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Paul Ricard
You don’t even need rose tinted glasses to get misty eyed about this place. What’s not to like about a race track named after France’s most famous aperitif, located on the French Riviera. Surprisingly, everyone managed to turn up early for the French GP when it was here and there was never much of a rush to get home once the weekend was over. Ricard was at its peak of popularity in the mid Eighties when French drivers seemed to feature on almost every row of the F1 grids. The early layout was dominated by the Mistral Straight, which was almost 2 kilometres in length, so that big balls were on the list of requirements for the daunting Signes right hand corner that came at the end of it. Cross winds – the Mistral in fact – could play havoc with the cars’ handling. But wait, if we’re going to have a French track on the list, maybe it should be Dijon, scene of the most exciting F1 moment in history as Gilles Villeneuve and Rene Arnoux proved that “frottage c’est la course” or “rubbing is racing” as we’d say in English. Plus the wines in this part of L’Hexagone are definitely superior to the rather rough Bandol Rouge on offer down at Ricard.
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