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I’m often times convinced that the FIA’s credo for F1 is “Destroying the sport, one circuit at a time.”

We already have total garbage on the F1 calendar. Abominations like France, Hungary and Spain. Well, chalk up another victim. Yes folks, another circuit has fallen prey to the butchers knife.

Hockenheim was one of the few great circuits remaining on the calendar. A circuit with class. High speed, low downforce. A car killer. A chance to see F1 cars at full tilt for a good part of the lap. F1 as it should be. Well, say goodnight Gracie, because it’s all over.

Head to the Official Site of the Hockenheimring, and, as I did, weep. Gone are the long straights. Yes folks, we need never fear Hockenheim making another circuit pregnant because it’s been neutered. Sterilised.

Hockenheim joins the long list of once great circuits that are now an insult to their names. Silverstone, Nurburgring… Hockenheim now joins them in the travesty. The running joke that is Formula One. The cream of the worlds best drivers, racing the most technologically advanced cars in the world, round little more than a glorified parking lot.

I am so sick of this constant butchery of F1. Of course I would be considered cynical if I mentioned that maybe, just maybe, Michael Schumacher’s lack of success at his home race had anything to do with this. Of course he didn’t. After all, it’s not like he had a say in the redesigned Nurburgring or, for example, designed a chicane to suit his driving style. No, it was would be wrong of me to conclude that this butchery of Hockenheim is in part caused by Michael Schumacher’s inability to nurse his car around a circuit that is a notorious car killer where only those drivers who can caress the car survive.

The fact is, this is yet another a long line of bullshit decisions to make Formula One lose any kind of distinction. CART race around ovals, and slowly but surely F1 is racing around circuits that are interchangeable. “Where are we this week?” “I don’t remember. They all look the same.”

Take your Magny Cours. Take your Hungaroring. Take your Silverstone. Take them all and burn them. Destroy them. Do as one gentleman did a few years ago in Argentina and take a bulldozer to the bastards. If this is where F1 is headed, to hell with the sport. Gone are the days of fantastic circuits like the original Silverstone, the unbutchered Lesmo’s at Monza, and now the full glory that is Hockeheim. Instead they want to put the drivers in playpens that all look alike.It’s gone from a challenge to the drivers, to absolute conformity.

To hell with the FIA. To hell with Bernie Ecclestone. To hell with F1.

There will now be a period of mourning for the late lamented Hockenheim.The last remaining circuit with any originality or history on the calendar.