The French Grand Prix has been held in more locations than any other World Championship event and looks set to find another new home in 2011. An F1 grade racetrack is reportedly being constructed just west of Paris in a farming area on the Seine river and should be ready for racing in just a few years.

The proposed Flins-Mureaux circuit is a remarkable project. From a design perspective it raises the bar already set high by Herman Tilke and the architects have put a lot of effort into making the venue environmentally friendly.

The circuit will be fully surrounded by earth banks and trees that will help integrate the track into the natural landscape, and will also help with noise reduction. In addition to this, land around the circuit will be preserved as orchids and farmland. Many of the buildings will be solar powered and some will even have gardens planted on their roofs, and there will also be two artificial lakes within the track that assist with drainage and potential flooding in the area.

The facilities will be world class and spectators will be able to see most of the racetrack from anywhere in the grandstands. Access will also be easy because the circuit is sandwiched right next to a train line and will have its own purpose built station.

It sounds great, although the venue is still lacking something special.

The layout itself is fairly unimaginative. The circuit does not cover a large area and twists around several times as if following an H pattern. It looks much like the infield of an oval racetrack that you would find at somewhere like Rockingham or Indianapolis. The idea is that spectators will be able to see everything in front of them, but the racing will likely suffer as a result. Generic mid speed corners might look good on TV but they do not create exciting Formula One races.

They are taking the blandness and tedium of Magny Cours and moving it next to a train station.

French motorsport authorities have never been able to find the perfect venue for Grand Prix racing, and there will be some who believe that Flins-Mureaux is not the answer to their problem.

Rouen Les Essarts was probably the best circuit to have hosted the French Grand Prix, but it was also the most dangerous and that proved to be its downfall.

Rouen was a brilliant racetrack that used public roads through a forested hillside. It featured a fast sweeping drop into the valley below and an equally challenging climb back up the hill. It was a great test for the drivers and had very good facilities for the time, but it also had trees instead of barriers and blind corners so the circuit had to be abandoned in the name of safety.

The French Grand Prix circuits at Clermont Ferrand and Reims were similar to Rouen as they were decent tracks that just weren’t suitable for modern Formula One.

Reims was one of the great classic F1 venues and was one of the fastest circuits in the sports history. It was not a particularly intricate layout and was essentially a very large triangle made out of public roads. Straight, hairpin, straight, hairpin, straight, hairpin. Simple as that. The circuit produced extremely close racing though because drivers were able to slipstream each other down the long straights. It was a real car breaker as well so the races there often featured a surprise result. However, Formula One eventually outgrew Reims and the French Grand Prix moved elsewhere.

Clermont Ferrand was far more complicated and was jokingly referred to as a quicker twistier version of the Nurburgring. The circuit was actually so full on that some drivers suffered motion sickness and had to race with open faced helmets. Stones on the side of the track also caused numerous problems so it was soon dropped in favour of the more tame Dijon Prenois.

If Clermont Ferrand was too severe for Grand Prix racing, Dijon was the total opposite. When F1 first visited the circuit it was so small that it could be lapped in under a minute and most of the drivers found themselves caught in a traffic jam during the race. The layout had to be lengthened before it could be used again and it hosted the French Grand Prix a further five times.

Dijon shared the race with Circuit Paul Ricard which was a purpose built venue located on top of a mountain near Marseille. The track was relatively popular, if difficult to access, and the safety standards were ahead of their time. However, the circuit lost much of its character in 1985 when it was dramatically shortened following the death of Elio De Angelis.

In the early nineties the Grand Prix moved to Magny Cours when authorities felt the Nevers region of France could do with an economic boost. The facilities were great but everything about the track screamed blandness. The layout wasn’t that special, the racing wasn’t that special, and it was smack bang in the middle of nowhere. The most exciting feature of Magny Cours was that it had the smoothest asphalt on the calendar, making it the vanilla ice cream of Formula One racetracks.

The French Grand Prix will now be moved once again and everyone in the sport is hoping the next venue will be more successful than those before it.

The perfect circuit would be in a great location with some history or character, or it would simply be an awesome racetrack like Spa or Suzuka.

In a perfect world it would be both.

The new proposed track at Flins-Mureaux is neither

Bernie Ecclestone’s French Grand Prix dream is a street race around Paris, and that would be fantastic, especially if it could be run on a Saturday night. However, the logistics and costs of such an event make it extremely unlikely that anything of the sort will ever happen.

It certainly isn’t like Paris needs a tourism boost.

Perhaps another option is to take Formula One to Le Mans.

Le Mans might not have the flavour of Paris but it does ooze history and is one of the most famous names in all of motorsport. In addition to that, the developed Circuit de la Sarthe is one of the finest in the world and would be a great test of driving skill.

Ideally the F1 cars would utilise the full eight mile layout, but the days of extra long racetracks are behind us now and a few kilometres would have to be cut by forcing drivers to veer right halfway down the Mulsanne straight. There are access roads in the middle of the circuit that could be converted into a racetrack with the help of a bulldozer and willing land owners, so a Le Mans Grand Prix is not such an extreme idea.

Casual sports fans all around the world associate ‘Le Mans’ with racing so it’s not a bad name for Formula One to get involved with.

The Circuit de la Sarthe might not be solar powered or surrounded by earth banks, but it might just be the best place to host the French Grand Prix.

Or it might not. Flins-Mureaux might not be such a bad track and the notion of a green Grand Prix might give the place its own unique character.

We’ll have a better idea in 2011.

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