Full circle

With Tom Wheatcroft planning a grand new motor racing complex in the Midlands, which is to include a banked oval, and Silverstone thinking in similar terms, it could be said that we have come full-circle.

Though Brooklands is sometimes described, wrongly, as an oval (it had far more fascinating topography), it was the first banked motor course of them all. However, its lap-distance was approximately 2.75 miles, whereas these new oval tracks may not exceed FISA’s minimum of 1.9.

Estimated lap speeds are around 170 mph, not all that much more than the record at Brooklands (set 58 years ago at 143.44mph, though with Cobb driving above the halfway line it was nearer 146). W B