Chronicles of ordinary amazement, sitting comfortably in front of the 55-inch that sends us images (many) and emotions (well…) from across the Atlantic where Formula 1 is racing. Oh my God, the emotions would be there; or at least there should be: it is from the pre-hybrid era that there hasn’t been a final championship sprint with so few points to divide the two main contenders. With the exception of 2016, but then Lewis Hamilton was fighting against his teammate, Nico Rosberg, from whom he then lost in the final laps of the last GP in Abu Dhabi.
It was said: 12 points to divide Verstappen from Lewis with five GPs still to run: the godsend. Yet the news from F1 World comes with an ever-increasing, and somewhat worrying trend, for a dramatization that no longer has much to do with speed and courage, with mistakes and with the adrenaline that can make them commit. . With the human factor, in short, which is the one without which races would not have been born and would not exist. At least in theory.
Let’s get to the point. On Saturday, bolted in front of Sky, which was broadcasting the qualifications live from Mexico, I jumped on the sofa to the voice of Marc Gene, an attentive and very good commentator in my opinion, intent on telling that the previous evening, leaving the Ferrari in Maranello around midnight, he had seen the engineers of the Remote Garage start analyzing the data coming from the circuit in those moments. At midnight?!? Yes: at midnight, which in fact corresponded to five in the afternoon paddock time. And here’s the question: is all this really necessary? Ferrari will have dozens of technicians on the track: is it really necessary to force other unfortunates to sleepless from midnight onwards at their home? Ultimately we are talking about racing, not a landing on Mars. And then, why all this fuss? Not a strange thought, seeing Leclerc drowning in a Ferrari in free practice on Saturday, which led him to turn on the track three times in a session. And seeing, in contrast, the Red Bulls fly on the track while their number one technician, their guru Adrian Newey, wanders in front of Verstappen and Perez’s garage holding a folder that not even a sixties school teacher …
Okay, now we are crucifying the Cavallino, which the qualifying then ended up putting in difficulty. Certainly the other teams will also have similar strategies and tactics in action, with people having to stand up at night to get a couple of riders going strong the next day, on the other side of the ocean. But is all this really useful?
Also from Mexico comes other news, and this time we talk about the side dish. This year, in fact, the paddock that moves from the hotels to the circuit and vice versa does so strictly in convoy. Dozens of minibuses and cars, in a queue with the four arrows, blue lights and completely indifferent to traffic lights, so a few dozen motorcycle policemen escort them at remarkable speed on roads with previously blocked intersections, with thousands of other cars and trucks blocked even more than normal Mexico City traffic on business days normally dictates. Okay: security also pushes in this direction: there are many cases of team members stopped at traffic lights and robbed in past years. But the armored convoy, as if it were presidents at a G8, will not attract too much sympathy in a Mexico City that Covid has made even poorer and probably socially dangerous than in the past. Someone, between the teams and F1 itself, wonders if all this will not end up detaching the common world even more from the Grand Prix circuits? Because today, this year, Mexico is going crazy for a Checo Perez finally able to aim for the big result thanks to a very strong Red Bull. But a Perez doesn’t last forever, and even Mexico could end up on the list of nations once in love with the Grand Prix and today more or less indifferent.
Last chapter of this saga of the useless, unless someone proves otherwise. It has been read in the newspapers that there will be many limitations for the F1 debut in Saudi Arabia at the beginning of December. F1 itself has already issued a detailed list of clothing allowed in the paddock and prohibited clothing to teams and journalists: skirts above the knee and short sleeves are not allowed for ladies; shorts, even if for work, ditto for men. And it could be pretty hot in Jeddah. Now another news: the doctors who follow and assist the Formula 1 traveling caravan will be able to bring to Saudi Arabia only a few medicines, or with crazy complications in terms of stamps and authorizations. To say: anyone who brings to Jeddah a drug that is a little more complex than Aspirin will have to accompany him with a medical prescription and unopened package of the drug, complete with a leaflet. Let’s hope they don’t expect it in Arabic too.
And again, a question: is all this useful? We know what Saudi Arabia is, on the way to normalization but still very far from a satisfactory goal. Did Formula 1 have to go there, even in defiance of medical regulations? Will it be Jeddah that will bring Grand Prix back to the ‘belly’ popularity that made Grand Prix great from 1950 to yesterday? Isn’t it that this world increasingly detached from the everyday world is pushing in the opposite direction instead? The virtual increasingly substitute for the real, as also Zuckerberg promotes with his Facebook that becomes Meta and promises a second life, more and more crowded with Avatars and less and less by man, will it be good for racing?
Ratava
#Saga #useless #FormulaPassionit