Faster, faster!

For someone who will only drive an automatic, I don’t know what the attraction is that draws me to Formula One racing. But there I was, before the television set with baited breath, following turn after turn, lap after lap of the Hungarian Grand Prix last Sunday night. Three weeks before it was Hockenheim in Germany, two weeks before that Magny Cours in France, and next week it will be Belgium.

The reasons for my interest in F1 are three people and a little red car–my two kids, Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari. I used to watch only the final laps of the race to find out who won, but the kids told me I was missing all the crashes and the brilliant passes that occur during the hour-and-a-half or so of high-speed racing.

And what high speeds! The brash Colombian rookie Juan Pablo Montoya reached speeds of over 300 kph in Hungary, while the rest hovered very near that. On the South Expressway, I once reached 100 kph (which is, I am told, the speed limit, measured by speed guns so you can get ticketed) but that was a very brief moment before I chickened out and slowed down. On the autobahn in Germany I persuaded my host to step on the gas and we made 260 kph, but on roads as smooth as that you don’t feel the speed. Besides, every other car was going just as fast, if not faster, so you do not get the feeling of whizzing by and leaving everybody–and everything–behind.

A couple of lifetimes ago I was pit crew for a cousin who raced stock cars. I was the lap timer–with a stopwatch and notebook I logged in the time of my driver every other lap; every so often a blackboard with his lap time and that of his nearest rival would be held out so he could see it as he whizzed by. These days pit crews are a lot more sophisticated, of course; the Ferrari pit looks more like a space station or a military war room than a garage.

With four world championships and 51 Grand Prix wins under his helmet, Michael Schumacher is a wonder to behold–in more ways than one. F1 racing is mind and machine, and Schumi and Ferrari are the perfect partnership, matching strategy on the track with flawless planning in the pits–and a machine that is every speedster’s dream. That’s what I’ll think of as I’m crawling along our newly potholed (after the rains) streets behind the jeepney that won’t let me pass and the taxi that’s determined to make singit in front of me.