GP and Me
If the bookies are to be believed then this Sunday evening Jenson Button's Fairytale Grand Prix season will be capped off with the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year Award. I shall, of course, be picking up the phone to register my vote for the Frome flyer. Admittedly as a motor racing fan I am of course more a little biased. I do not mean to belittle the achievements of the other nominees, it's just that when it come to sport, I'm afraid there can only ever be one.
My love affair with racing began when, as a child, I watched the fierce battles between Mansell, Piquet, Senna & Prost on television before recreating them over and over on my living room floor. (A pleasure think is probably denied to the kids of today - The last time I looked in a toy shop the only model racing cars I could find where of Roary the Racing Car or from Disney's Cars.) My Matchbox grids of old may well have been an mismatch of contemporary and historic machines but in my adolecent mind all that mattered was that they were racing cars - and where racing cars went, drama and excitement were never far away.
It was of course a feeling that could never leave me. I will never forget the feeling that shot through me when I first heard the scream of a Grand Prix car driven in anger. The anticipation that builds in you as you walk into a quiet circuit at some ungodly hour in the morning to stake your claim on some dusty or mud soaked vantage point overlooking these hallowed strips of tarmac.
Those who never caught the bug can never understand those magic nights you crawl of out a barely disturbed bed as the world a round you sleeps, to tune into live footage from a distant continent. You know the race will be repeated at sensible o'clock tomorrow afternoon but that's not the point. When it's live you are part of the action in a way that replay can never possibly equal. It's just a mirage, an echo of a moment long since past in which fate has already dealt his cards.
It has only been a month since the curtain fell on the 2009 Season but it already seems an eternity. Each day the countdown clock on the Autosport homepage ticks away the seconds until the action resumes again. The articles provide teasers and conversation points as I try to fill the winter void with speculation of things to come. To predict the next chapter of story not yet written, but one which you know will be packed with a familiar drama & excitement... and of course a little controversy.
So I apologise to Beth Tweddle, Ryan Giggs et al, my vote will be going to Jenson. Because although I'll never be a part of Formula One, I know that Formula One will always be a part of me.
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