Local
The adrenalin rush of the pit stop
by Rob Pattman

What do watching paint dry, being locked up in a cell with nothing but the Money section of the Sunday Times for companionship and watching A1 motor racing have in common? Please email your answers and you could be one of the lucky ones, if you suffer from insomnia, to win a seat at next year's A1 Grand Prix in Durban (that's if Durban gets another one).

The great thing about watching motor racing is that, unlike taking sleeping pills, it's non addictive; in fact I can't think of anything less addictive, well, maybe watching paint dry is. And unlike taking sleeping pills the thrill of listening to the sound of high pitched droning cars, like an amplified chorus of mosquitoes, the adrenalin rush of the pit stop, seeing how quickly people can change tyres, and the excitement when cars crash, causes no physical harm, well not to you at least.

But the most exciting thing is at the end when carried away by his emotions the winner spontaneously and quite out of the blue shakes the champagne and starts squirting it over the other drivers standing on the podium. The last thing they expect is to get squirted with champagne and the surprise and excitement this provokes is a sight to behold.

 
There's nothing to beat motor racing as a spectator sport if you don't really like watching competition. For what's so good about motor racing is that the cars line up with the fastest at the front and the slowest at the back and the order doesn't change very much from start to finish. Unlike say athletics, motor racing does not pander to our most base competitive urges, and unlike athletics, it's not riddled with drug cheats who try to gain an unfair advantage on the other competitors by relying on external aids. What we see in motor racing is the triumph of the best drivers, or at least those with the best cars.

 While watching motor racing on TV is a marvellous way of spending time, if you don't like time very much, it's so much better actually being there by the side of the track soaking up the atmosphere and guessing who, if anyone, has overtaken whom. For what's so good about watching from the stands is that you are not distracted from what's happening in the race as all your attention is focused on the one small stretch of track which you can actually see. And anyway overtaking in motor racing, as we have said, is as common as feeling the cold in Durban at this time of year.

To those killjoys (if enjoyment is inversely proportional to excitement) who claim that holding A1 motor racing in Durban represents a grotesque display of extravagance tantamount to Mugabe's birthday bash all we can say is: think of all the car guards earning 25 Rands a day who will be able to watch it after just less than a week's work, so long as they don't spend any money on things like food and shelter. And not only that, the A1 Grand Prix will generate lots of business for all the car guards working around the beachfront. Actually, on second thoughts, because of the Grand Prix, cars have been banned from going anywhere near the beachfront. Well it's pretty important that nothing untoward happens to the cars before the race, and maybe a car guard might get lucky and be squirted with champagne for guarding the car of the winner.

As for those who claim that motor racing is dominated by whites, well this is just what you'd expect to hear from people who don't seem to realise that we're no longer living under apartheid, and that everyone, irrespective of race, has got the opportunity to rise to the top in anything. What do they say about all the people from informal settlements who are now multi millionaires, if we think in terms of Zimbabwean dollars? And what do they say about all the Lewis Hamiltons who have excelled in motor racing, and all the Barack Obamas who have become US presidents?

 
And it's absolute rubbish, too, to claim that motor racing is dominated by men. All you have to do is look in the Sunday Times Sports Section and there's a picture of the former Miss Panama, Melissa Piedrahita looking very fetching in a pink top and tight grey slacks, sitting on the lap of her boyfriend who is none other than top South African driver Adrian Zaugg. This picture speaks more than a thousand words, well thirty four to be exact: Just because there are loads of jokes about women drivers, that doesn't mean to say they don't have a really important part to play in motor racing, and especially if they're really sexy looking.

If only the detractors of motor racing would actually go to the Durban Grand Prix, and, instead of carping on about it, witness at first hand the droning cars going round and round, see them flashing on the bits of track within their visual fields and experience the pits or, to be more precise, people at the pit sops changing tyres. There's nothing we'd like more than glue their bums to their seats and peg their eyelids so they couldn't fall asleep.  

Rob Pattman is a lecturer at the School of Sociology and Social Sciences, UKZN