valencia grand prix

It was the Valencia Grand Prix this last week.

Traditionally, Valencia is up there as one of the worst races of the season. It's a street circuit and is normally even more processional than Monaco. Indeed, if you think of all the worst bits of Monaco, then Valencia amplifies those to the degree of tedium.

It's quite a common problem with street circuit - Singapore is another road-racing snooze fest, although that at least has the added interest of being held at night. Although it's not a universal effect. Canada is a street circuit and produces some cracking races, and so's Australia and that's usually okay too.

And of course the reverse isn't automatically true. Being a purpose built circuit doesn't guarantee a good race. Especially from the newer circuits, which are often a bit lacklustre.

Anyway, the point is that Valencia is usually dull (Mark Webber described it as being a Tesco's Car Park), but this year we have the superb Pirelli tyres, KERS and DRS. We even had two DRS zones, which they did in Canada, but more as a test for Valencia than because Canada did it.

Anticipation was therefore high it would finally produce an interesting race. And the result was not spectacular.

I guess it's worth noting that I thought Monaco wasn't the greatest race this season, but it was far better than in previous years. I felt the same thing about Valencia - it was a bit more interesting than it usually is, but I wouldn't put it high up the list of greatest ever races.

Part of the problem was that the DRS, which is meant to give overtaking, didn't really seem to add that much. It seemed that when they had the chance to use it, unfortunately the cars just ended up bouncing off the rev limiter, unable to really develop extra speed.

Perhaps if DRS was also associated with a temporary lifting of the limiter, it would have allowed them a better chance to overtake. But then it really would have looked very artificial, with one car sailing past the other on the straight and that wasn't really the idea of it. It's meant to put the trailing car in a position to try to overtake, rather than being a push-to-pass button.

It did seem to help some situations, but didn't quite do what it was meant to.

But it wasn't a terrible race - there were a few interesting things going on. And if we'd had this race last year, I think I'd have been very pleased. The trouble is the rest of the season has lifted the bar very high, so it made Valencia seem like a bit of a damp squib.

Next up is Silverstone of course, and I'll have the somewhat unique viewpoint of actually being there, which will be nice.