Month: March 2016

The World Is More Complex Than James Hunt

Recently I went to the Nürburgring with a friend. A male friend. Normally I wouldn’t specify gender, but in this story it matters – trust me. Said friend and I had never visited a track together before, but on this occasion we’d come to a suitable arrangement. Due to circumstances I’m not able to drive the entire way to the Nürburgring on my own. I’m dependent on a co-driver to get there, but for that one day I hadn’t been able to find any. Then I learned my friend was going to the Ring as well. Moreover, he was going there in a car that had a seat empty AND he had selected a route that almost passed by my house. It would’ve been silly not to carpool, really.

The journey went without a glitch and once we got to the Ring, we had a good time. We studied the  new cars, compared them to last year, gathered some racing intel: the works. But even so a small detail was amiss. Neither of us failed to notice that throughout the day one question kept popping up. It wasn’t a new question to me. I’d heard it many times before in the past decade, but never this frequently. Most of the time the question was asked in the following context. A person would walk up to us, look at my friend, look at me, look back at him, and ask: “Is that your girlfriend?” It’s a simple question. Many won’t see harm in it. In fact, the people who asked it only did so out of interest, not to give offense. Unfortunately, however, in a way they kind of did.

You see, the question has its roots in an old motorsport stereotype, one that I sometimes refer to as Hunt, are fearless, strong-willed, free-spirited, do whatever they please whenever they please, smoke, drink, and surround themselves with women. Who these women are isn’t really important. As long they have long hair and cleavage, nothing else matters much. They’re mainly ornaments anyway.

It’s because of this idea that every time someone assumes I’m dating a man simply because I’m standing next to him, I feel a bit uncomfortable. Comically-meant follow-ups like “why didn’t you bring her on a day with better weather?!” usually make that worse. It’s just not a nice feeling to know that you’re being simplified to fit an image born in the 1970s. This is 2016. We live in a world that’s much more complex than a stereotype. We have female drivers. We have female engineers. We have female team bosses. So why not assume that a girl on a race track, regardless of who she’s standing next to, is there to see the cars? Why conclude she’s attached to her boyfriend’s hip? And speaking of the supposed boyfriend, why assume that every man standing next to a girl is straight? I’ve no doubt there are gay men the world over who love motorsports.

We’re a long way away from abolishing the James Hunt-Principle. Motorsport is an archaic fortress that won’t be changed in a day, or even a week. But if we stop asking women on race tracks if they’re a man’s girlfriend; and if we stop asking girls if they’re there because their father made them, I think we’ll take a step in the right direction. I admit it’ll only be a tiny step. It’ll be like putting a grain of sand on a table. At first it’ll seem like nothing. But remember, if you keep stacking up grains then eventually the table will vanish.

What If It’s Not Lost in Translation?

When I’m in the company of strangers, I’m not a big talker; but when I’m in the company of my friends, I am. With them, I can easily keep babbling all day long. Luckily my friends never get tired of returning the chattiness, so we’re never short of conversation topics – especially not on circuits. We discuss our separate journeys to the track (“We got overtaken by a Bentley!!”), odd paddock scenes (“One of the teams brought a swimming pool!”), the weather (“I blame this rain on BMW!”), shoes (“How can she walk in those heels?!”), small dogs (“LOOK HOW CUTE.”) and, most importantly, the on-track events. Who is leading? Who’s fallen down the order? Why? And, if there’s no clear answer to that last question, can anyone come up with a farfetched theory? (“I bet it was bugs.”)

Most of the things we talk about is plain pointless banter, which is perfectly fine among friends. Only the problem is that, on a race track, you’re not just among friends. You’re also among a lot of other people, a large group of which consists of drivers, mechanics, engineers, and other race-related personnel. Seeing as these are usually the people my friends and I are bantering about, I’d rather not be overheard by them. A running gag among friends is fine, but a joke out of context can be taken in entirely the wrong way. So to make sure I cause no great trouble, I either fall silent when a Potential Eavesdropper comes too close or I switch to a language I’m sure the Potential Eavesdropper doesn’t understand. 99% of the time this approach works flawlessly.

In the remaining 1% of the time, however, I get caught out by the circumstances. My most famous blunder happened back in 2012, in Zolder. It was the Saturday of the GT1 WC-weekend and team AF Corse had parked its Ferrari entry behind the pit building. When a friend and I came across it, seven mechanics were standing around it. There were pointing and gesturing at it, while talking to each other in rapid Italian. Since they were all so obviously Italians, I started talking to my friend in a language the two of us shared, but Italians rarely if ever understand. I began telling her all about how I thought the Ferrari GT car was ugly and how the stickers on this particular one made it even worse.

About halfway through my story, the seven mechanics were joined by their two drivers: Francesco Castellacci (yet another Italian) and Enzo Ide. I barely knew Ide at the time, but I logically assumed that if his first name was Enzo and his last name could be pronounced with an Italian accent then NO DOUBT he was Italian too. So I didn’t bother to stop talking. After all, there was no way he could understand me, so why bother? I just kept on babbling. And babbling. And babbling. I didn’t even stop when Ide stood himself next to me. And turned his face partly towards me.  And threw me a few strange looks. I simply kept on talking until I’d said all I wanted to say. Then my friend and I moved on to some other part of the track, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

It wasn’t until two days later that I found out Ide wasn’t Italian at all, but Belgian. Which means he’s fluent in the language I was using to bash the looks of his car. He probably understood every word I said. Sorry, Enzo.

