I Love Auto Racing. . . A love which I credit from having a father who grew up in the car business. My grandfather, Sam McErlain, a Scot by birth, worked for Jaguar after he came to America in 1948. As might be expected, my father got fully exposed to the car business as he was growing up -- something which provided him with one of his first jobs. In his case, driving cars from British Leyland dealers in New York down to the Baltimore-Washington area. Once here, he'd pick up cars straight from the docks at the Port of Baltimore and drive them back to New York.
Nice work if you can get it.
In any case, my youth was filled with a whole lot of Sunday afternoons sitting beside my Dad watching racing -- any and all kinds. NASCAR, CART, NHRA: you name it, we watched it -- especially in the sports dead spot between the Super Bowl and baseball's Opening Day.
But my father's favorite was always Formula 1. And his favorite racer was his fellow Scotsman and three-time Formula 1 champion, Jackie Stewart. But by the time I was old enough to watch racing with my Dad, Jackie had already retired, and was pulling in the big bucks working races for ABC Sports.
Just to be a pain, and as a nod to my mother's Italian heritage, I adopted Mario Andretti as my favorite driver. As it would turn out, we wound up cheering for him together when he took the Formula 1 title in 1978.
So, when I turn on auto racing, it's as much out of a desire to touch my family's past as anything else -- especially when it comes to thinking about my grandfather, a man I hardly knew, but whose decisions affected my family to this day.
So I took time out from watching football yesterday to check in on the third annual U.S. Grand Prix from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. By now you might have heard that Brazillian Rubens Barrichello was the winner -- taking the race by the closest margin in Formula 1 history. But what you might not have heard was the following:
Michael Schumacher can stop feeling guilty.
Formula One's most dominant driver won the Austrian Grand Prix in May when Ferrari ordered teammate Rubens Barrichello to pull aside on the final straightaway. On Sunday, Schumacher's record-tying fifth F1 championship long since assured, he returned the favor to give Barrichello the victory in the U.S. Grand Prix.
"There wasn't any plan," Schumacher insisted. "But I didn't feel particularly happy with what happened in Austria. To be honest, with what happened here, I feel it has been somewhat equalized.
Back in July, when this happened the first time, it left a real sour taste in my mouth. Sure, I understand that in Formula 1 there is both a drivers championship, as well as a team championship. But there's something in the American psyche that doesn't cotton to letting somebody else win a race you've dominated all on your own. That Schumacher and Barrichello have finished 1-2 in most of the F1 races this year, just seemed to make it all the more heinous -- sort of like Randy Moss taunting the opposition after he's burned them for a long touchdown. But, instead of just an end zone celebration, we have to put up with 10-15 yards of Randy dancing all the way to the score.
And that this happened not only on an American track, but on the most famous in American racing, seemed insulting. And although I've chastised others from drawing political conclusions from things I've observed in sports, I can't help but think that this incident demonstrates as well as any other one of the basic cultural divides between the U.S. and Europe.
Here we have the Americans on one hand, complaining about the integrity of the sport, and how arrangements like this one undermine its credibility. Then, you have the Europeans on the other hand, wondering what the big deal is.
But that's not the only divide. Earlier last week, IRL driver, and Off-Wing favorite, Sarah Fisher, took a couple of practice laps in a West McLaren Formula 1 racer. But in the run-up to Sarah's time on the track, the manager of the McLaren team made some comments that indicated he felt that despite the fact that a number of women have raced on ovals in North America, that he felt that a woman would never make it on the F1 circuit.
Wanting to get another opinion, I shot a note to fellow blogger, F1 fan, and son of Scotland, Steve MacLaughlin:
Ron Dennis said the following back in August: "I think that, over-simplifying it, oval racing is a very different type of racing to circuit racing. It (Formula One) requires different abilities and I think those abilities are more challenging for a woman to fulfill than for a man. I think it is very difficult for a woman to be competitive in Formula One."
In that context I have to agree with RD (Ron Dennis). CART, IRL, and NASCAR do not put the same kind of stresses on the body that F1 does. This is not to say that women couldn't meet the challenge, but I think you would have to be in peak physical fitness. Sadly, I think other reasons besides the physical demands might keep a woman out. There are only 24 driver slots to begin with and there appears to be enough trouble getting an American driver into the series. One step at a time I guess.
I can see where Steve is coming from. It's not like there are a whole lot of open slots available for just anyone to jump in to Formula 1, and the fact that there aren't any American drivers on the circuit is hurting its popularity stateside.
Still, in a country where women fly fighter jets, it's a little hard to get your head around the idea that it would be impossible for a woman to drive Formula 1.
Think of it this way. In just a few weeks, a pilot inside an F-15 will be streaking across the sky above Iraq when an alarm in the cockpit will go off. It will be the sound that combat pilots fear most -- the SAM warning -- one indicating that an enemy surface to air missile has locked on to the jet. Evading this missile will take everything the pilot has, physically and mentally, just to survive. And if the pilot loses, it means the end of a multi-million dollar aircraft, and more importantly, perhaps the life of the pilot as well.
So tell me this: can anyone seriously believe that evading a SAM is less physically and mentally demanding than holding off F1 champion Michael Schumacher in an S-curve? I'll let you decide for yourself.
UPDATE: I missed this piece from the Sydney Herald Sun, where fellow team owners went on the record to bash the Ferrari team.
