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.