The only way to truly experience the thrills and sensation of Formula 1 is to go to the races – TV is no substitute
There’s no doubt about it: watching an event on TV is nothing like being there in person.
The angle of a downhill ski slope, the size of a football pitch and the effect of a pack of motorbikes coming into the first corner of a grand prix will seem completely different depending on whether you’re watching it on TV or are there in person.
Luca di Montezemolo was right to reject 4-cylinder engines for Formula 1 because they’d have turned the vibrations that run through the ground at the start of a Grand Prix into little more than you’d feel standing at the traffic lights on a city street.
The whine and roar of 20,000 horse power being vented all at once at the start of the race in Monza last Sunday brought a truly unique excitement to Fernando Alonso’s superb getaway as he shot first into the narrow chicane just after the line.
It’s odd to think how different the feelings the public experiences are so completely different from the drivers’. Unlike ourselves when we’re behind the wheels of our cars, they don’t hear the noise of their engine at all. Not because they’re wearing ear plugs but for the simple reason that the roar of 20,000 horses being unleashed at once drowns out the sound of the individual engines. They’re also too busy focusing on rpms and instruments. That’s why starts sometimes don’t go well and why, in the past, drivers might, with disastrous results, inadvertently let their engines stall because they didn’t realise the revs were too low.
The other hugely impressive part of being at the trackside is the speed of the tyre changes. On TV, it looks like a kind of split-second ritual that happens out of time. But when you see it with your own eyes, it’s a kind of emotional overload: it feels like everything happens at once – like a lightening bolt. The car arrives, stops and before you know it tears off again in an inhumanly short space of time. A leading English surgeon came to Maranello a few years ago with his theatre assistants to learn what rules each one of the pit-stop boys works by to achieve such perfection. Our technicians even helped them work out what they could improve during their own operations and the results were positively spectacular.
So to wrap up, you can’t match the thrill of firsthand experience of a race and for real enthusiasts at least one Formula 1 GP a year is as good for both heart and soul as any medicine.
PUBLISHED IN Editor's corner BY Antonio Ghini ON 09.16.2011
Credit: Ferrari S.p.A. (www.ferrari.com)
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