To better adapt to the United Kingdom, a colleague recommended that I look into Formula 1 racing. It seemed like a good fit as I am definitely a car guy. He further recommended that I watch the Netflix series Drive To Survive as it does a great job of helping newcomers understand the sport. It worked. I’m addicted.
My first near miss with seeing a race live happened in Monaco. I was in Cannes the week before the famed race for the film festival. So, I hopped on a train and made my first visit to Monte Carlo. The city was already set up for the race. And, since it is a street circuit, you can actually walk on the track!
From there, my interest was in actually attending the British Grand Prix. It just so happened that some one at work was selling a ticket. I jumped at the opportunity immediately. Granted, I probably should have done a little more research. Now residing in London, I’ve built this assumption that I can just go to my local train station (Kings Cross/St. Pancras) and magically be transported anywhere. Unfortunately, this was not the case. To get to the race, I took a bus to Luton airport, then rented a car to drive; on the wrong side of the road of course. A short 3 hours later, I was there.
The event itself is really cool. It has a festival vibe with food vendors and live music. I had a general admission ticket, so I was free to roam around, but did not have an assigned seat. Watching the event is an interesting experience as well. The cars are so fast, when they drive past you, they are just blurs. It was neat that, if you stood at the same place for successive laps and counted the delay between two cars, you could understand that the cars were either getting closer or further apart lap over lap. Not too surprisingly, the lag between Max Verstappen and everyone else got longer and longer. For the last few laps, I sat on a grassy patch in the infield and watched the jumbotron. You could say that if I’m just going to watch it on a TV, why go to the track, but there is defintely something enjoyable about the crowd’s energy and the roar of the engines.
I also had the opportunity to attend the final race of the Formula E season. Formula E is something of a junior series to F1. But, I think it is very cool that it is forward thinking in using all eletric vehicles. They don’t seem to be quite as fast and it is a bit eery to have a near silence as a pack for cars fly past you.
Here’s to a new interest!