A circuitous life: 90 venues not out

Long-haul flights get me down at this time of year, but there was a spring in my step as I boarded my flight to Shanghai this week. It's not that I'm anticipating a thrilling climax to the FIA World Endurance Championship on Sunday, nor that I particularly enjoy visiting China. Rather, it was the prospect of reaching a not insignificant milestone in my motorsport life.

The Shanghai International Circuit is the 90th circuit I've had the good fortune to visit over the years. It's a tally that astounds me now as I scroll down my list of tracks and one that would have sounded implausible to the wide-eyed kid watching racing cars in the flesh for the first time at Brands Hatch 35 years ago.

Yet somehow I really have spectated, reported or raced at 90 different race circuits around the world. I'm not going to reproduce my list here, but I can tell you that I've been to every track in the UK bar Kirkistown, ticked off the majority of international circuits in Europe and visited most of the tracks that have held important sportscar events around the rest of the world over the past 20 years.

I guess the obscurities I can count include Birmingham (I got there for the final Superprix in 1990), the Washington car park circuit (used just once), Sentul (visited when I was on A1GP duty) and Autopolis (ticked off in 1991 when it was on course to host a grand prix). Notable omissions from my list include EuroSpeedway Lausitz and Vallelunga in Europe, and I'd say Virginia International Raceway and Montreal in North America.

Just so you know the rules of my game, a circuit is defined as a venue in use at the time of my visit. I must see racing cars on the track to tick that particular box.

That means various bits of motor racing tourism in which I have indulged down the years have no bearing on my tally. I wish I could count Montjuich and Rouen, but I got to Barcelona far too late to witness racing on the former and the latter's downhill swoops were open to everyday traffic when I first drove them in 1993.

The legendary Montjuich Park in its F1 heyday © LAT

Test tracks and kart circuits don't count (so there's no Boreham or Buckmore on my list). I don't include short ovals either, which means Wimbledon and Crayford don't make the cut.

'Venue' is a key word in my rulebook. I couldn't tell you how many iterations of the Silverstone circuit I've witnessed racing on (and I've even competed on the 'old' triangular Stowe circuit), but they all add up to just one notch on my circuit-visiting belt.

Ditto the Osterreichring. I count myself fortunate to have seen Formula 1 cars race on the almost-original layout (so that's post-Hella-Licht chicane) and somewhat less fortunate to have reported on racing on the point-and-squirt A1-Ring. But should you read a race report from the Red Bull Ring with my name on it any time soon, I'll still be counting the Styrian venue just the once.

Zhuhai is an exception that most definitely proves the rule. Believe it or not, I have reported from the Chinese city no fewer than 10 times, twice from the street circuit that brought international motor racing to the People's Republic back in 1994 and eight times from the uninspiring Zhuhai International Circuit built down the road. The 10 or so miles separating them are key.

Watkins has made plenty of trips to Zhuhai

My little game started a dozen or so years back in a pub. I was at Croft for the first time and was asked how many circuits I'd visited. A stack of beer mats later, I'd scribbled out a list in the high 40s.

Most of us in the AUTOSPORT office have a rolling tally secreted somewhere and I've played the game with various people in the paddock over the years.

Schnitzer team boss Charly Lamm, a motor racing statto like me, topped the ton some time ago, though I'm pretty sure he hasn't made any additions this season. The disappointment of the DTM offering him no new circuits this year has, I'm sure, been tempered somewhat by the team's amazing championship triumph with Bruno Spengler.

Ricardo Divila probably takes the biscuit among my circle. The roving race engineer tells me that his tally now stands at 154, but then his motorsport career does date back to the early 60s.

If you keep lists like I do, there's tendency to start ranking their contents in some way. I've managed to resist so far, partly because I've never settled in my mind on what constitutes good and what constitutes bad in terms of motor racing venues.

It's not all about the ribbon of asphalt. Take Laguna Seca. It's a bit overrated as a track these days, but it's a great place to visit, a venue with a special vibe.

Adria: Bottom of Watkins' list © XPB

Using those criteria, I reckon I've hit on the worst circuit on my list. It has to be Adria. The circuit is woeful, there's no atmosphere at a venue hemmed in on some kind of industrial estate and it's not located in a particularly pretty part of Italy. So what that it's got an air-conditioned paddock?

Circuits that would be near the top of my list include classics such as Spa, the Nurburgring, Macau and Sebring. Road Atlanta would be up there for me, as would Thruxton and, maybe, Silverstone. And, my first love, Brands Hatch.

Mosport, sorry the Canadian Tire Motorsport Park, would definitely make my top five. It's a breathtaking place packed full of ultra-fast corners and it has that smell of history of which I have talked before.

My love of motorsport history means that I'm always going to favour what I call unmolested circuits, ones that take me back to the days when I was first reading about motorsport in the late 1970s. Mosport hasn't changed in layout since Jody Scheckter won the final Canadian Grand Prix there in 1977 and the biggest thrill I got on visiting Anderstorp for the first time a few years back was seeing the remnants of the unusual pitlane used for F1 back in the 1970s.

Don't expect me to be announcing any time soon that I've hit the magic ton. As a cricket fan, I know all about the 'nervous nineties' and as far as circuit visiting goes, the law of diminishing returns most definitely applies.

It's taken me a while to make it to Shanghai and there could be worse places to reach 90 circuits. It's not one of Hermann Tilke's finest, but it's far from his worst.

And the scale of the place would have been unimaginable to that 10-year-old standing on the bank at Clearways in 1977.