the lost noise

The following article is a response to a question asked on Jalopnik’s “Question of the Day” series. The article is slightly edited from it’s original as I wrote the original in a 15 minute rush before class started lol, enjoy.

Will Europeans ever embrace NASCAR? Will Australia ever embrace Ice Racing? Will Jeremy Clarkson ever embrace the 911? Will Porsche ever embrace F1? Will Japan ever embrace drag racing? Will China ever embrace original ideas?  

All these question are based on culture. Yes there are people in America who love F1 with a passion but there are even more that embrace NASCAR as a family pastime. Essentially what happens with motor racing is that it’s as about as cultural as the food one eats or the sports one plays, what is born here is played here.

 So long story short, will F1 ever gain ground as a popular form of motorsport just because it is the global standard of what top level motorsports should be? Nope.

This brings me to football (or soccer for you Americans) I always loved watching it. To me it is a sport of finesse, strategy and unfortunately rich playboys who dislike getting their nails dirty, kinda like Formula 1. Compare this to American Football: a harsh, hard hitting, “more complex than it looks,”  fast paced, endless action that can be viewed as being barbaric by some, which kinda reminds me of NASCAR. With the stigma set on what each sport should be now try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who you’re trying to convince to watch this sport. F1 becomes a train of cars while NASCAR is a train of cars turning left.

Despite liking F1 for a long time, NASCAR is growing on me and I am interested in watching it, but just getting up and watching it is way easier than it sounds.

Problem is that for me to convert my schedule to accept NASCAR into my world, I’m going to have to not only get the viewing schedule in order but I’m also going to have to re-learn the sport, drivers and the tracks (which took me about 5 years when I started F1). Then there is peer pressure. Me, Michael McFarlane watching NASCAR? How is anyone going to take my auto opinion seriously when I enjoy watching people turning left?  The situation gets worse when you’re trying to convince someone to switch from NASCAR or IRL to F1.  

• a) You have to wake up early: Only 3 of this season’s proposed 20 races start later than 9am EST. 7 take place between the hours of Midnight and 4am while the rest take place in the standard 7am-9am slot. The whole timing thing is thrown off even more when you live on the West Coast. But if you shift over to the Meridian of Greenwich all races take place during times when people are actually awake.
• b) If you manage to keep some one up to watch a race with you, imagine if they end up watching a Valencia style race? (Or even a 2005 USGP?) Not even die hard F1 fans can bear watching a boring race, and unless you enjoy hearing about camber angles and another description of how DRS works the commentators really can’t do match to grab the audience when a race gets boring (which happens a lot especially when it’s easier for a team end up dominating a season in F1 than most other sports)  
• c) The drivers are plastic: Vettel and Raikkonen are the only entertaining drivers on the grid and apart from a few squabbles between Hamilton and Massa (and Sutil’s suspended sentence), on the outside all the drivers seem to be good chums. Essentially tempers are bottled in for the sake of pleasing the sponsors just to get a few extra bucks to fill up the tank in the yacht.  
• d) Appeal to mere mortals: F1 drivers are Gods to me, I will never be one. By the time I figured out about F1, I was too old, too tall and too heavy to even consider start learning in how to even become a test driver. Mark Martin is 53 and still kicking ass in NASCAR, Paul Newman was kicking ass in his 60s but Michael Schumacher is an old man at 40?  

These facts make me question not only why anyone would start watching F1 but also why do I watch it? The fact is I do watch it for one reason, and one reason only, the cars.

I was lucky to catch on to F1 during it’s fastest period (2004) just before they dumped the V10s for V8s but that hasn’t made them even noticeably slower to John Public. I love running by F1 numbers just to see how amazing these cars are in comparison to our daily drivers. No matter how crappy the drivers or the tracks will get, the sound, feel and speed of an F1 car will never change. So why don’t people try and sell the sport on that alone? Fact is John Public might never notice their power from a 40” flatscreen and a surround sound system, what is needed is an in person experience. I’ve had the privilege of hearing a (detuned V10) Red Bull race car driven by Sebastien Buemi. The sound, speed and rush of under-car downforce created this surreal feeling to the experience. It’s like seeing an alien space ship right in front of you, you know it’s real but you can’t believe it.

Maybe it’s because I am a fanboy, maybe it’s because the fastest car I saw prior to that was an AMS Evolution or maybe the exhaust fumes made me high. Fact is, I now yearn to attend an F1 race live, more than any other international racing series just because of that one visit Red Bull made to my island. If the experience of an F1 car does not turn you on, then frankly you are not human (or your deaf)