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 It may be dangerous, cramped, outdated and whatever else its critics throw at it; but it is also the last reminder of a time when the public could experience F1 close up and the drivers had never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?

I see that the Imola authorities are going ahead with their plans to improve the circuit in spite of the San Marino GP being dropped from the calendar for 2007. The hope is to get the race back in 2008 but I cannot help but feel that it is a forlorn hope at best.

With Bernie Ecclestone trying to get the Silverstone organizers to agree to an alternating race with France (and, of course, the BRDC is not interested in such a plan), things look pretty bleak for Imola’s chances. There is a limit to the number of races that can be run each year (18 seems to be the maximum) and Far Eastern countries are lining up with money in their hands, desperate to get into the game. India is next to get a GP, in 2010 we’re told.

Simple mathematics indicates that, if you add a new race to the calendar, somewhere another has to be dropped. And it is Europe that suffers, inevitably, since it has by far the most races. No circuit in Europe can be confident that the ax will not visit at some time in the future.

Traditionalists (like me) can bemoan the loss of old and great circuits but the facts of modern life dictate that the oldest and best are the most likely to go. “Safety” is invariably the excuse to get rid of them because that is their greatness – they present a challenge to the driver and demand a higher level of skill to achieve good lap times.

But we all know that the real reason is money. It is costing the owners of older circuits millions to keep their tracks updated to the latest FIA specifications and this makes it almost impossible to balance the books. Already it costs a small fortune to go to watch a GP – in the future the gate fee will only increase. And that means many potential spectators will stay away – after all, they can see the race on television for a fraction of the cost. The resulting squeeze on the organizers’ finances gets worse as a result.

So how do the new circuits manage? The answer has to be that a GP is seen as a status symbol for the nation and the government helps with cash injections. Notice that half of the Turkish GP’s FIA fine this year was paid by the Turkish government – they want to retain their race because it has benefits beyond mere money; there is national pride to be considered.

In Europe, F1 has been around too long for its subsidiary benefits to be recognized by governments. It’s a case of familiarity breeds contempt. It would be hard, too, for a European government to justify huge expenditure on a GP to its constituents – too many of them could not care less about the sport.

So the spread of F1 to far corners of the earth will continue and fewer old circuits will be used in the future. But, just occasionally, the traditionalists get the last laugh – and here’s an item that made me smile:

F1 Racing-live reports that practice for the A1GP race in Beijing has had to be suspended because the cars just could not negotiate the hairpin. Total chaos ensued on the first lap, it seems. How ironic that all the money and hype has been insufficient to produce a circuit that cars can actually drive around…

David Coulthard has been talking about the unreasonable attitude of the FIA towards F1 drivers’ opinions, although he specifically identifies Max Mosley as the main culprit. He refers to the Monza circuit where the GPDA (Grand Prix Drivers Association) expressed their concerns over safety at the track.

“Instead of real answers we got a letter from Max saying we were speaking out of turn and that the terms of our superlicenses include a clause that says we aren’t allowed to speak out of turn or against the governing body, etc,” he said.

As I pointed out in my post, Formula One Shows the Way, the FIA seem to be deliberately ignoring any input from the drivers and have even referred to them as “self-appointed experts”. I cannot think of any other sport that is governed in as high-handed a manner as the FIA run F1.

Years ago, in the midst of the fuss over whether rugby should become a professional sport, I recall the then England rugby captain, Will Carling, getting into trouble for referring to the sport’s governing body as a bunch of old farts. But that is slightly different – as an old fart myself, I have no objection to others pointing out the fact but I do understand that some might feel their dignity deflated by such a term. The GPDA have hurled no insults and merely want their views to be known. When the FIA react by making it a part of the regulations that the drivers have no say in safety matters, I have to think that something is wrong.

Either the “old farts” running F1 have become so obsessed with their own importance that they cannot bear to hear any disagreement with their decisions or there is much more at stake than either we or the drivers understand. And, knowing how the FIA decide these things, I would have to guess that the second option means money. It might be interesting to find out just who will be making the wonderful new barriers touted by the FIA as such a significant breakthrough in safety.

So I sympathize with Coulthard’s mystification at the FIA’s attitude. As he says, it seems to go directly against all their claims to openness:

“The FIA recently commissioned a survey to find out what F1 fans think of the sport – and rightly so.

“I’m all for the fans expressing their views; I’m all for everyone involved in the sport expressing their views; why, then, must we drivers not express ours?”

But not that anything will be done, of course. Just as Will Carling was forced to eat humble pie all those years ago, so will David and the rest of the drivers be told to “Shut up and prepare for blast off.”

Where F1 goes, the others follow, it seems. Autosport magazine has a report that Champ Car drivers are incensed by new tire chicanes introduced at Surfers Paradise. The system has already caused accidents in practice, in one of which Justin Wilson fractured his wrist and will not be able to drive in the race.

Echoes of F1 occur towards the end of the report with Sebastien Bourdais’ comments on the matter:

Bourdais is particularly unhappy because the current idea was proposed to the four-man driver safety committee – Bourdais, Wilson, Alex Tagliani, Oriol Servia – with (Tony) Cotman (Champ Car’s VP of Operations) sending diagrams to each, and they unanimously disapproved.

“I said to Tony, ‘What, are you trying to kill us?’ We suggested something similar to Long Beach, using rumble strips, and then we get here and discover that, hey, they’re going to run what they proposed anyway. So what was the point in asking us?”

How familiar that sounds. Compare it to this extract from the FIA’s September press release on their new high speed safety barrier:

The owners of circuits licensed for Formula One are required not to discuss safety measures with third parties (including drivers). This is to prevent self-appointed experts, with little or no understanding of the latest developments in circuit safety, causing confusion and undermining the significant safety benefits which are now being achieved.

What it amounts to is that the drivers, the people who are going to suffer the consequences of any mistakes made by the governing body, get no say in the assessment of proposed new safety measures. The arrogance of this astounds me. If the F1 drivers are “self-appointed experts”, how much more so are the delegates of the FIA and their chosen safety measure designers who have never sat in the seat of a racing car in their lives? To say that drivers, who have experienced the effects of coming into contact with various attempts to limit the dangers of racing accidents, have nothing to contribute towards the design and introduction of new systems is short-sighted, to say the least. Drivers know what it’s like and will be able to foresee problems where none occur to the “experts”.

It seems that something very similar is happening in Champ Cars now – and this just at the time when we thought the Americans had a much more sensible approach to such things. How often during the latest FIA fiasco have we gazed at the low profiles maintained by the governing bodies of Champ Cars and Indy Cars and wished that F1 could learn from them? But no, it looks as if things happen the other way around and the Statesiders are learning from F1 instead.

Ah well, if nothing else, I suppose we can always say that it proves that F1 is the pinnacle of the sport…