Sir Jackie Stewart stood on a platform overlooking the entrance of Miami International Autodrome’s Turn 6. You know the one. The broad lefthander that swept around a flotilla of yachts that weren’t floating at all, anchored in fake water in a football stadium parking lot that, oh yeah, also featured a tiny little bit of asphalt deterioration at the fringes of that turn, ragged edges produced from the recently poured and not entirely cured blacktop.
Some furor was raised over those “pebbles” that turned out to be much ado about nothing. The fake marina? In old-school Formula One circles, it was portrayed as only slightly less offensive than spray painting the Eiffel Tower purple. Even after the checkered flag waved at a successful Miami GP, making lots of people lots of money, the race and the place became the spark of a spirited, not new but certainly much louder debate in the motorsports community.
“Racing in the cities is exciting because people are already there. You don’t need to excite the people, because in the first place, they are already close,” four-time F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel said after Miami. “But certainly from a racing and driving thrill [perspective], I’d love to go to proper tracks.”
Temporary street courses vs. new-fangled road courses vs. classic “proper” road courses. Good? Bad? Little bit of both?
“I understand that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea because it isn’t a traditional circuit,” Stewart said as he watched Porsche Sprint Challenge machines hammer their way by the boats, tires screaming. “But perhaps there is room on the true racer’s plate for this and that?”
Over the motorsports month of June and now looking ahead into early July, that plate is indeed full, with a spaghetti pile’s worth of right- and left-hand turns over road courses of all types. F1 just raced through the city park streets of Montreal and this weekend will be on the nearly 75-year-old Silverstone Circuit of Great Britain (stream live on ESPN). IndyCar started its June on the city streets of Belle Isle in Detroit and next weekend will be in the rolling hills of Mid-Ohio. The NASCAR Cup Series began the month snaking its way through the permanent curves of Sonoma Raceway and this weekend will race where IndyCar was two weeks ago: perhaps the crown jewel of American “proper” road courses, the…
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