Even those two-hour “sprints” NBC broadcast last summer were fun! Great camera angles, cool cars, enough dicing to keep it interesting.
Dropzone: As a fan of F1 and an on-the-cheap driver of FFord (remember that?) in the '70s, I really appreciated your list. Nice to know that someone else remembers. Add to the list Jo Siffert (my spelling may be off).
Auto racing is somewhat like sex. If you “get it,” then watching it isn’t really enough; you want to actually do it, and you’d do it whether or not anyone would pay to see it. If you don’t “get it,” you wonder: why in the world would anyone DO that!?!
I’m sure there are some who go for the beer, the babes, and the potential for blood, but you know what? The people who make it happen don’t care.
Adding to the list of F1 drivers that never made it to the “safe” sport it is now, I’d like to offer the following:
[ul][li]Gilles Villeneuve. The most horrible F1 crash ever.[/li][li]Elio de Angelis. Potential world champion and one of the last playboy drivers - died in 1986 whilst testing.[/li][li]Ayrton Senna. While this was in the “safe” era already, he can’t be omitted from such a list. And in that ill-fated weekend in 1994, Ronald Ratzenberger (admittedly a mediocre driver) died as well.[/ul][/li]
No fatalities since 1994 - unless we count the poor marshall that got hit by a flying wheel at Monza last year…
I have to admit, I love watching NASCAR. Why did I start to watch? I don’t know. The right combination of boredom and nothing else on TV. I will say that the more you know about it, the more you appreciate it.
There is a lot of strategy involved in getting through a good 500 mile race and ending in first place. (# of tires needed/ gas / when to pit and what to do when you do. When to pass (It’s not always good). Watching the guy in the lead fending off the guys behind him.)
Think of it this way, if a guy is in first and he pits, he takes will no longer be in first place. Unless the people behind him pit. Then he has to decide what to do. Does he take four tires or two? Need any adjustments, or is the car running fine? Plus you take the chance that even if the other cars pit, you still might lose position because your crew isn’t fast enough. So, he has to take all this into account when deciding how much to do during a pit (four tires takes mor ethan two, but will probably let you run faster… An adjustment takes even more time.) But if he pits first, he can probably get that lap back, unless he gets stuck in some sort of pack… (Ok, do you see what the Crew Chief is going through now? And he does this all afternoon. It’s all plotting and strategy.) And the beauty is perfect strategy can get shot to heck when the tire guys gun goes out! (I still don’t understand what the guy wiping off the front of the car is doing though. There’s no grill there, so he doesn’t appear to be wiping off bugs or anything or cleaning the grill, what gives.)
The more I learned about the strategy of racing, the more I realized it was not just “hicks turning to the left” it was a highly skilled driver and extremely intelligent crew chief working magic in a car.
And then there’s crashing.
I was lukewarm on racing until I got free tickets to Darlington years ago. There was something about all those whupped-up gleeful Southerners hollerin’ above the engines that captured my attention. The loudness of the live race is really mesmerizing. The engine hum gets so loud it takes over yer heartbeat.
I became a fan of dirt-track racing in Mississippi, where it’s still pretty wild and wooly, as opposed to NASCAR slick. People would be sitting on the bank tires at some tracks, and have to jump off when a car came too close! At that level, it’s guys who are obsessive enthusiasts without corporate support, honing their cars for the good thing. My plumber was one of 'em, and I had many conversations with him when he fixed the pipes as to how his car was running. I could generally tell anyway, because he always fired up at 5:30 and dragged his car up & down the backroad behind my house.
That’s the level I like it at. West Memphis Speedway, hot August night, drivers trying to hop up their engines with basic know-how and guts. That’s how NASCAR started, too. A bunch of car-smart guys- some showing off their moonshining ability- racing to show off how much they had hopped up their standard issue engines.
Two things that might fire you up about racing: The book, Dirt Tracks To Glory by Sylvia Wilkinson
And the movie (Ted Turner bought it, so it’s pretty widely available on video) Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum, his little brother, and the esteemed chanteuse Keely Smith.
And, now, this year, them Pettys are racing for Dodge, of all things. Well, Mopar still rules!
Oooooops.