April 20, 2007

What do we come to see at a motor race?

By Brian C. Mackey

Recently while sorting through all my junk and paperwork, I came across an old friend. It was my dog-eared, torn pages, first edition copy of the late Leon Mandel’s book (co-written by Peter Revson) entitled “Speed with Style" (Doubleday & Company), an autobiographical look at Peter Revson’s career and life in motorsports. It’s a book I have never forgotten. For in it is very eloquent prose on what the “it” is that all of us that follow racing understand to be the foundation of our fascination. Mr. Mandel understood it better than most over thirty years ago. With all the industry talk of commercial values, sponsorship, promotion, TV coverage and the like, we sometimes lose sight of what inspires us to follow motor racing, to attend events and watch on TV in the first place. It is this foundation from which all else radiates and creates the impassioned support that fans feel toward motor racing, which cascades like dominos to ultimately create the commercial sponsorship applications and values, the TV contracts and the festival-styled events.

I am referring to Mr. Mandel’s foreword in the book written in March of 1974. It’s directed toward a F1 Grand Prix car, but nearly any thoroughbred racing vehicle applies.

“Even at night, in the still of its abandoned garage and swathed in its dust cover, a grand prix car is an awesome presence.

There are no people around it, none of the swirl of the crowd nor even the intimate and familiar shadows of its crew, but still the car seems to breathe and tremble.

A race car is a lean and terrible thing. Delicate, highly bred, it is like a fine horse but with an immense strength no living creature can have. In the sunlight you are blinded by the splendid, bright colors of its paint. Not a rough weld, not an obtrusive seam jars the conviction that what you are looking at is an enormously accomplished product of the craftsman’s bench.

But at night, in repose, the car is at its most impressive. All that strength, all that power is quiet and isolated. Even then, however, it is not alone.

For all its ability to shake the trees with the shriek of its engine, to destroy the thought of time and distance by flashing incredibly from end to end of the viewer’s horizon, for all that, the car is only paraphernalia.

It is nothing more than a fiberglass pole in a vault. A number-nine iron. A Head competition racket.

It is the driver who counts."

Amen

Yes, sponsors, TV and souvenirs are all very important, but in the end, its all just paraphernalia. We as fans need to “know” and care about the drivers as they race past our view. It’s part of the undeniable tension of watching a racing car hurtle past at 200+ mph, whether on an oval, road course or drag strip. Sometimes it’s important to pause and remember what we all come to the race track to see. It’s not sponsors, not festivals and not even the cars by themselves. We come to see the drivers drive. To experience the tantalizing balance between the deep-seated desire and envy to be “one of them” and at the same exact moment, the exhaled breath of relief that we are not. No other sport can come close.

It's drivers that build loyalties. It's drivers that build series.