Baku

The Baku City Circuit is two races pretending to be one. It threads the medieval walls of the Old City, Icherisheher, through a castle section barely wider than a car, the stone close enough to read, before opening out onto a two-kilometre run along the Caspian seafront, the longest full-throttle stretch anywhere on the calendar. The Flame Towers watch the whole thing from above the bay. This is the street race that built its reputation on chaos, and the contrast is why: nowhere else asks a car to be threaded through stone one moment and held flat for two kilometres the next.

We fly here because the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is the weekend the highlights never do justice, you want the walls and the noise in person. A race that turns on chaos is the easiest of all to argue for, and the hardest to leave well, with the seafront snarled the instant the flag drops. That last part is precisely the part we exist to remove. You're above the Caspian before the crowd has found its car.