Mar. 26, 2006 - The Racing Season Begins

The racing season for me is in full swing now that I watched my first MotoGP race of the year, first ALMS event and second F1 parade. 

As is typical of the last few years, MotoGP motorcycle racing leaves me breathless after each event that I witness.  The wheel to wheel duals in almost every race are as exciting to watch as anything on TV.  Constant running order changes brought about by valiant overtaking maneuvers is common.  A person without any idea of the series or the personalities therein can be drawn in within a few laps, which proves one does not have to have that much invested in the driver/riders to appreciate a good race.  We have only a few Americans in the series, Nicky Hayden and Colin Edwards to name two, the rest are from across the pond and hardly household names.  What trumps all in a MotoGP race is the race-- an increasingly novel idea in motor sports.  

The opposite holds true for NASCAR, where the off track shenanigans of the WalMart set provides the majority of the entertainment and the race itself is not the denouement, the back flip off the roof of the winning car is.  I’m not a fan.

Formula One is precariously close to becoming irrelevant, with ever increasing technology and incomprehensible rules “packages.”   We now have complex elimination races to determine starting positions, with the rules changing in each of the three rounds.  These little sprint races are actually more interesting then the feature races themselves since you see some risk taking by the drivers and off track scrambling by the crews. 

When it comes to personalities, the F1 circus also fails miserably.  The drivers seem to have disdain for the hoi polloi and don’t feel the need to hide it.  Arrogance is a common side effect of being a top athlete in the pinnacle series of any sport, but in F1 it is a downright epidemic.  Since the outcomes of the races usually comes down to attrition, fuel strategy, and luck there is little in the form of excitement to watch.  I’ve been disenchanted by F1 the last few years, yet every new season I give it a chance to win me back.   They are losing me, race by race, year by year.

The best racing in my humble opinion is endurance racing, and in particular Le Mans racing, including the 24 hour French classic and its American series offspring.  There is something about the grit required to compete in a race for hours on end that makes the drama that much more intriguing to me.  It’s not only a struggle against the competitors sharing the track; it’s a struggle against time and machine.  Throw into the mix different classes, different cars, and woefully different speeds and you have the recipe for an exciting race.  And frankly, the cars are beautiful, be it the diesel powered Audis, the nimble Porsche Spyders, or the wing and fender bulge bedecked Ferrari, Porsche, BMW and Corvette race cars in the slower classes.  It doesn’t get much better than that.