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Auto Racing

PaulTra said:
NASCAR =Checkers
F1= Chess

Not saying one is better than the other. They both have their merits and short comings.
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This is about the best comparison I've ever heard. One isn't better than the other, they are just very different forms of entertainment.

I grew up in Ohio where the Indy 500 was king. It's still my favorite race and form of racing. I've followed it my whole life, and watched the 500 from all over the world: Ohio, Florida, Washington, North Carolina, Japan, Iraq, Thailand, and even Speedway, Indiana. I love the month of May!

When I lived in NC, my wife tricked me into going to a NASCAR race by telling me we could fly to it. I followed it for a few years while we lived there, which coincided with the heyday of NASCAR. I did happen to fly over Talladega one day in my first airplane, and flew a few circles above the track. There were a few cars below doing testing and they all smoked me! You certainly don't get the sense of speed on TV that you do in person. Since moving away from NC, I can't seem to gather much interest for NASCAR. There's too many races on EVERY weekend, and much better things to do than watching TV all day every Sunday. And I find the whole stage thing stupid. Plus, as a defender of the English language, it's a bit too unrefined for me. Besides, I don't "whoa down" for anyone! I'm not even sure I would know how to do

When we moved to Japan I had a renewed love of Indycar. I would get up at 2am Monday morning to watch the 500 on Armed Forces Network, and occasionally go to work afterwards. I had a routine where I'd cook a big breakfast on race day, and enjoy the whole event. One year, we had an exercise that started on Memorial Day Monday, and there was a rain delay, so the race didn't end before I had to go to work. One of the few times I abused my rank was to slip away from the tent in the parking lot where we were conducting the exercise to sequester myself in my office to watch the conclusion of the race, and then take a nap under my desk before returning to the exercise.

In the last few years I've tried to figure out F1. It's great that there is so much content available on the subject, but sometimes it gets to be too much. Recently, there was two weeks worth of pundits discussing the first 10 seconds of the Saudi GP, which was about 15 days more than I could tolerate. I appreciate that F1 is basically prototype racing, but it has it's limitations. There's only so much interest in a race that's basically qualifying plus a sprint to turn 1. Typically, I watch the highlights in 8-10 minutes instead of watching the 2 hour race. It's just not that interesting to me. However, I would say that I follow F-1, I just don't watch it.

During COVID I decided to check out Lemans, and watched the entire race over a week's time. I've followed WEC since then, with focus on Lemans.

I've tried occasionally to watch a NASCAR race, but it just doesn't hold my interest. I find restrictor plate racing stupid, and always have, even when I followed the sport closely.

Oh, look at that. It's the month of May. Indy practice starts in 4 days! :)
 
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