Saturday, 10th December 2016 – 5.54AM
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen!
Ouch. That sounded very breakfast show-like, didn’t it? I’m not sure if that is the impression I want to make right now, because breakfast shows are usually associated with cheerful, entirely awake hosts sitting at newly-painted tables paying close attention to the words of their guests. I’m nowhere near any of that at the moment.
I got up at 4.30AM to watch the Sepang 12 Hours. That may now be almost two hours ago, but still I’m not fully awake. Every once in a while my eyes start to droop and if I’m not careful I’m going to fall asleep and miss a considerable part of the race. (Indeed that is one of the main reasons I decided to write this blog; to help ward off sleepiness.) I’m not going to look in the mirror right now, I’m honestly smarter than that, but I have a fairly good idea what I currently look like – and that’s nothing like a prepped tv show host. I’m sure I have a pale face, bags under my eyes, rings under my eyes, eyes run-through with red vains, and hair all messed up, sticking out in more random directions than you would think humanly possible.
I’m not sitting at a table either, let alone a newly-painted one. In fact, I haven’t moved an inch since waking up. When the alarm went off, I simply turned on the light on my nightstand, reached over to the deskchair parked next to my bed and fired up the laptop sitting on its seat. Before I fell asleep I’d already pre-programmed the Sepang 12 Hours website to appear automatically at start-up, so all I had to do was click the ‘play livestream’-button and I was all set to watch the race from the comfort of my bed.
It hasn’t been entirely clean sailing though. It’s so early that the ancient heating system in my house doesn’t work yet, so every 15 minutes I start to feel cold and have to pull out an extra blanket. By now I’m covered with a tiny mountain of blankets. The height of the pile sometimes makes it difficult to peer over it and watch my computer screen unobstructedly. Still, at this time of morning nothing will make me sacrifice my warmth. I’ve already completed all of my assigned Freezing Cold Hours for this year during track visits to the Nürburgring, thank you very much.
Oops. I nearly did it again just now. I almost fell asleep.
Sometimes I wonder if watching the Sepang endurance race live is really a good idea. I’ve worked too many hours this week and the weekend would probably be better used catching up with the 10 hours of sleep I’ve missed out on in the past few days. But if I did that, I would miss one of the few GT races driven this winter. I would miss things like the Audi 16 starting from the pitlane and cutting its way through the field, all the way into the top 10, within the first half hour of the race. I would miss things like the three-way battle for P2 or the leader going wide and losing P1. I would miss everything. And come afternoon, I would bitterly regret it. You can blame both my love of motorsport and my overall insanity for that.
So if you need me in the next few hours, my bed is where I’ll be; soaking up as much of this race as I can, before social obligations planned for the afternoon will drag me away from the livestream. And I know I’ll be tired for the rest of the day because of this. I also know I currently look nowhere near the likes of a styled-up breakfast show presenter, but sod all that. Right now, I’m happy. 🙂