Just to spice things up, keep it an oval, just make it like the Nascar All-Star race (but instead of each segment you go for money, make it points). It would make a nice twist to things and add some original things as well.
It used to be the oval. But it's westhill now. The controversy was about the extra oval (some people thought that visiting Kyoto three times was too much even though the third was a rev) which is now the all star race.
But apparently the all star race made it different enough cause of the special race format