stressed on the pit-wall!”

That is a very revealing indication, not only of Fernando’s racing brain, but also of how complex driving an F1 car is these days. There are innumerable settings within the car that can be tweaked during the race and, to be able to fiddle with these in the heat of competition, is some measure of a driver’s ability.

It was Ayrton Senna who first admitted to using a two-foot driving style through corners, staying on the accelerator and adjusting the car’s speed with dabs at the brake. It took time for the others to copy this (some never managed it) and it is a useful example of how small refinements of technique can make the difference between a competent driver and a gifted one.

These days, everything about a driver’s style can be known; so much telemetric information is fed back to the engineers in the pits that they can tell exactly where a driver hits the brake, how he handles the throttle and what adjustments he makes. There is nowhere to hide.

So, when a driver’s race engineers offer an opinion on his skills, we can be pretty certain that they know what they’re talking about. If Rod Nelson thinks Alonso is the business, he is almost definitely right. Loyalty may have an influence on such judgments but no-one enthuses unless they mean it from the heart – and Rod was enthusing when he made those remarks.

I was coming to the same conclusions (honest) even before the Renault team offered their opinion but now I am sure. McLaren are getting one excellent race driver for next season. And he will probably be World Champion too.

Kimi Raikkonen is rumored to have been in trouble with police in Hungary over a matter of alcohol and sitting behind the wheel of a car. This follows other stories of the flying Finn’s night club and partying exploits.

It has echoes of an F1 tradition that we all thought had died out with the advent of the super-professional driver epitomized by Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher: the “bad boy” syndrome. In the 1950s, many drivers were renowned for their wild behavior at parties, Mike Hawthorn especially gaining a reputation for being heavily into wine, women and song. It was as though the working class lads, who suddenly found the heights of motor sport available to them, intended to make the most of their brief moments of fame. They worked hard and they played hard.

This continued into the sixties, although there were already signs of a growing professionalism that had no time for drunken high jinks. Drivers like Jim Clark and John Surtees were serious about racing and saw it as a profession rather than a bit of fun. Some, such as Graham Hill, still knew how to relax and party between races, however.

By the 1970s, advertising had upped the stakes so high that it was clear that F1 was now more of a business than a sport; the sober attitude of most drivers reflected this too. So James Hunt stands out as the last of the playboy drivers, an isolated throwback to F1′s wilder days. With his retirement, we all thought that era was gone forever.

Through the eighties and nineties we became used to the dour professionals, Prost, Senna, Schumacher, pursuing their career objectives with unwavering intensity. Flashes of humor from such as Johnny Herbert gave relief but the overall atmosphere was that this was far too serious a business to have fun in (hmmm, I think I just identified the reason for Minardi’s huge popularity).

And now Kimi Raikkonen arrives to upset all our preconceived notions. It would have to be someone like him, of course – a driver so talented that all his off track adventures can be ignored by the team manager. Oh, there might be the occasional “talking-to” in the motorhome but, when you’re paying the guy millions to drive for you, it’s not easy to lay down the law about his private life.

What Kimi does for us all is demonstrate that it’s possible to be damn good at your job and still have a good time on your days off. For too long we have believed that only the dedicated monomaniac can get to the very top of any profession. Kimi shows that, with youth, talent and energy, that doesn’t have to be true. After all, what is the point in being paid so much if you can’t live a little as a result?