The Naughty Audi

He leans against the tow truck. The legs of his orange jumpsuit and his shoes are caked in mud. His hands are covered in grime. Given that he’s had an incredibly long day, it’s not surprising he looks like he’s been through the weather. He had to report in to the circuit at the crack of dawn, mainly to be given the same set of safety instructions he’s already been given a hundred times before. Still, you can never be too careful with safety. So even though he knew he probably wouldn’t hear anything new, he crammed himself into the tiny conference room, along with all his colleagues, to attend the run-through of the emergency procedures.

He’s glad he hasn’t had any need to put those procedures into practice today. Despite the considerable length of this endurance race, it’s been a quiet day for post 29. (In as far as a day filled with roaring WEC engines can be called ‘quiet’, that is.) However, if anyone had gotten into trouble, he and his colleagues would’ve been ready to help. That’s what marshalls are for. Without people like him, motorsport wouldn’t even exist – and he knows it. A smile forms around his lips. The only thing better than doing something you like, is doing something that matters.

Suddenly his daydream’s interrupted by an LMP1 car approaching La Source. It’s the race-winning Audi 7 that’s just taken the chequered flag. The car confuses him. It has no visible damage, but even so his gut feeling tells him something’s wrong. Then it comes to him. The Audi’s going too fast. Victory laps are forbidden at Spa, so the LMP1 should’ve slowed down by now to prepare itself for making a sharp U-turn coming out of La Source to steer itself back into the paddock. But it hasn’t. Not even a little. It has just hit the apex and is now steering into the corner using the racing line. This is going wrong. The driver needs to be stopped.

It seems his fellow marshalls have come to the same conclusion. As one man, they start to move towards the track. Some rush through the small opening in the tyre wall. Others jump over the catch fence. As fast as their legs can carry them they run across the run-off tarmac, looking somewhat like a herd of overenthusiastic orange minions attempting to close the distance between them and a pile of moving bananas. Most of them are holding objects above their heads. He himself has gotten hold of a white flag and he waves it frantically through the air, hoping to catch the driver’s attention. By now the Audi has rounded the corner. If he runs fast enough, maybe he can block its path. He speeds up, but it’s not use. When he’s still some meters away from the track, the Audi shoots passed him.

When he realises he’s too late, he teeters to a stop. In disbelief he stares at the Audi as it’s gearing towards Eau Rouge. Helpless, he waves his flag above his head one last time. Behind him his colleagues are beginning to block the track to make sure that no other cars can slip through illegally, but he can’t tear his eyes away from the Audi yet. He watches as it shoots up the hill, shrinks into a tiny dot, and disappears behind the horizon. Sadly he lowers his flag. He can’t believe this just happened. The moment he comes home he’s going to write up a new emergency procedure, one designed especially to deal with naughty race-car drivers.

Never Count Your Chickens Too Soon

For years I’ve called the Nürburgring my second home, but I’ve never been so foolish as to consider her my friend. I’m not sure she has friends. I know she sometimes comes across people she likes and is willing to favour for a while. When in her good graces, these people are able to dodge tricky track situations or miss going off-track by millimetres. But the Ring takes at least as much as she gives. The very people she favours one second, may find themselves thrown against a barrier the next. This principle goes for competitors and fans alike. Maybe it even goes doubly so for fans, because they can’t run to the pit building for cover when the weather games come into play.

The first time I visited the Nürburgring was in the spring of 2005. I’d been told the weather would be ‘nice and sunny’, but I quickly realised ‘crisp and toasty’ was a more accurate description. My friends and I sat on a grandstand at the exit of the Dunlop Kehre, where there were no roof or shade in sight, just endless square meters of concrete that projected the sun’s heat right back at us. Sunscreen was no help against that kind of heat, so we were forced to keep ourselves wrapped in blankets all weekend long to avoid being burned alive.

When I returned in the summer for my second visit, the Ring had undergone a makeover. She’d turned grey, cold, foggy, and her rain fell uninterrupted so that within the hour I was chilled to the bone. I’d been smart enough this time to buy a ticket for a roofed grandstand, but the Ring didn’t permit me any solace. It turned out the grandstand roof had sprung a leak, naturally, directly above my head. The stream of rain drops that dripped down my head, shoulders and inevitably my neck seemed endless and I can still remember it well to this very day.

Over time I’ve learned the Nürburgring enjoys switching between hot and cold weather. Sometimes she even fancies having both in one weekend, like during the GT Masters weekend in 2014 when she dropped temperatures by 29 degrees overnight. But on the whole it seems she prefers cold weather. As a regular Ring visitor you learn to expect this and dress accordingly. Still, last October during the vln9 qualifying my six layers of clothes were useless against the frost. Not even the two scarves I’d wrapped around my head could stop the wind from biting my face. After 50 minutes my body had gone so numb I knew I couldn’t safely stay where I was. So I stumbled away from the track towards the nearest piece of shelter, my personal Walhalla, my own piece of heaven on earth: the loo cubicle.

I sat out the last half hour of qualifying there. Perhaps it’s a somewhat embarrassing place to be, but at the time I thought myself pretty smart. I’d outfoxed the Nürburgring! I was within earshot of the track speakers and could still follow the action, but was out of the icy wind’s reach! However, I’d counted my chickens too soon. Shortly after qualifying I learned my favourite driver’s car had been crashed beyond repair. And before the race had finished I was running a massive fever. It was obvious the Ring wasn’t amused with me. I’d ruined her little game and she was making me pay for it. Still, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Thirteen days until my next visit.