Dear Editor, A very interesting article by Graeme Brown. (Is it time to re-engineer the super prix? Post July 28) It must be August again as we seem to have “resurrect the super prix” articles most years.

Just a few points that readers might be interested in. The race ran from 1986 to 1990, not 1989 and the race was not dropped from the F3000 schedule. In fact many considered it the jewel in the crown of the F3000 year and most Formula One team managers picked their future drivers from among the super prix runners. Jean Alesi after winning the super prix went straight into Formula One.

Every event needs to go forward and after five successful years to keep the event fresh and maintain worldwide media interest we wanted Formula One. We were very favourably looked upon by FOCA, the Formula One organisers, but the original parliamentary Act had the difficulty of only allowing three days over a bank holiday for a race, which is not much use for a worldwide audience who are at work on our bank holidays.

A new Act had to be sort from parliament and although a lot of hard work was put into this it became a political football, with very little relevance to the issues of the motor race and more party politics. It was therefore lost.

It was a fascinating and very rewarding five years, although very hard work and now when we look at the fantastic success of events such as Goodwood Festival of Speed, with sold-out tickets and visitors and manufacturers from all over the world vying for the massive media attention, perhaps Birmingham gave up too easily on a genuinely unique event (still unique in Britain) in contrast to some of the supposed world events that the city appears to promote today.

David Lucas

Head of the Motor race unit

Birmingham City Council 1985-90