Thoughts on the road – and the silly season

There is a chance to pause this morning, sitting in a hotel on the Algarve coast, listening to the waves on the beach down below and enjoying a coffee. The only thing of note is the latest iteration of the FIA’s Covid-19 Delegate notes (the fun we have), which come in the wake of Lance Stroll’s adventures in Germany, a fortnight ago, which have been covered elsewhere by people who have become slaves to the modern media machine.

Anyway, I have spent the last two days on the road to the Algarve, 2,100km according to the car. That is about 1,000 km a day, which is plenty enough… In racing terms it began early in the morning on Tuesday, passing the old Rouen Les Essarts circuit and the Circuit de l’Europe Kart track at Sotteville, where Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon cut their teeth, and continued from there to Le Mans, which needs no introduction to race fans. Rather than going on to Tours and Poitiers, I went south-west instead to Angers, La Rochelle and Rochefort. Why? Because I could… and I’ve done the other route too many times. I was soon at a place called Le Bailleul, where the road to La Flèche crosses the autoroute. This is of little overall import – unless you happen to know that it was at this remote spot that the winner of the first Monaco Grand Prix Willy Williams was parachuted into France, to work as a secret agent in World War II. A minor detail perhaps, but still a part of Grand Prix racing history (of sorts).

When I got to Angers I decided on a whim to deviate from my route for a few minutes to visit the village of Soucelles, a few miles to the north-east. This was the location of what they called “the English airport”, a vast prairie where the Royal Air Force used to land Lockheed Hudsons in the middle of the night to pick up and drop off secret agents, including future President Francois Mitterand and Grand Prix driver Robert Benoist, who was working with the aforementioned Willy Williams. It is an impressively big field…

After that it was on to south to Bordeaux and down through the vast Landes forest, once a swamp before the French decided to plant as many trees as possible to generate a bit of revenue. It is an area of 3,900 square miles and one can only imagine the number of trees. Before then, so they say, people used to walk around the marshes on stilts, to avoid getting wet feet. Strange, but true.

Over towards the coast is Mimizan, where Winston Churchill used to go to paint. I used to live down this way a long time ago and I remember flying in and out of Bordeaux and each year finding myself picking up luggage with the world championship surfers who would turn up to compete at Hossegor.

It was then through the Basque country and across the border into Spain, to San Sebastián (or Donostia, as they call it round here) where I stayed in a very elegant hotel called the Hotel de Londres y de Inglaterra, where the Prince of Wales (no idea which one) used to stay with his mistress, when he wasn’t in Biarritz and where Mata Hari did some of her supposed espionage work. It was also where many of the Grand Prix drivers stayed when they came to race at San Sebastian. I decided to drive around a little to find what was left of the old road circuit, in an area where the development has been chaotic. There is a fair bit left, but only the path of the roads, as the placed is infested with motorways and roundabouts, but you can still find your way, more or less from Lasarte, where the circuit heads alongside the River Oria, with a cliff on one side and the river on the other. At Andoain it went through the town and then ran alongside the railway line up to Urnieta before skirting around Hernani. This was the home of Grand Prix racing in Spain from its opening in 1923 until 1935, after which the Spanish Civil War broke out and all racing stopped. Sadly it was never revived – although it would be impossible today with safety as it now is.

San Sebastian is a spectacular town if you ever get the chance to visit, with the delightful Bahia de La Concha at the centre. I suppose at one point it was a sort of Spanish version of Monaco, with a fancy casino (now the town hall) and some splendid Belle Epoque buildings, with a Basque twist.

The next morning I was on the road early and winding my way through the hills to the plains at Vitoria-Gasteiz. Last time I was in those parts was to visit a fabulous Formula 1 factory that had been built for the Epsilon Euskadi team – that never happened. It’s still there if anyone needs an F1 facility… From there it was on across Castille to Burgos, Vallodolid, Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo, with endless empty land and rain storms every few minutes. It was lunchtime by the time I got to the border at Fuentes de Oñoro, a bleak spot, and then I was off through some wild Portuguese country to Guarda.

Spain and Portugal have fantastic motorways but it seems like almost no-one uses them and those who do seem unable to obey any road sign. I did see one police car on the 375-mile run between the border and the Algarve, but I don’t think I saw any cars going under the speed limit…

I thought I was lost when I saw signs for Mação, but soon afterwards the sun came out and the afternoon was spent pootling down the A13 until the early evening. At times one might think oneself in Australia when there was eucalyptus growing, but then it would change to rolling brown hills with gnarled old oaks and endless umbrella pines, and you would swear you were in California.

Somewhere along the way I stopped at a service station and, thanks to the miracles of modern technology, logged into a press conference launching the Supercharge Championship, which is an electric series which will take place in cities. The crew behind it is impressive, many of them being ex-F1 types, including marketing guru Rob Armstrong, team boss Max Welti and technical director Willy Rampf. With that kind of pedigree it should do well.

Along the way I was busy thinking, which is one of the joys of long drives, and it struck me that the F1 driver market will probably be done and dusted quite quickly. I think we’ll see Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin at Haas. I would argue that we will have the same drivers again at Alfa Romeo and Williams will probably have Sergio Perez and Nicholas Latifi. I won’t explain the logic (there is some) – but let’s see if that turns out to be right…

The key point to remember is that the F1 teams will get about half their usual money in 2021 because of the low revenues this year and thus some of them have to throw away normal racing logic and concentrate on survival. And that takes money…

And the line-ups mentioned provide the maximum in that respect. I would add that Perez might not replace George Russell at Williams if Mercedes agrees to come up with more cash to keep the Brit in place… but we will have to see. Otherwise he may have to sit out 2021 and wait for Valtteri Bottas to move on in 2022…

Is it speculation? No, there is plenty of inside help on this, but things are still a little fluid so we will have to see how it develops.