Hungary (I wanna go......)

Monaco without the houses is one popular way of describing the twisty Hungarian Grand Prix circuit.

Forget glamour and glitz. If some drivers stifle a yawn when they contemplate a visit to the hot and dusty Hungaroring, it is because of its reputation as the second slowest track in the championship.

Races can be processional, due to the extreme difficulty in overtaking, and dull in comparison to others at more flowing circuits.

"Watching paint dry, counting the grains of fluff in your belly button...filling in your tax return form; all these things can be rather more exciting than watching the Hungarian Grand Prix," declared a Red Bull handout on Thursday.

It was not ever thus.

There was a time, 20 years ago, when a visit to the Hungaroring represented, in the words of the Times newspaper's then Formula One correspondent, 'motor racing's boldest experiment for many years'.

When the travelling circus arrived in Budapest for the first grand prix behind the then-Iron Curtain in August 1986, there was a palpable sense of excitement about the place that seems unthinkable in the current era with its new races in China, Malaysia and Bahrain.

Hungary, now an EU member state, was then firmly in the embrace of the old Soviet Union and light years away from the free-spending extravagance and luxury represented by the high-tech world of Formula One.

Eastern Europe had seen nothing like it.

SMOKE-BELCHING

The governing body put the race day turnout at 200,000 spectators, many of them stripped down to their underpants in the scorching heat on an afternoon unlike any other.

"I recall standing on the grid and being aware that there was something very different, very strange about the scene," Briton Martin Brundle, who finished sixth for now-defunct Tyrrell, wrote in his book "Working the Wheel".

"At first I couldn't work out what it was. Then I realised it was the silence.

"I felt like a gladiator in the ring. All those people were looking on in almost complete silence, not knowing what was going to happen next...there were a lot of people present who had never seen a grand prix live before."

Hire cars, even for race drivers more accustomed to Ferraris or Porsches, came down to a choice of Russian Ladas for the lucky ones and sputtering and smoke-belching East German Trabants for the rest.

"It was the first time that lots of us had ever been to the other side of the Iron Curtain," said Ann Bradshaw, then a press officer at Lotus with Brazilian Ayrton Senna and Briton Johnny Dumfries and now with BMW Sauber.

"We all had to have visas and it took a long time to get through customs unless you were Finnish, in which case you just walked through, which we all found very strange. Keke Rosberg loved it.

"There were 200,000 people -- coaches from around Eastern Europe and also a lot from Russia. They had some very strange clothes on...it was hot and there were a lot of people just wearing Speedos.

"The people on the gates were actually police and soldiers," she recalled. "You would come in with your car sticker and we would argue with them. When the guns came out we stopped arguing."

The first race, won by Nelson Piquet in a Williams, was also quite a thriller with the Brazilian chased by compatriot Senna all the way to the finish. The pair lapped everyone else.

"I think we'll all be very happy, indeed, to come back here again next year," Piquet said afterwards.

Since then the circuit has witnessed two championships being decided, Briton Nigel Mansell in 1992 and Michael Schumacher in 2001, and the occasional thrill such as Damon Hill leading in an Arrows in 1997.

These days the happiest driver at the Hungaroring is probably McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen, last year's winner in a race that Finns have come to see as their home grand prix.

Robert Kubica, making his debut as Poland's first Formula One driver in place of Canadian Jacques Villeneuve at BMW Sauber, can also expect quite a following.

Afterwards, there is an August break before drivers re-gather further east for the Turkish Grand Prix on the 27th in Istanbul.

Twenty years ago, the next destination was at the Oesterreichring in neighbouring Austria the following weekend. Those who took a boat down the Danube to Vienna were shadowed by army helicopters and gun-toting guards along the riverbank.

"It was an adventure, a serious adventure," said Bradshaw.