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Thank you Purist for your extensive reply including your detailed discussion of Sonoma.
First of all, yes, I agree that Le Mans Bugatti would fit in well with the Iberian Circuits. And my favourite of the circuits in that part of the world is also Algarve/Portimao.
For me, Jerez does not fit in with the group of the Iberian Circuits either, mainly because of its flowing nature and it having more than just one long straight.
Watkins Glen is a very nice layout indeed. It's just that this track has got some serious safety issues, the most blatant being the lack of runoff surrounding the Esses, which would be necessary to prevent a single-car accident turning into a large pile-up from happening there after a start or re-start. Unfortunately, ISC failed to do something about this during their fairly recent renovation effort at the track.
The SAFER barrier idea for Peraltada at Mexico City is a good one which would have worked good enough for IndyCars because they are chassis with crash structures that are solid enough for high-speed oval impacts. Yet, F1 cars are frailer than that and it would not have been safe enough for those. Also, we both know that the allure of filling the entire baseball stadium on the corner's inside with paying spectators and not having to build new stands was just too high a chance for the promoter to pass up: taking the original Peraltada out of the layout pretty much was an economic decision.
However, the 2nd stadium section of the new Hockenheim, the Mercedes Tribüne, has also been constructed due to an economic decision, and now, Hockenheim has been suffering at the box office from an overabundance of seating capacity for the F1 race for years. They even had to give up their annual calendar spot and share it with another track because of it. People now prefer the Mercedes Tribüne over the Motodrom because they can see the action at the hairpin at the Tribüne and the Motodrom does not have any action on display anymore because the low downforce layouts are gone, which the cars used to run in the old days of the long straights though the forest.
I also agree that Sonoma is very much a stop-and-go circuit these days. Yet, the most recent layout works better than what IndyCar ran on there when I returned to watching the series after reunification. However, the less sharp and more circular hairpin which can be seen in the video from 1997 would indeed be interesting to watch again. Yet, SMI does not seem to want to adress the real problem of Sonoma, probably because it would need some major investment: the final corner and its lack of runoff due to the location of the pit entrance. At this point, it seems rather unlikely that the stop-and-go nature of the 2nd half of the lap of Sonoma is going to be changed anytime soon.
Still, I have come to the maybe controversial opinion that IndyCar is currently better off with Sonoma than it would be with Laguna Seca, as Sonoma is more undulating and has several interesting sections whereas Laguna is basically just the hill with the cork screw and the first corner at the end of the front straight.
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