The unexpected street-race warning F1 must heed

The surprise election defeat for Montreal mayor Denis Coderre earlier this week could be bad news for the Formula E race on the streets of the Quebec city, and is a timely warning to Formula 1 as it considers a future calendar packed with street races.

The Montreal street circuit was one of the best to have featured on the all-electric racing series calendar so far. Wide boulevards, genuine elevation changes and challenging corners mixed with the ubiquitous chicanes and 90-degree bends to create a track that not only wouldn't have looked out of place on the 1990s CART calendar, but was universally enjoyed by the drivers.

The fact that it also produced one of the all-time classic title deciders, with Lucas di Grassi capitalising on Sebastien Buemi's self-induced implosion with relish, was an added bonus.

New Montreal mayor Valarie Plante has hinted that she is in favour of keeping the FE race, but not at the street track, suggesting that it could be run on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, a short distance away on Ile Notre Dame. But while that track is a classic Formula 1 venue, it could scarcely be less suitable for FE.

Long straights are fine for 200+mph cars, but the FE machines were designed for the tight confines of street racing, they are geared for short, sharp bursts of acceleration. Long slipstreaming straights where v-max will be achieved almost immediately and battery-sapping abounds were not part of the plan.

There may well be a way of short-cutting through some of the service roads to create a track around the 2km length typically used in FE, but that won't compensate for the fact that the race will be taking place on an island far away from the centre of the city.

The concept of FE is based on showcasing the performance of electric cars in the urban settings where they will not just be used predominantly, but where their zero-emission technology is most effective in helping to combat air pollution and the tens of thousands of lives lost to its consequences.

It would be wrong to cite the FE race as the sole reason for Coderre being unseated; however, it cannot be ignored. Despite the quality of the track and the racing it produced, the race was deeply unpopular with the locals. The disruption the track caused to their daily lives - the road closures forcing a different commute, the shortcuts they were no longer able to access, the cycle routes on Strava they could no longer maintain - all served to antagonise them. But chief among their concerns was the money that was being spent on the event.

From a professional perspective, it was money well spent. The race was well run, well organised and well promoted. However, when Coderre finally revealed the details of the ticket sales, it became apparent that only 25,000 of the 45,000 tickets had been purchased, with the rest given away. Given that the event cost an estimated CAN$24million, it becomes clear why it ended up as such a political hot potato.

And this is a lesson that F1 and Liberty need to understand. In modern, westernised social-democracies, spending enormous amounts of public money on events that cause considerable disruption to the tax-payers' daily lives can be politically perilous.

It's no coincidence that the three countries hosting street races on the current F1 calendar - Monaco, Singapore and Azerbaijan - are places where the will of the electorate might not be as accurately represented as it is in places such as Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK, all countries that have been linked to an F1 street race over past months.

That's not to say that they can't work in a democracy, but the list of successful (and for the purposes of this column I'm defining this as currently holding a race for 10 consecutive years) street races is a short one.

It's not just local objections that need to be taken into account when a future influx of street races is planned in F1. Races are processional and dull and produce little trickle-down effect

In the US, Jim Michaelian and his team have done an amazing job to keep the Long Beach Grand Prix as a permanent fixture on the IndyCar calendar despite the wavering fortunes of the series, ditto the organisers of the race in St Petersburg.

In Europe, aside from Monaco, the only other street races to enjoy a long and fruitful existence are in Pau, where it's become a major part of the social calendar in the small Pyrenean city, and at the Norising, a unique, brilliantly German affair that ought to be on every race fan's bucket list. There are other road races across Europe, especially in the bike racing world, but no others have hosted international car races over a sustained period of time.

The Macau Grand Prix remains the blue-riband Formula 3 event, but the former Portuguese colony is hardly a beacon of democratic representation.

Which leaves the Aussies showing the world how it's done (as is often the case in sport). Bathurst, Surfers Paradise and Adelaide have all been successfully (and profitably) hosting races on their public roads for years, and while there has long been local political scrutiny of the cost of putting on the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne's Albert Park, the race remains one of the best organised on the F1 calendar.

Quite why Australians are happy for (in the old days) roaring V10 F1 cars to thunder around their park, while a few dozen residents of Battersea had such a problem with the near-silent FE cars racing in theirs probably speaks volumes about the different psyches of the natives in their respective countries, with the Brits displaying world-class levels of NIMBYism (we'd clean up if petty disputes were an Olympic event).

But it's not just local objections that need to be taken into account when a future influx of street races is planned in F1. While for purists Monaco remains an immutable fixture and an integral part of the unofficial triple crown (along with Le Mans and the Indianapolis 500), for modern, iconoclastic fans, the tight streets of the Principality and the processional racing it creates, make the Monaco GP a yawn. And they might just have a point. When was the last time there was an overtaking move for the lead in Monaco that didn't take place in the pits?

While street tracks are undoubtedly a fantastic driving challenge, with no room for error and the punishment for even tiny mistakes extreme, the limitations imposed by the city layouts normally means that the races are processional and dull. This year's grand prix in Baku was anything but, although it's too early to judge if this will be a recurring theme there.

The other limiting factor it's important to point out about street tracks is the lack of trickle-down effect they produce. While some of the F1 white elephants - Korea most notably - have had no impact on the domestic racing scene, when new permanent tracks are built they create their own cottage industry around them.

Local championships can emerge, and if other international series are attracted, suppliers who are able to service the needs of these start to crop up. Motorsport, even F1, is only as strong as its base. It's not just drivers and fans that need to be brought up through the ladder, but mechanics and engineers and even media too.

A one-off event each year does little to inspire local participation. A well-run permanent track, like Austin's COTA or Abu Dhabi's Yas Marina, can play an integral role in shoring up the foundations of the sport, especially, as has tended to be the case recently, if karting facilities are planned in as part of the design.

These facilities don't have to cost hundreds of millions. F1 lost its way with over-restrictive constraints on the design of tracks, the insistence upon acres of asphalt run-off despite the cars (and barriers) being safer than ever before. This has blunted the viewing experience, made the cars look slow and unspectacular on TV and given rise to the track-limits epidemic, which has now reached narcoleptic proportions.

As is so often the case, balance is key. One new street track on the calendar would be no bad thing. Bringing a few of the old classic tracks up to F1 standards - Zandvoort would be a good place to start - would be a nice addition too.

Building the occasional modern facility, especially in a country where there is a strong motorsport fanbase - Poland, for example - would be to the benefit of the whole motorsport world, not just F1.