[Purist]

Here goes with another segment.

"Mickey Mouse" Tracks and Elements
This was mentioned in this thread's first life, and I decided I would entertain the notion with some of my thoughts on the matter.

First off, my biggest focus is on circuit car racing, and I am particularly fond of road racing. This colors my perceptions, naturally, and while I try not to make too many broad, sweeping generalizations, go-kart tracks and tightly packed club circuit facilities often strike me as quite "mickey mouse". I have a similar feeling toward parking lot autocross activities as well, I will admit. Then again, based on the bulk of circuits posted here, I think a lot of us like the big tracks.

Of the various, major circuits in the real world, there are few that I would consider wholly defined by that "mickey mouse" tag. Two tracks that I would probably put in this category would be the 2002 Miami street circuit and the 1991 New Orleans street circuit. Most often, however, it is a particular place or section on a track that just seems pathetically tight or puny compared to the rest of the track that gets saddled with this label. The double-hairpin on the Indy road course is often cited for this criticism.

This brings me to the point that rovals in particular are regularly singled out for being "mickey mouse" in their character/layout. Of course, being stuck within the confines of a speedway is going to have its limitations, so this can be hard to avoid. It can help to have a larger oval within which to work. It is the rare roval that goes outside its speedway, and rarer still to find one of this type still in operation, such as Texas World Speedway.

Street circuits are also brought in for tongue-lashings involving that Walt Disney trademark, but in many cases, I have to disagree with its use on street circuits. For one, you can't reasonably use the same standards for street circuits as you use for permanent road courses, or everything becomes "mickey mouse". Even Monaco isn't really in that category for me. It's not unusually short for a street circuit. There were plenty of other tight, urban street circuits laid out at that time also; Pau is probably the best-known, and is still with us. And, perhaps, apart from the tightened chicane after the tunnel, none of the added corners really seem odd or out-of-place, though I personally wish Ste. Devote, for one, wasn't made so tight back in the '70s.

I think that there maybe is another undertone with the "mickey mouse" moniker, and that added tinge is a certain monotony. A number of street circuits, especially those with an abundance of 90-degree corners surrounded by uniform, grey concrete walls, have had this feature. Parking lot circuits suffer particularly from this image, and most infamous among them is probably Caesar's Palace, which hosted F1 in 1981-82 and CART in 1983-84.

Overall, I think the term is overused. There are times when I think it is warranted, but overall, I think people use it kind of as a fall-back when they don't have a clear idea of what they really mean.

If I was to give it a definition of my own, it would be something like this. "Mickey Mouse" refers to a circuit that in significant part, or in total, is unusually/unnecessarily tight, narrow, and slow. This is normally accompanied by the track being used by a series which emphasizes these qualities, because for that series, these qualities cause the racing to suffer substantially; a track can be "mickey mouse" for some categories, but not others. However, a circuit that would otherwise have this descriptor applied can have it mitigated, at least in part, by having extraordinary history and/or character.

Finally, as another example of a part of a circuit that is "mickey mouse", take a look at the 1992-95 New Orleans street circuit, and specifically, look at the smaller loop that goes around City Hall. It kind of blows the mind that they had 800hp GTPs going through those streets.