FRv6 Donnington!

[Kidzer]

I hope not! Don't want to change it, might be good luck now!

[Mackmot]

kidzer werent you about 5 years old 6 years ago? :P

[Kidzer]

em.......15-5=10, just about so yea heehee! :-)

[Mackmot]

It good to see kids being fans of motorsport. I went to a school recently with an F3000 and very few kids had ever even seen F1.

[Kicking-back]

Originally posted by Mackmot
I went to a school recently with an F3000 and very few kids had ever even seen F1.

Disgusting!

It's on free-to-air television.

There's no excuse for them!

[Paul Rayner]

It's peer pressure, K-B. When I was at school, hardly anyone else liked Formula One, you had to be into football or you were often left out of things. To like F1 was weird. Faced with that opposition, many will either give up on the sport at an early age, or just learn not to shout about it and tell others how great they think it is.

Very few kids will go against that, and do something like organise a Fantasy Formula One competition for several years, converting most of their school year to, if not like F1, then at least accept it. There's a tidal wave of opposition to overcome if you want to expand that to an entire country.

[Kidzer]

Totally agree, yes I lkiek football and rugby, but F1 and Motorsport in general is my life and Peer Pressure won't change that and i hope to god it never will!

[Kicking-back]

Lets make it compulsory!

[Kidzer]

Great Idea, last day of school 2moro before holidays so ill take in a few Motorsport Videos and DVD's i have and make everyone watch them, I think they will really like the 1989 British F3 Championship, great video that one

[Suze]

Lol - nice idea kidzer.

It's not just F1 at school - try loving motor-racing, football, sport in general and being female - apparently that makes you secretly male! (according to people I've come across anyway). And of course, being a motor-racing fan means I'm just there for fit guys (well, I watch a bit of racing too!), and football makes me a hooligan.

Life's so unfair sometimes

Anyway, back to motor-racing - don't you all just hate the people that say it's just a bunch of guys driving round in circles? Ok, so in very very simple terms it is, but there's a lot more too it as well.

[Kidzer]

YES!!! Hate it, get it all the time, when i came back from donny everyone said to me - 'Have fun watchin cars going in circles? Soo boring!' Maybe they are jealous that i have something i like a lot and they dont? Suze, unlucky , dont see whats wrong with that at all!

[Mackmot]

I heard all your school mates were texting Ryan

[Paul Rayner]

Originally posted by Suze
Anyway, back to motor-racing - don't you all just hate the people that say it's just a bunch of guys driving round in circles? Ok, so in very very simple terms it is, but there's a lot more too it as well.

Yes, I hate that. What I also find infuriating is when motor racing fans use the exact same phrase to describe oval racing. The way I always used to put it was that it completely depends on how you look at it - if they want to put it that way, isn't football just 22 men kicking a ball about? No, it's not, it's about 11 men on two teams, representing a town, city, country, whatever, fighting for pride with a crowd that really gets behind them. Just like motor racing is 20ish men/Susie fighting to get the best from a car, pushing it to the absolute limits and trying to pressurize the guy in front into a mistake. Plus there are crashes!

[Kicking-back]

Originally posted by Paul Rayner
Plus there are crashes!

Not that we'd encourage anyone watching it just for the shunts!

[Paul Rayner]

Course we would. I would. Some people enjoy them - plain and simple. No-one wants to see anyone get hurt, but there are people who watch just for the crashes. If you can get them into it for the crashes and then entice them into the racing, then that's much better...

[Kicking-back]

I suppose, it's bums on seats and a lot of series are crying out for punters through the gates.

[Suze]

Originally posted by Kicking-back
Not that we'd encourage anyone watching it just for the shunts!

The people that watch it just for crashes annoy me too. When you go racing, it's almost certain you'll see at least one crash / contact / a spinner etc, but it's the people that don't care how the driver is after the accident that annoy me. Crashes and accidents are a part of motor-racing. Motor-racing is a dangerous sport, everyone knows that and accepts that when they race / watch. I don't mind crashes and things, it can make the race more interesting, but as long as I see the driver walk away / that they're ok then I'm happy.

Re oval racing - I guess again it is fundamentally cars going round in circles. When people say that though, I try to explain about tactics, set-ups etc, but they won't listen. They listen to what they want to hear - that motor-racing is guys going round in circles, they claim you don't need to be talented to be a driver! It used to annoy me, but I'm used to it now! Still.....can't wait til the next BTCC / FRen meeting!

[Paul Rayner]

I don't think there are many people who "don't care" about the driver - just that they really don't expect it. They've seen so many accidents where no-one has died or got injured that they don't expect to see it. They kind of blank out the danger, it only really hits you when it actually happens in front of you.

I remember watching F3 cars go through the Rockingham first corner chicane in 2001. I was watching with a couple of drivers and their family as the cars flew up in the air. They were shocked and gasping, I was thinking "Wow! Cool!"

Anything that's spectacular, out of the ordinary, people want to see. Hell, loads of people watch those "America's wackiest police chase crashes" programmes. I think they just blank the danger, the fact it could happen to them, from their minds.

[Kicking-back]

Paul - with your website to run and reports to write - how much on track action do you actually get to see these days?

[Sid The Manager]

That Rogkingham chicane gave Bruce Jouanny concussion as he landed, cracked the chinpiece of his crash helmet too.

But talking about crashes, even if you don't go for them, how cheated do you feel when you are there when theres a crash, but youre at the wrong bit of the circuit?

[Paul Rayner]

Originally posted by Kicking-back
Paul - with your website to run and reports to write - how much on track action do you actually get to see these days?

Quite a lot. Obviously I see all the races that I'm covering, which has seen me at race circuits every weekend since the start of April. I tend to watch them on TV in the media centre if possible because you see more of the action that way, but that's not always possible (particularly at F3 meetings). I try to catch as much of the other races as possible when I'm not busy and, with a weekend off coming up, I'm heading to Rockingham to watch the DoT series, with no journalism involved at all!
Why do you ask?

[Paul Rayner]

Originally posted by Sid The Manager
That Rogkingham chicane gave Bruce Jouanny concussion as he landed, cracked the chinpiece of his crash helmet too.

But how many of the people who watched that event, either in person or on TV, ever knew that? Unless it's a serious injury, people tend to think "he's alright." I think the Simpsons did a good mickey-take of that attitude with a daredevil once. Slightly over-the-top, but an accurate and amusing reflection of what people tend to think.

[Kicking-back]

Originally posted by Paul Rayner

Why do you ask?

You just seemed enthusiastic about racing and I thought it would be a shame if you missed it so you could slavishly watch a timing screen instead.

That's cleared it up

[Paul Rayner]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to just spectating at a race this weekend. Not that I don't enjoy reporting, just that it's nice to have a weekend without the pressure. I want to have at least one weekend a year when I can just watch.

[Kidzer]

Mackmot, waddya mean i said all my mates text Ryan? I'm the only one at my school with his number!