The repertoire of set phrases
“He pushed me out!…He crossed the white line, I saw it!..He doesn’t leave me any space!..He moves when I get close!..He cut me off from the pits! He has to give me back my position!…”
These are just some of the set phrases that the drivers shout into their helmet radio boxes during a Formula 1 Grand Prix. With the engineers on the pit wall reassuring them in a fake way, as you do with unruly children, with phrases like “We saw everything, we’ll report back to race direction but now don’t worry..”. More than a competition, it’s now a cross between a condominium meeting and a nursery school fight.
The Curve of Discord
Curve 3, or Remus Curveof the Red Bull Ring circuit seems to be made on purpose to provoke and tempt the drivers. A sharp right-hand bend with a welcoming, wide and forgiving escape route that allows for life-or-death attacks that even if they go badly, never mind. And while the driver rides along that escape route, which if it were full of gravel would not be so busy, he can immediately think about who or what to blame for ending up in it. And yet It is precisely the concept of guilt that should not have any place in a world-class motor racing competition between professional drivers. The drivers are, or should be, on the track to go as fast as possible and spend all their energy and their great talent to beat their opponents by going to the limit of their car’s possibilities and even beyond if necessary. Without obviously bumping into or gratuitously damaging their opponents, then yes there would be a fault or malice.
This year, the historical protagonists of the Remus Kurve brawl have been joined by Verstappen e Norriswith the first one defending himself in a definitely rough way from the attacks of the Englishman, and the second one who between the Sprint Race and the Grand Prix “went crazy” in the attempt to find a way to overtake the Dutch champion having the uncomfortable awareness of driving a McLaren faster than Red Bull. And it wasn’t the first time this year. At the end of the race we also had to hear sappy reflections on friendships ruined by a duel on the track that certainly had serious consequences but we’re still talking about a motorsport competition, not a chess game.
The epic promise and not kept
The mystical-combative rhetoric with which pay TV channels package their launch services a few minutes before the race (made up of quotes from superhero, action, dragon and knight films on a carpet of epic music) clashes greatly with the reality that unfolds on the track a few minutes later, where instead of knights behind the wheel we find boys reciting a short prayer of wrongs suffered to be immediately remedied by a higher authority. Wrongs that are perpetrated not only by their opponents but also by their own teammates, guilty of not leaving them the way by virtue of their race pace which is theoretically superior to that of their teammate who, however, at that moment, is ahead of them. And if the engineers on the pit wall, to whom he turns as supreme justice bodies, force the driver to slow down to manage his tyres, then they cease to be a source of justice and instead become a source of grave injustice, often to the advantage of the hated teammate who, however, cannot be overtaken on the track.
Running by proxy
Certainly this way of racing “by proxy” is also the result of a motorsport in which now only the race pace counts as a function of tyre management, so the drivers “just” have to try to go as fast as possible in relation to the level of wear on the tyres and an overtaking to be done, or a defense to be implemented, is just a useless waste of time. And it is already like this in the minor formulas. It is no coincidence that on Sunday in the Formula 2 feature race, we witnessed a long argument on the radio between Hadjar and Marty, teammates of the Campos team. With Hadjar fourth who demanded from his pit wall to ask Martì to step aside because he had more and then, once satisfied, he started to complain about not having the pace to detach the Spaniard after, in his opinion, his tires had been ruined by spending too much time behind him. In short, that’s how they grow up.
