A study has been published looking at the most beautiful circuits in the world, but the methodology is questionable.
The study is based around circuits which have previously held F1 races, which means there are a bunch of circuits on the list that are well-known to motorcycle racing fans.
Top of the list overall is the Nurburgring, although we’re assuming that the Nordschleife, rather than the current GP layout that WorldSBK last visited in 2013 is the part containing the ‘beauty’.
As such, the first track on the list that could be considered a motorcycle racing circuit is, surprisingly, Donington Park, which comes in at second overall, one spot ahead of Brands Hatch. Although it’s been well over a decade since WorldSBK visited the latter, its prominence in the British Superbike Championship (a series in which it hosts two rounds annually, including the final round) means it is still affirmatively a motorcycle racing circuit, while Donington is still the host of the WorldSBK UK Round.
The study, conducted by the gambling company Genting Casino, looked at how many Instagram posts had been made about a circuit, and the percentage of reviews of each circuit that described them as either “beautiful”, “stunning”, or “gorgeous” to work out an index score.
The validity of the study and its methodology has to be called into question, though, when you look a little further down the list from the aforementioned Nurburgring, Donington, and Brands Hatch, and discover that the Autodromo Internazionale del Mugello - which is easily the most beautiful circuit in the world - is out-ranked by both those British tracks. Not that either Donington or Brands is ugly, but they aren’t Mugello. Perhaps using numbers to rank beauty doesn’t work, or perhaps ranking beauty at all is an elementally flawed objective, or maybe even trying to make objective fact out of something fundamentally subjective is foolish.
Anyway, Mugello, the home of the Italian round of MotoGP since 1985, comes in at seventh on the list, while the Circuito de Jerez-Angel Nieto - home of the Spanish Grand Prix since 1987 - features at fifth, making it the top-placed circuit that currently features in the MotoGP World Championship.
The Buddh International Circuit can be counted as a motorcycle racing track now, since it hosted the first ever MotoGP Indian Grand Prix last September, and it featured at sixth on the list of beautiful historic F1 tracks. Buddh certainly made an impact in MotoGP last year, although perhaps more for the intense heat and humidity which led Jorge Martin to dehydration, despite which he finished second.
Malaysia has become a staple of the MotoGP World Championship since it hosted its first Malaysian Motorcycle Grand Prix back in 1999. Easily one of the best circuits in the world - for its combination of just about any kind of corner you can think of - it somehow ranks only eighth in Genting’s list.
When thinking of German motorcycle racing, the obvious thing that comes to mind is Sachsenring, but since this list is based on old F1 tracks the only German motorcycling venue that makes the list is Hockenheim. Sure, the Hockenheimring hasn’t hosted WorldSBK since 2000, but its old (now overgrown) through-the-forest layout is one of the most spectacular in all of racing, and it produced some awesome fights in the World Superbike Championship. Race 2 of 1996 is our pick of the bunch.
Since Silverstone, the circuit used for MotoGP’s British Grand Prix since 2010, is also a current F1 track, it doesn’t make the list for old circuits, but it did come second on the list for current tracks. That list was topped by the Circuit of the Americas, which is also used for MotoGP’s Grand Prix of the Americas, while third place was taken by the Red Bull Ring - host of the MotoGP Austrian Grand Prix.
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