Ray wrote:NASCAR is nothing more than WWE on wheels... NASCAR isn't hard, I don't care how much camber some corners have on entry versus exit. It's a series mired in tech that's 40-50 years behind the average road car. There's zero reason they have only now tested fuel injection. The racing rules change from event to event. They stand behind this facade of good ol' boys when they are shrewd, backstabbing, vicious politicians that would as soon sell their grandmother up a river as lose a popularity contest. They throw parties with country singers and preachers that give invocations before every race, and then they let competitors go out on track and literally try to kill each other (Edwards and Kesolowski to name but one pair). They dress that up as 'rubbin' is racin'. Nothing they do on track translates to any road car. The LS engine wasn't borne from NASCAR racing. The safety of road cars didn't come from NASCAR. The series is more like IROC. Not a single person in NASCAR could identify a car without paint and stickers on them, it's the same damn car. The racing is dictated and won by who can convince Brian France would make him more money. They allow GoodYear to continue to make tires that are guaranteed to spectacularly fail at least once a race. They won't make a car that's lighter weight with more tire and lower CG to help this problem. NASCAR is rigged. NASCAR is a joke, they shouldn't even call it racing. They should call it 'Staged for your entertainment with rigged cautions and crashes when it gets boring' Cup Series. But that doesn't sound as good as a series borne from illegal activity that gives ... in the stands some fake emotional connection because they have a John Deere license plate tag and Remington stickers with camo running board graphics, all on an F-150 that hasn't seen a dirt driveway much less actually used as a truck. ... NASCAR and their fake fans. The announcers won't call ... when they see it, they tow the corporate line and say what their told to avoid risking the fake persona NASCAR tries so desperate to keep. Too bad the death of Dale Earnhardt didn't also kill NASCAR, he would have been better of in sports car racing like he was planning.
I hate NASCAR for all of those reasons and more. They are ... wrapped in a lie... It's a worthless series run by politicians ... . Formula 1 is too, but they don't dress it up with fake smiles and fake Christian values.
Well, yes. That's one way to see it: to watch the first layer. I'm not going to defend the world, if that's what you're asking. The world is what it is.
However, you know, I like to race. I don't race for other people, I do take a car once in a while, gas to spare allowing, I get some laps and the best part is that I do it only for myself.
I simply like tinkering with the tools and the car mechanical thing and I like the wind and I like to concentrate on driving while there is some sun. I like to explain to others how they can get the same feeling of "flow in movement" and I like the beauty of power in your hands through intelligence.
I will never get tired of that, I know already.
Actually, simply, I like to move. To see the things passing by, like in a dream. That's it.
So, when I see where does it takes you, when you see "the NASCAR series", in its entirety, it is easy to forget the people behind.
However, I don't forget that people. I like to watch the drivers drive, no matter what is happening in the stands.
I do not think they, drivers, are fake in the sense you accuse them of be: cynical.
I think that many, many people tries, I think they "dream the whole dream", even if the politics and all the implications of living among other people break their "careers". I like those who try, I see the same urge in me as in them. Even older drivers, you know, the true cynics, must feel "it" once in a while. Once in a while they must feel they are doing all that for themselves, I mean.
It happens in any profession, from lawyers to sculptors, from physicists to racing drivers. There is an ugly and cruel world outside, interested mainly in money. That's true to the last bitter drop.
Many, if not all, people start their profession or art with all the enthusiasm of youth and over time become disenchanted by all the ugliness that they can (easily!) find around ANY human activity.
However, once in a while you find a "colleague", someone that when young had the same illusion as you had. He can understood the nuisances, the effort, the hard work you have put in the things you do, not because you are waiting for someone approval but because they are beautiful. Those things you might have done in your profession have this beauty that only a "trained heart" can understand. With some of those colleagues you can find that spark of enthusiasm and love and devotion to something. You know well they are trying in the same way you do. They are kind of spiritual twins to you.
That's why I like NASCAR. Among all the disillusions of the world, I like to see, year after year, people trying. They know well what they're up against but they try.
If you cannot see this second layer behind the sport, then,
the Christian preachers and the commentators of your particular world will drown you.
However, if that's the case, I would add, cynically, that you were drowned from the start. Either you had a soul once or you'll never have one. I used to have one... and I can tell you that you cannot race without one. Soul, that is.
Why? Because in the end, that's all that life gives you: a chance to try and a chance to believe in yourself. This, and only this, the world, the entire world, with Goodyear, France, the "fans" and, in general, all the leeches that you might see around your (are they only that? Leeches?), cannot take away.
I don't know if this apology of the human heart can make people realize that you have to distinguish people who have one (one heart, I mean).
I see many of those hearts at NASCAR and a few at F1, that's why I watch them race. The rest, friends, is glitter. Who wins, who lose, that depends. Who try, on the other hand, is easy to spot if you have tried too: those are well known.
That's why I like, definitely, by all means, a Person, with uppercase P, like Kimi Räikönnen, having the money he wants after so many years, saying, "what the heck, I will try, it must be fun".
I love this kind of people, I cannot avoid to love them.
I will watch him, hopefully, being astonished by the crowd and the smell of the old gas engines, designed in other era, when things were simpler and life was something a bit different, with less money in the basket.
Then, as now, its meaning, the meaning of your life, is something you and only you can find. I will see him race, Mr. Räikkönen, because I have the feeling he will do it for himself, and I tell something: let's see if there is something to learn among all the glitter you mention or if he is racing at NASCAR just for the money (something that could well be).
That's the field where you have to play, no man can avoid that. Finding a meaning in all that, with the hookers and the cheap bastards around, hard as it is, is fun and, let's say it, deep. It can be in racing or you can do it sweeping the streets. It doesn't matter where you find
it, I say that
there is a second layer, behind all the cynicism, the corporations and the marketing.
That's where, dear Ray, you could
easily be, behind or better yet, beyond all that. You have all the knowledge, you have had all those feelings, you have or had all the abilities, you, in a nutshell, have the understanding.
Use it.
. But i just can't help mentioning this, you say you've been a fan for almost 20 years and one of your gripes is that they use (as per your own words) technology that's 40-50 years behind road cars, and also complain about them hiding behind their christian values... i mean it's like saying you no longer watch porn because you just figured out the breasts aren't real. Though i should point out that while breasts contribute to the final product, we're lucky that the old tech and religious values deter nothing from the racing