The Euro Issue

It's a Eurosceptic's dream really - alighting upon the European GP, getting really wound up and bellowing "European??? It's always in Germany!!! What does that tell you?!?!" before going on to somehow relate it to fishing quotas and the end of the world as we know it.

Still, it's actually a very good point. The 'European' isn't genuinely a European GP at all. It's just a second German GP. Just as the 'San Marino' GP is a second Italian GP.

With talk of bringing on a second Spanish race, you surely have to wonder if there's a better way of handling the 'European'.
I have to say if I were Max or Bernie then, apart from getting a decent haircut, I'd drop the San Marino GP, and drop the Nurburgring as the 'European' venue too.

Imola could then alternate with Monza as the venue for the Italian GP, or it could be one of the many genuinely European venues for a genuinely European Grand Prix.

There's only room in the calendar for a finite number of Grands Prix, so giving Spain a second one purely as a sop to Ferdy's newest fans seems pretty fickle and shortsighted.

Why not do something more constructive and have a proper "roving" European GP that takes in Zandvoort and Estoril and this second Spanish venue? There are plenty more good tracks that could inject some more personality and variety too: Donington, the A-1 Ring, Paul Ricard...

Short of adding half a dozen extra races to the calendar (which I must admit I'm all in favour of, although it would be completely unfair on the teams and their families, damn them!) I'd take the opportunity to re-jig the summer into an extended and geuninely European sector of the season.

At the same time, other chunks of the season could be rethought and reorganised into more geographical legs of the Championship.

Sadly Bernie thinks in 'markets' not 'circuits'. And whilst there already exist plenty of great venues, he's always going to jump at somewhere with a vast untapped TV audience. And build a shiny new Hermann Tilke abomination in it.

In fact, that Hermann Tilke's German and he gets to design all the tracks!!! What does that tell you, eh??? Eh???