The flowing beauty of the premade racetrack is undeniable, but the wilderness of the street circuits is where the magic happens.
Big-ticket racing series love street circuits: They are big-ticket races. On the Formula 1 calendar, the hottest of all is Monaco, a spectacle so old and storied it might as well be in the Odyssey. But the realities of F1 have caught up with this dinky circuit.
Though the streets are curbed with striped glamour and the Casino still has a vibe, today’s cars are simply too large for the narrow European streets. Monaco may be the standard-bearer of street racing, but it is as much a ghost as Jim Clark or Ayrton Senna. That’s not to say that street racing doesn’t have a place in F1 or, for that matter, every other series. I would argue that the low-downforce, high-horsepower combo of NASCAR is perfectly matched to the streets of Chicago. Sonoma Raceway, a dedicated track that emulates a hilly country road, offers the best of NASCAR. The results of these races are determined by the grit, bravery, and cunning of the drivers rather than money or sophisticated aero setup. They are the best sort of bar brawls.My favorite F1 race is in Montreal, on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. Winding around an island in the most populous city in Quebec, the track is disguised city streets. It has epic straights that allow for extraordinary speed and braking zones that benefit the crazy-brave. The road surfaces are unpredictable from year to year, and the weather that rolls through ranges from searing heat to sleet. This is where Sebastian Vettel led the longest F1 race of all time in monsoon conditions and lost when he made an imperceptible mistake in the final lap in the fourth hour of the contest.Stefan Johansson was a dynamic and natural competitor in his prime. Like many of his ilk, he’s a big fan of street races.“Street circuits were always my favorite tracks, whether it was F1, sports cars, or even Formula 3,” Johansson says. “I like the unpredictability and precision required. The best of them offer no room for error, and you always have to improvise to find the best grip. Oftentimes, that’s not where the ideal line would be on a normal track.”Johansson, who is today an artist, racing guru, and driver manager living in Los Angeles, came really close to F1 wins back in the Eighties— almost always on street courses.“I have great memories from so many of them over the years, Monaco and Detroit and of course Montreal, which was probably my favorite circuit in F1,” he says. “It has a more natural flow than the traditional street circuits, and it’s fast as hell.”However, his heart belongs to the Guia Circuit in Macau, on the southern shore of China. There Johansson raced Formula 3 in the Eighties, nabbing a pole and a second-place finish in 1984. “Macau is the best street circuit by far,” he says. “In fact, the best track period is Macau. The place is incredible, like the Nürburgring on the streets: It is fast flowing and has zero room for error at any point of the lap. It’s one of the most fun and certainly challenging racetracks in the world.”Clearly, the fans and the money behind motorsport connect on the newfound enthusiasm for street circuits. Of the four races most recently added to the F1 slate, three are city-street races, in Miami, Las Vegas, and Saudi Arabia. “You can’t judge a Formula 1 race without taking a whiff of the atmosphere they provide,” Johansson says. “This is a time when the race comes to the people, rather than the other way around. I like that sort of democratization. In whatever city it is, it’s the race that becomes the city’s highlight of the year. Generally, the people embrace it with great enthusiasm. And that’s what it’s all about, right?”
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