The 2006 Formula 1 race season starts this weekend in Bahrain. Whereas F1 is the auto racing gold standard in most of the known world, the U.S. market is dominated by NASCAR, for which I hold tremendous disdain. Formula 1 cars are like rocket ships compared to NASCAR’s tractors. I would make more use of the snarky expansion of the NASCAR acronym — Non-Athletic Sport Centered Around Rednecks — if “centered around” wasn’t such poor grammar.
F1 isn’t just about driving around in circles as fast as you can go. There are no oval circuits in F1, and, in fact, F1’s governing body is constantly trying to regulate the cars to keep speeds down to increase competitiveness. There is probably more drama and intrigue off the track than on as teams constantly work around these regulations to redesign their cars to eke out precious RPM. Refueling and tyre-change strategies often vie for attention with speed. The whole sport pits engineers and strategists (and drivers) against policymakers, which makes it more a chess game played at 150 km/h.
Eons ago, when I was smart-ass graduate student attempting to prove that one could write academic papers about anything, I wrote a paper about Forumla 1 auto racing. Not only did I get an ‘A’, but the paper was selected by a conference on popular culture and I got to travel to exotic Bowling Green, OH, to present it.
The gist of the paper is that the sport helps create a cultural expression of “techo-fear” — it is the embodiment of both technological excess and the efforts to contain it. In reviewing it, I have to admit that it’s probably the least bullshit-laden of my academic papers. I wish it wasn’t so jargon-filled, but I stand behind my analysis of Formula 1 from a decade ago, and present to you “How Can One be a Formula 1 Race Fan? Fear, Technology and the Politics of Excess”
