Formula One

The Formula One season starts this weekend. I am so excited.

I can feel it.

Sunday, March 6.

The unveiling.

West McLaren Mercedes has constructed the MP4-20, the weapon that will loosen the stranglehold Ferrari holds over the world championship. Three years ago the McLaren team plunged itself into a project of revolutionary design, devoting months and months, and pouring ten of millions of pounds into an ultimately futile effort. Week after week during the 2003 season, a shroud of disquiet blankets the Paddock, incessant whispers and frightful anticipation over the mystery of when the MP4-18 would gain entry into the FIA Formula One World Championship. Is it here? How fast is it? This was the car to strike fear into the competition. This was the car to dust Ferrari off the road.

The MP4-18 was never allowed to race. It was very fast, unreliable and terrifyingly unsafe, having failed every single crash test imposed by the FIA. Ferrari and Michael Schumacher have won the Constructers’ and Drivers’ titles every year since 2000 and do so again in 2003 and 2004.

For 2005 the McLaren team has retained the services of the Colombian driver, Montoya to race alongside the young super quick Finn, Kimi Raikkonen. The McLaren cars will by piloted by the two drivers that are arguably the bravest and the fastest in the world. The Renault team is very strong; Alonso will win races and the return of the highly celebrated but overrated Villeneuve will disappoint for Sauber.

Ernst Hemingway wrote that there are only three true sports, Boxing, Mountain climbing and Auto racing. The rest are just stick and ball games. These three are the sports that reveal a man, exposure one’s true nature and truly test the depths of machismo. No other human endeavour combines the same combination of skill, strength, courage and faith as Formula One, the highest level of the world’s most dangerous sport. The anticipation to the start of a new season is electrifying. Overblown? Hyped? Yes perhaps, but there is resolution as well. Optimism reigns in pre-season testing. Every team believes they have constructed a very special car; the first race will reveal the pretenders. The first race will show us who got it right, who will be in for a long difficult season, who will have to re-design their challenger. Sunday March 6.

The 2005 season has 18 races scheduled in 17 different countries on five different continents. It is the world’s most elite, exclusive and expensive competition. In the sporting world only the Olympics and World Cup soccer hold sway to larger audiences for their events. They are staged but once in four years. Formula One is the only annually contested global championship. With an annual worldwide television audience exceeding five billion viewers, every person in the world watches on average, one Grand Prix race per year.

Formula One is the world’s most beautiful paradox, with rules so sophisticated yet so elegantly simple. As a spectacle, it is the technology that makes it spectacular, the human element that lends it passion. Predictable, yet prone to the most unexpected sudden of events, there is drama and consequence until any other. We see the events on the track, but this often belies the truth of the matter. There are other hidden dramas, unseen conflicts, in the pits, over the radio, within the rumblings and synchronicity of the engineering, within the politicking of team brass. It is the most glorious and cruel of sports. It can be unfair and full of bitter betrayal. But it is absolute. Competed with relentless intensity for their entire duration, close grand prix races are taut and captivating, scene for many of the most gripping moments in sporting history. Few things in life are more cathartic than a brilliant maneuver in an F1 race.

When I was very young, I was an enormous fan of the Ferrari driver Gilles Villeneuve from Quebec, Canada. Dead twenty three years, he is idolized in Italy to this day for his tremendous skill, honour, drive and passion for life. I remember the day of his death in a qualifying accident in Belgium, May 8th, 1982. I heard the news from the CBC that Saturday mid-afternoon in my room on my portable black and white TV. I can’t describe to you how sad I felt. I did not watch nor follow Grand Prix racing for many years after. Until Senna.

The greatest that ever lived. The late Senna was the best of a very special group. The best of all racing drivers. Courted by royalty, worshipped by the proletariat, so few of them walk among us; there are only 20 men from twelve countries on this planet both privileged and skilled enough to contest the 2005 championship. Rich, glamorous and talented; they are famous the world over and mythic in their homelands. Living under the dark omnipresence of danger, they walk a higher ground; they are the beautiful people. We may all come into the world as equals, but we do not share the same patch of Earth as the Formula One drivers.

