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Thank you Purist for your analysis of why all of us on this board prefer tracks which have more medium and high speed corners than slow corners. In my early days of designing tracks in the early 90s (on paper), my role models have been Monza, Silverstone (when they still used just the perimeter circuit), Östereichring and the now largely deconstructed Autodromo Nelson Piquet at Rio de Janeiro, 3 of which I knew from Accolade's Grand Prix Pursuit game of circa 1988. The one thing that unites these is that they have lots of medium and high speed corners and that they have straights. Many of those corners go around 180 degrees or more, such as Peraltada from Mexico City which you have discussed in detail. The original Hermanos Rodriguez is also an amazing layout but with the highway just behind the wall of Peraltada at the apex, they really had no other choice than to remove it from the layout if they wanted to race F1 cars there. Watkins Glen also deserves to get a mention and to be put in the same group as the turbo era tracks you have listed.
It is interesting to note that there is a difference in likelihood of overtaking between the end of the long front straights of Iberian Tracks (e.g. Estoril and Barcelona Montmelo) and the "classic" circuits you have mentioned. I believe the reason for this is how the rest of the track compromises the setup of the car, as the Iberian Tracks usually have tighter and slower corners in the infield than immediately surrounding the straight, whereas the "classic" tracks do maintain roughly the same level of speed in most of the other corners on the track, often having more than one straight on which overtaking is possible.
That is also why Dijon-Prenois does not fit in with the group of Iberian Tracks: it does have the front straight being the longest straight as defining geometric element of the track like those have, but the part of track behind the pits is unique in that it does not have any slow corner at all. This is a circuit which benefits greatly from not having that bit of everything in its layout. The DTM race that they held there a few years back was so amazing to watch, yet still, the track still does not host any major series today anymore.
Another interesting aspect to discuss might be the influence of medium to high speed 180 degree corners on how racy a circuit can be. Look for example at how much overtaking Barber Motorsports Park provides with the current IndyCar chassis. Overall, I get the impression that the car setup for Barber must be somewhere between that for Mugello and Sonoma, with Mugello having the undulating terrain and fast technicality which you have discussed in detail in a previous posting on this thread, and Sonoma having the heavier braking zones of some corners.
I've never been a fan of Sonoma but the current IndyCar chassis does provide good racing at this place, especially in the circuit's current version. It's too bad that SMI seems to generally disregard the need to upgrade Sonoma's safety features.
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