Disappointment

It's hard to tell what I was most disappointed by on Sunday, but there were quite a few things seemingly fighting for my attention.

Things I wanted to like about being at a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Everything.
Things I liked about being at a Formula 1 Grand Prix race. Not one thing.

The saddest part is, I wasn't expecting it to be a whole heap of entertainment unless something out of the ordinary happened, but even so I was totally underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Two of the things I was looking forward to
1. The sounds of the engines, full out as they reached the end of the pit straight, going down gears as they approached the first corner and accelerating up through the gears as they left the pits. I had heared the previous V10's and a V12 many years ago, and remembered the full, throaty roar building into something almost too painful to listen to, but still with a musicality to it. These days, they just sound like someone's firing a million bolts at a thick steel sheet and you have your ear pressed against it. The engines just made noise, and too much of it. This left me feeling sad and annoyed.

Then there was the moving through the gears. Imagine that sheet steel with bolts being fired at it, and every now and then, there is a pause for a tenth of a second. That's a gear change. That's just plain boring.

There is no glory to these engines, they're just technological marvels. It hurts my soul to listen to them.

2. Something more entertaining than a person being told continuously by the stewards that they could not poke their camera through the safety net. Even that was boring after about the fifth time, with no-one loosing their temper or waving any arms around or going to get a couple of bouncers. He just got sick of being told not to do it and went and sat down. That was the most exciting part of the whole day.

I probably wouldn't have minded if I had been able to just turn up, watch it all happen then leave again, but no...to be part of this whole experience involves queueing for 3 hours on the roads leading up to the circuit (Bernie, sorry, but whatever you say about access to Silverstone, Magny Cours beats it for silliness hands down). The dual carriage motorway ends about 5 miles north of the circuit, turning into a single lane road that wends its way through the country-side, until you turn off it into utter bedlam at the actual circuit itself. The signage is utter crap, with the way to places being pointed out sometimes, and forgotten about others, so you can end up going round a roundabout looking for the next sign to the reception area, but of course, there isn't one. It's pot luck time.

Then there's getting out, which makes the getting in part look thoroughly organised. From arriving 5 miles north of the circuit to being 5 miles away from the circuit took about ten hours, with three of those spent sat in the grandstand watching not very much happen. If I sat down on the floor and shuffled my arse along, I could have done those ten miles in less time and had much more fun doing it.

You may think that I'm bitter about the experience. No, not really. Just disappointed. They have been doing this for a long time now. If I had been doing something for this long, and was this bad at doing it, I would be disappointed with myself. I was slowly loosing my respect for the Formula 1 circus as their in-fighting and petty games leads them to be less interested in the race and more interested in saving face, fleecing the customers and treating their corporate sponsers well. Now, I've moved from "loosing respect" to "gaining contempt", which is a very dangerous positiion for a paying customer to be in. There are other things to do on Sunday afternoons, and I think a lot of people are starting to do them rather than watch F1.

It's disappointing.