F1 Fanatic has an article today looking at a new circuit in Argentina - Potrero de los Funes. It is a fabulous track, winding its way around a lake and climbing up and down hills, and the comments are coming in thick and fast. Unsurprisingly, they all love the circuit and want F1 to stage a race there.
1964 - 1965 AC Cobra Daytona Coupe
We all know it will never happen, of course. Even though Potrero has already been used for a round of the FIA GT Championship, it would be dismissed as too dangerous for F1 cars and one cannot see there being enough funding for Argentina to buy a race anyway. Gone are the days when new circuits could be interesting enough to hold our attention - we have to run races at night to inject a little excitement.
In fact, with the regulations heading down the spec formula route, nothing but bland and sterile new circuits on the agenda, serious problems on the financial side and the sport being turned into a rather sleazy money-making concern, it is likely that the gradual drift of the real fans away from F1 will continue and increase. Some of the political shenanigans of recent years have almost succeeded in turning me away as well and, like many, I have pondered upon what substitutes are available.
Many turn to Le Mans and GT cars and such series do have happy memories for me, I must admit. I watched in the sixties, when the battles were between Ferrari, Aston Martin (gorgeously ugly brutes) and a lone birdcage Maserati that invariably led for a few hours before exploding. Then came the Ford GT40s and Cobras, followed later by the all-conquering Porsches. And it was in the early seventies that I lost interest, with the races generally dominated by one marque and little but pure speed to recommend them.
That is what puts me off GT cars, there being insufficient variety and potential winners. Similar stories could be told of the various road car series around, the BTCC, DTM and even NASCAR. Somehow they do not offer the cutting edge technology and finely-honed skills of the drivers that is still F1.
As an old fogey, I am bound to wish that things could be put back twenty or thirty years and the regulations and politics reduced to a dull roar in the background. There are series in which old F1 cars are pitted against each other, the historic races that deserve much greater popularity. But they are hardly substitutes for the real thing; the drivers must always hold back a little, aware that their cars cannot be replaced, and it is impossible to ignore our knowledge that the peak of technology has moved on.
So we are stuck with the F1 that Max and Bernie choose to present to us and we will never see the most advanced open wheel cars on the Potrero circuit. It is depressing to think that only the lesser formulae are likely to sample its delights.
Unless some drastic changes happen within F1, of course. Were there to be a revolt by the teams and a rival series set up, circuits like Potrero would suddenly become viable for the sport. If a more realistic view were taken of the financial dealings of F1, if the circuits were no longer required to follow a standard formula, if the regulations were freed from the restraints currently in the making, there is no reason why there should not be a GP in Argentina again. Or several in the States.
There is the problem in a nutshell; it is not the racing that is turning the fans away - the last two seasons have been the most exciting and hard-fought for years. What is stealing our enjoyment is the way the sport is run and the awful decisions made by those in power. I experience only despair when I look at the future proposed by Max and Bernie, hence my pondering on other series and alternative routes for F1.
The sport has to change and find a way to continue in the world of tomorrow - that is clear. But the changes suggested seem to me to be creating something that is not F1, that is rather a test bed for manufacturers of road cars in which all racing innovation is stifled. And, in that world, there is no room for circuits like Potrero.