With the F1 news being thin on the ground today and nothing in particular from history occurring to me, I am free to reflect on the events of yesterday. It did not reach the headlines nor trouble the F1 bloggers to put finger to keyboard but, in its way, it was a day as important to the sport as any this year, rubbing shoulders with the WMSC hearing and the movable floor controversy, the customer car issue and Max's opinion of Jackie Stewart.
One of my commenters, the esteemed Number 38, and I met for the first time for a drink and a bit of a natter, as they say in England.
Number 38
Now, that may appear a very minor event indeed but it is representative of the international fellowship of motor sport fans, the bedrock upon which F1 and other formulae are built and without which racing would be a matter of boy racers avoiding the police to pit their souped up family runabouts against each other on back roads and disused airports. There is nothing that unites the F1 fan so much as the opportunity to relive great races and share opinions on anything remotely connected with the sport.
Number 38 arrived armed with several photo albums containing a history in motor sport stretching back to the sixties. And we went through the lot, fifty years discussed in a couple of hours over a beer or two and a couple of crab cakes. I don't think Max was mentioned once, which perhaps shows his relative importance in the greater scheme of motor sport everywhere.
At heart, the sport is about drivers and machines, and politics has nothing to do with it. Its soul remains with the fans and the drivers, the mechanics and engineers, who create the multitude of events every weekend and then argue the merits of F1 in the pub afterwards. As long as this continues, Max's capacity to do damage is limited only to the most visible form of motor racing, the "pinnacle" of the sport. Let us not forget that pinnacles are merely tips, and tips remind us of icebergs.
And Number 38? He is nothing like I had imagined him, presuming from his use of capitals and exclamation points a character rather more belligerent than the reality. Roy, for that is his name, is a soft-spoken New Englander, living now in Virginia, and his passion for the sport is what produces the writing style, rather than any irascibility of temperament.
He has built and restored cars beyond number, tuned them and raced them, known some of the great names of the past and understands the sport from the ground up. Those battered hands, deep-grained with engine oil yet delicate in their turning of the pages, are evidence of a life lived for cars and motors, the photos themselves a re-awakening of memory for myself, taking me back to the days when I hung around the pits to ogle the cars in events long forgotten now.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable time and one of probably many thousands of similar events that took place worldwide yesterday. It did not matter that we were of different nationalities, from different backgrounds and experience - motor sport united us. And this is what really matters, isn't it?
One of my commenters, the esteemed Number 38, and I met for the first time for a drink and a bit of a natter, as they say in England.
Number 38
Now, that may appear a very minor event indeed but it is representative of the international fellowship of motor sport fans, the bedrock upon which F1 and other formulae are built and without which racing would be a matter of boy racers avoiding the police to pit their souped up family runabouts against each other on back roads and disused airports. There is nothing that unites the F1 fan so much as the opportunity to relive great races and share opinions on anything remotely connected with the sport.
Number 38 arrived armed with several photo albums containing a history in motor sport stretching back to the sixties. And we went through the lot, fifty years discussed in a couple of hours over a beer or two and a couple of crab cakes. I don't think Max was mentioned once, which perhaps shows his relative importance in the greater scheme of motor sport everywhere.
At heart, the sport is about drivers and machines, and politics has nothing to do with it. Its soul remains with the fans and the drivers, the mechanics and engineers, who create the multitude of events every weekend and then argue the merits of F1 in the pub afterwards. As long as this continues, Max's capacity to do damage is limited only to the most visible form of motor racing, the "pinnacle" of the sport. Let us not forget that pinnacles are merely tips, and tips remind us of icebergs.
And Number 38? He is nothing like I had imagined him, presuming from his use of capitals and exclamation points a character rather more belligerent than the reality. Roy, for that is his name, is a soft-spoken New Englander, living now in Virginia, and his passion for the sport is what produces the writing style, rather than any irascibility of temperament.
He has built and restored cars beyond number, tuned them and raced them, known some of the great names of the past and understands the sport from the ground up. Those battered hands, deep-grained with engine oil yet delicate in their turning of the pages, are evidence of a life lived for cars and motors, the photos themselves a re-awakening of memory for myself, taking me back to the days when I hung around the pits to ogle the cars in events long forgotten now.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable time and one of probably many thousands of similar events that took place worldwide yesterday. It did not matter that we were of different nationalities, from different backgrounds and experience - motor sport united us. And this is what really matters, isn't it?