Many, Many Hours of Motor Sport

posted by Jaitu at 20:20

I've been a fan of Formula One for about ten years now and have watched almost all of the races in that time. Prior to that I would watch them if they happened to be on when I was around but wouldn't go out of my way to see them. Now it's a ritual. If I can watch them live then I will and I'll have my laptop showing the live timing screen alongside me. (If you're an F1 watcher and haven't tried the live timing online then I highly recommend you do. It adds a whole layer of involvement and you will often notice things long before the commentary team/cameras bring it to your attention).

Last year was the first time I made the effort to follow anything other than Formula One from start to finish. I watched every one of the Formula One, GP2, A1GP and Australian V8 Supercars races. Where possible I followed the qualifying as well. There was no way I could watch these live and had to resort to 'tape-delay' for all but the F1. I made sure that I watched each series in order though and found them all to be greatly entertaining (Formula One being arguably the least exciting on-track).

People often say that F1 is boring. Those people might prefer cricket or golf or snooker or darts or bowls. They almost certainly do not follow the season. Watching an entire campaign results in something more than the sum of it's parts. You get to know who the drivers are, be able to recognise livery and helmet designs without relying on TV captions to tell you who you are looking at, you understand how important a certain race is for who and why. It's like watching the whole season of LOST instead of one episode somewhere in the middle (OK, not the best example because no-one knows what's going on in LOST, but you get my point). There are people, myself amongst them, who will watch every race from every circuit even knowing that sometimes once the field are through the first corner it'll likely settle in to a procession. But also knowing how the points stand, what a difference a small change in the order could make, that whether or not this guy can stay out a lap or two longer before pitting can be as significant as a passing move, that the chap whose running fourteenth is wringing the neck of an under-funded back-of-the-grid car and has that position on merit, that this boy has landed a seat in what could be the championship winning car in his first season, that this old guy could well be enjoying his last hurrah or that that fella tends to get a bit flappy and all 'Mama Mia' under pressure. There is a lot of enjoyment to be taken from a race that to a casual observer is 'boring'. The thing is you have to know it and the only way to know it is to follow it.

I've always been curious about the Aussie V8s but mostly have only seen highlights and then usually only from Bathurst. The V8 Supercar Series is in my opinion the best touring car category I have ever seen. There are currently only two manufacturers and only two models involved, the Ford Falcon and the Holden Commodore, which makes for generally closely matched racing although one or other can sometimes show an advantage at a particular track. The two make format also has the affect of dividing fans into 'red' (Holden) and 'blue' (Ford) camps. There can be either three, two or only one race on a weekend depending on the circuit in use. The most famous being the one thousand kilometre endurance race around Mount Panorama in Bathurst, an event that lasts around seven and a half hours. This is the Monaco of the Aussie V8s and was fittingly last won by Craig Lowndes (partnered by Jamie Whincup) on the day that motor sport paid tribute to Aussie racing legend and Lowndes own mentor Peter Brock. A close run championship was decided at the final round at Philip Island.

A1GP was in it's first campaign across 2005/06 and the second season began in September. This is a new concept in motor sport. A one make winter series, all the teams have the same spec car, but each team represents a country. The drivers for each of the teams must be from the home nation and as a result the competition is between countries and not individuals. France stormed to a first season win with Nicolas Lapierre and Alexandre Premat sharing the time at the wheel. The cars themselves are a swoopy affair looking like a cross between F1, IRL and the Batmobile. With low down force and a single tyre supplier the cars can run close to each other without suffering aerodynamically. Pitlane crew restrictions and a Push-To-Pass system mean you are pretty much guaranteed close racing and plenty of overtaking. The different countries tend to display a wide range of ability and as a result you get a number of on track battles at every event. Recently the round held at Sentul in Indonesia provided some of the best wet weather racing I've seen in a long time and has put the name of Germany's Nico Hulkenburg at the top of many people's list of drivers to keep an eye on (the fact that he races for a team whose principal is Willi Weber won't do his career much harm either).

GP2 was running for only it's second season last year and had learnt from it's debut campaign. Current Williams F1 driver Nico Rosberg won the opening season and was at work at the end of '05 assessing changes to the GP2 car before starting in F1. Another one make series the car looks more like F1-lite than the A1GP vehicle but also benefits from low down force and high mechanical grip from the control tyres. It's not uncommon to see overtaking moves under braking around the outside of corners in GP2, as well as four wheel drifts, things not seen for a long time in F1. A number of GP2 drivers have moved in to Formula One the most publicised being the young British driver Lewis Hamilton who became GP2 champion last year and this year partners current F1 champion Fernando Alonso at Mclaren.

This year I'm aiming to add four American series: ChampCar; IndyCar; Nascar Busch Series and Nascar Nextel Cup. These, again, are formulas where I've seen bits and pieces. Mostly they have not been so exciting except for an occasional pile-up, but this has been because I have never known the back story. Both Champ and Indy have drivers I'm familiar with from Formula One and even Nascar now has Juan Pablo Montoya and former Aussie V8 racer Marcus Ambrose. Not knowing too much about these categories right now I'm looking forward to seeing whether Sawyer and Kate can escape and what Jack intends to do next.