Consistency has never been my strong suit although I’m never short of excuses either. It’s been a couple of weeks since my last motorsport edition of Pathfinder Doorhandle but had it not been for technical issues this would have been the lead video for my Italian Grand Prix commentary:
And the previous weekend at Zandvoort, it would have been this:
At bottom left are my best upload and download speeds; on the bottom right are speeds at the digs where I may – of necessity – be moving. The top shows Monza weekend speeds. Two days later the DSL went down completely and I was offline for a week. I’m back up now but speeds are no better than they’d been at their meager best. I’d looked into Starlink and put down a deposit but when after months of anticipation I finally popped to the top of the list I was given until 2:30 the afternoon of that notice to sign up… at twice the originally promised cost of the receiver and monthly fee and no guarantee of speeds, so it didn’t happen.
Anyway, John Frankenheimer’s Cinerama Grand Prix in 1966 was not my introduction to Formula One but for the fourteen-year-old me it was pivotal, what with reserved seating in the golden age Art Deco movie theater on lower Washington Street at the edge of Boston’s Combat Zone, a formula car in the lobby, an intermission and a 24-page glossy color program – along with sound and images that wrapped nearly 180° around the audience.
Now, in order to get back into the swing of writing about racing once a week I’ll resort to a lazy man’s listicle taken from my random notes, some bullet points being questions.
Formula One
Monza was a very entertaining race, more so than Zandvoort.
Actual side-by-side racing!
What are those mountains in the background in some Monza shots?
Clean race for quite a while, amazing given the speeds, over 200 mph at some points around the circuit.
The Ferraris were aggressive, with Charles claiming he was faster than Carlos and wanting to be waved by. Same with Piastri and Norris.
An announcer mentioned three World Champions in the race; I experienced the same phenomenon in Montreal from 1996 through 1998: Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, Mika Häkkinen.
What are the camera-looking things on the endplates of the Ferrari front wings?
I love the “rear view mirror” that appears in the halo graphics!
Sleeping Policeman Curbs! Or is that kerbs?
Love the old church inside the edge of the track.
By lap 46 the Red Bulls were running 1-2 but Max had a 12.5 second lead!
One of the dweebs in the booth called the other a cunning linguist! OK, that WAS funny!
IndyCar
What sense does it make to have final warmup the day before the race?
IndyCar races are nice and short, like F1.
When it was TrackPass the audio/video would continue sans commentators during broadcast commercial breaks. That stopped when Peacock took over.
Palou is amazing, but having the championship decided before the final race for the first time in seventeen years took some (all?) of the drama out of the Laguna Seca weekend.
There, all caught up. Now, lets see what’s going on with Jack’s Wednesday Racing/State Of The Stack Thread.