You know I don't really mean it. Thanks Bernie. Help yourself to my bank account. I can't wait. A new race in a country that cares about the sport. Travelling to a race without leaving the continent. Back to back race weekends. Bernie has destroyed my life in the nicest possible way
Here I was just sitting around thinking that I had June 2013 all sorted out and planned for when Bernie goes ahead and throws all my plans out the window by giving me another Grand Prix to go to. Damn you Bernie! Now I am going to spend months and months learning a series of streets in New Jersey by heart from Google maps. I am going to have to work out how the New York subway works and whether to get a hotel in New York or in New Jersey. Bernie is forcing me to spend countless hours on the net looking for plane tickets, train tickets, car rental prices, hotels, hostels and bed and breakfasts. More time wasted trying to imagine what the views from Grandstands will be without the benefit of having seen a race at the track. God damn it Bernie! Now I am going to have to figure out whether to get expensive Grandstand tickets or take my chances with General admission. If the Thursday pitwalk is at 2pm will I be able to make it to the track with a morning flight from Montreal. Are there overnight buses. All these things I didn't have to worry about last week.
You know I don't really mean it. Thanks Bernie. Help yourself to my bank account. I can't wait. A new race in a country that cares about the sport. Travelling to a race without leaving the continent. Back to back race weekends. Bernie has destroyed my life in the nicest possible way
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Dan Wheldon died tragically this weekend in the final round of the Indy car series at Las Vegas. It seems pointless to pass on my condolences to his family since I am fairly certain that they don't read my blog, but needless to say it is terrible news and news that I can't imagine having to recieve.
There seem to be two extremees of what to do about death in motorsport. No matter what we do there will always be the risk of people getting killed racing cars. When it comes down to it, motor racing is about doing fairly unwise things in machines that are designed to be as fast as possible, not as safe as possible. That being said there are people that believe that death should be present in motor racing in order to give some sort of assurance that what drivers are doing is not only bloody skillful but also bloody brave. Hemingway said "there are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." And I get his point. These drivers we watch every week are bloody brave because they could get killed in some pretty frightening ways. I think that I am not exagerating when I say that there is also a lot of hero worship that goes on surrounding drivers that died on the track. Would Gilles Villeneuve be so well remembered if he didn't die on the track but instead went on to never win a world title. I don't mean to sound insulting to Villeneuve, I am just questioning the mentality of us fans. No doubt he was good, but do we give him more credit simply because he died. Most people wouldn't hesitate to say that Senna was better than Prost but both drivers won a title when they had each other as team mates and people are much quicker to ermember the dirty antics of living Schumacher than the dead Senna. Again, I think that we quick to want to create a hero out of people for dying while racing. The other end of the arguement of course is that any death in motorsport is a terrible thing. I happen to like most of the drivers in Formula 1 at the moment and I don't particularly want to see any of them die in front of me. It has only happened a couple of times that I thought a driver wasn't going to come out of a wreck with the heart still pumping. Robert Kubica in Montreal and Luciano Burti in Spa in 2001. Tony Stewart said it best when asked by a reporter if he thought that Nascar should be more dangerous. I suggest you look it up on YouTube because I can't say it as well as him. What he said in effect (in a way that only Tony Stewart can) was that maybe they should cut the legs of the reporters chairs so that they could fall off and cause some entertainment for everyone. In other words, how the hell would you like it if your job was made intentionally dangerous in order to give everyone a kick. As fans we need to remember that these drivers we watch are brave on the one hand, but on the other they are humans not heroes. They are humans with families and friends. The more that can be done to make sure they get home safe to their families and friends the better. Well Sebatian Vettel has taken the 2011 drivers championship in dominant style. If I had more spare time I would write up a report that did him justice. Four races left to go means that he has plenty of time to buy all of his mechanics drinks in different bars around the world. The next practice session is just 5 short days away. You have to wonder whether the Red Bull hangovers will let some others fight for podium spots!
Congratulations Sebastian |
TonyI am a race fan. I cannot claim to be an expert on anything, but as a fan I am apparently the most important part of the sport. So I assume everyone wants to hear what I have to say. Archives
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