I’ve been to several F1 races in Montreal and Indianapolis. Twice, I’ve had to go by myself. That’s how much I love it. I am willing to drive for hours to cities I don’t like by myself if need be for the privilege of sitting in a grandstand hours before the event and waiting. I savor the wait. I love watching the grandstands fill up around me over the course of two or three hours. In the days of 12 lap low fuel qualifying, my favourite seat at Il-Notre Dame in Montreal was the back of the starting grid across from the last Paddock garage. The cars break hard in front of the pits with a quick right left before opening up onto the front straightaway. There is a concrete wall, and during qualifying the back end of the cars slide out, having gone over the “edge”. For fractions of a second it appears the driver(s) has lost it, but just as suddenly the car will snatch back, missing the wall by mere inches. These are thrilling heart-stopping moments. Only live is the element of speed so apparent. During the standing start, a wave of excitement ripples through the grandstand, the entire crowd stands, leaning, peering to their right to take in as wide a view as they can. Simultaneously the red lights turn on one at a time as engines rev higher, and louder, distorting the sights with their heat waves, until suddenly when the lights go out, they are gone. Disappeared behind the pillowing clouds of tire smoke.

At the mecca of racing, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the fabled Turn One is the best place to sit. At the apex of the oval during at the 8:30 practice you can see the cars emerge from the early morning mist and slingshot down the straight before disappearing again into a vanishing point through the infield. This is the widest field of vision you can take in of an F1car at any circuit in the world. If you are a true-blue, hardcore racing fan; if you go to take in the racing with no interest in the distractions around the event weekend, then you must go to Indy. Placed in a different context than Il-Notre Dame, the F1 cars are completely transformed here. Fully released, the engines are monstrous, the speed and the cars truly frightening.

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Two years ago, Scott TECHRITER and I drafted an outline for a book proposal that we sent to the Wiley Corporation, the publisher of the “For Dummies” series. The book was to be titled “Formula One for Dummies” and we detailed 18 chapters and 5 appendices for a volume that we estimated would be approximately 350 pages. We were hopeful, but realistic that it was no more than just a slight possibility, and when it arrived two months later, we were well prepared and accepting of the rejection letter. Our idea was a good one, but they had already solicited that same project onto someone else, so said the letter. About six months ago in a Chapters store, I couldn’t help feeling very disappointed when I saw a brand new book that had just been published, “Formula One for Dummies.”

It is similar to what we had outlined, but I believe ours would have been better. It would have been a deeper felt labour of love. The published book is written by two editors of the British magazine “Autosport”. It is not a bad book, but flipping through the pages you can see clearly it was a mechanical exercise, just another dispassionate assignment for a couple of beat writers.

I suppose it really was just a fantasy believing that a couple of fans could somehow gain access to such a closed world, even if only briefly in an indirect peripheral sort of way. Who are we? We have no affiliation with F1. All the authors of the “For Dummies” books are experts with credentials or some sort of close association. The computer books are written by geeks, others by teachers, this F1 book by magazine editors, the “NASCAR for Dummies” by Mark Martin, an actual driver for the Pf-zer sponsored Viagra car.

Scott TECHRITER is a real writer. With over 200 published writing credits to his name, he’s very talented and his work is both tidy and efficient. He brings something. Me? - Well, I’m not sure, but here’s the bio we included in our proposal. The last line’s not true, but the rest is.

“Slowpoke played with toy cars as a child and has since grown up to be a full-time motor racing enthusiast. He dedicates his Sunday mornings to televised Grand Prix events in Europe and makes annual excursions to Montreal and Indianapolis for the whining V10s and burning rubber of Formula One. If you can find him in the crowds of 100,000+ fans, you’ll see him wearing the cap of his favourite World Champion, Damon Hill. In his hometown of Toronto, Canada he enjoys July weekends along the shores of Lake Ontario, breathing in the methanol from the Molson Toronto Indy.”

You don’t need qualifications to be a motor racing enthusiast.

The Formula One season starts this weekend. I am so excited.