Indy 500 and Indy Grand Prix
Oval racing? NEVER. Is basically the reaction of many of you, I guarantee it. But, to put it simply, you’re wrong. The Indy 500 is an historic part of the World Championship and oval racing is very much a legitimate and widespread discipline of motorsport. If F1 wants to truly be the pinnacle of motorsport and the greatest challenge around it needs to take in an oval, and it should be the biggest oval race of them all. Imagine mixing in the IndyCar oval experts with the drivers who like to think of themselves as the best in the world, it could really show how difficult oval racing actually is, and you would finally get a chance to see how the likes of Scott Dixon, Will Power and co. do in F1 cars. Plus, the theatre of the 500 and the Month of May would be a breath of fresh air to the F1 show. Oh, and we’d get the F1 drivers to join in with the Indy GP race on the re-jigged version of the road course too.
Le Mans Four Hours
I’ve created a new race here. Because I think if the F1 champion can truly be called the World Drivers’ Champion they should complete every discipline on track (I’d include a rally here, but we want all of this to be in F1 cars). So here is the Le Mans Four Hours, an event run as part of the build-up to the famous race, possibly on the Saturday, and it’s a two driver race. But, you say, F1 is all about single drivers, you’d ruin the sport if you changed that? Well, nonsense I say. F1 has a long history of multiple drivers. Ask anyone who it was won the 1957 British Grand Prix. Yes, a legendary triumph, first British driver in a British car to win the British Grand Prix. Well, it was drivers actually, as Tony Brooks surrendered his car mid-race to Stirling Moss, who had retired his own car. There’s many more examples of more than one driver winning a Formula 1 race, so it’s nothing new. For this we’re thinking it’s another opportunity to get people like Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Sébastien Ogier and others who we spend ages debating ‘whether they are good enough for F1’ into F1 cars. And just imagine the image. A field of F1 cars, probably in special liveries, completely aero trimmed-out, slipstreaming down the Mulsanne, attacking the Porsche Curves, or trying to get the power down out of Arnage. Also, there’s no way all 20 drivers would be able to resist trying to do the big race as well, and that’s the kind of ironman feat we all love.