What do you do with the Circuit de Catalunya?

Well, if you’re an F1 team, you test there like crazy. To the point that all the teams know the circuit so well it wouldn’t be a surprise to see the teams line up two-by-two, Noah’s Ark style, at the start of the race – and stay that way until the chequered flag.

Until 2006 the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola was the circuit that kicked of Formula 1’s ‘European season’. And following its emasculation in 1995 it elicited groans from those who love a good wheel-to-wheel race because the chicane blighted track made it an impossibility.

There were gasps of astonishment when Juan Pablo Montoya somehow forced his Williams past Jarno Trulli’s Jordan at the re-profiled Tamburello in 2001.

Now it’s the Circuit de Catalunya that heralds the start of the tough middle portion of the season when the teams live out of their transporters and the race weekends come thick and fast.

And, like Imola, Catalunya (along with the Hungaroring) is the venue we now think of when we talk about F1 circuits where overtaking is impossible.

But here’s the thing: Catalunya is quite unfairly maligned. There’s nothing wrong with it. If you want to understand why F1 cars can’t run closely together at speed, look no further than the cars themselves.

Catalunya first arrived on the F1 calendar in 1991. Back then the cars were wider, ran on fat slick tyres, and were much less aerodynamically efficient.

The first race at Catalunya was a corker and. Those that saw it were left with the image of Mansell and Senna flying down the straight millimetres apart scorched into their memories.

As the 1990s wore on the cars became more aerodynamically efficient. Then in 1998 Max Mosley embarked on his notorious folly of making the cars narrower and forcing them to use grooved tyres – a policy that may finally be reversed next year.

As the racing got worse people began to think of Catalunya as one of those tracks, “where there’s nowhere to pass.”

But that is just nonsense. Catalunya has a dirty great straight with a slow-ish corner at the end of it. That was good enough for F1 cars in 1991 and it was good enough for GP2 cars (slick tyres, less down force) in 2007.

Is the track at fault? No. Are the cars to blame? Yes.

It was hoped that the new chicane added last year might tip the balance in favour of the chasing driver. But the teams found that even with the tighter corner before the final bend the cars were still passing through the final turn at similar speeds, following cars weren’t able to get closer, and it didn’t make much of a difference.

Perhaps this year without traction control we’ll see the odd slip-up and change of position. But I doubt it.

I’m looking forward to the start of the GP2 season though.