Seven years from China

I first went to China in 2011, racing for the Lotus/Jetalliance team at Zhuhai in the Intercontinental Le Mans Cup. It was a delightful experience, but also a glimpse of China's gritty side. Zhuhai had an unapologetically industrial look, with a permanent, low-hanging haze. The parade through the city felt like the crowd had been instructed to attend on pain of... consequences. Brutalist aesthetics through and through.From 2013 through 2019, I raced nearly every year at the Shanghai International Circuit in the World Endurance Championship. The skyline got a little brighter with every visit, but the smog remained thick. I still recall a taxi driver straddling lanes all the way to the circuit before blasting straight through a red light, horn blaring. Exciting, but in a very frontier kind of way.Then Covid hit, the WEC stopped going to China, and so did I. For seven years, I watched China's rise from the West. First the electronics, then the services, and finally the cars. Even from…