In the spirit of Gaudi

Racing moves to the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit in Spain this week. Barcelona hosted the Summer Olympics in 1992 and this track was built during the development program for the games. It is a driver favourite and often used for testing, outside race events.

This design incorporates the straight streets of the city and is inspired by the Catalan architect and designer Antoni Gaudi, who died 100 years ago today (10 June 1926), aged 73. This is quite the coincidence as my original design had nothing to do with Gaudi and then late last week I had this strong feeling to look at photographs of his work and base a design on them. It is only in researching his life as I write this that I learned of his death date. Love it when the magic happens.

Gaudi is buried in his most important work, the Sagrada Familia, but the playful design of mosaics at Park Güell were a standout for me.

Back to racing. Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli has won 5 races in a row, living up to all the hype surrounding him. The Monaco race, usually a bit of a procession, ended up being quite the event with penalties, accidents, DNFs and the appearance of the girlfriend* of Sir Lewis Hamilton, which outraged the racing community, especially when she ignored Martin Brundle on his gridwalk and then stole Kimi’s towel. As I heard today when watching a program about US politics and its president: ‘Like kindergarten in COVID – no class.’

*I have never watched her reality program (or her other productions).