Oh, c'mon. I leave you for I don't know, like three months and some of you are still discussing why on earth
there is open wheel racing?
Wake up, people, this is a Formula One Forum! I confess these days it's becoming harder and harder to distinguish real people from robots...
If I haven't told you so already, I say it now:
We have open wheel racing...
Because
you can feel the wind on your face (and you can swallow one or two bugs per mile).
Because
chicks will actually watch your face while you pass by (unless you're one of those morons that ride an open wheel car
professionally and you
have to use a helmet with a undescriptible thingie on top of your shoulders that makes you seem like Hansel of Hansel and Gretel, with tirolese pants: that's why it's called a Hans device).
Because
you can actually watch the wheels go up and down with every bump and you can watch how you are tearing them down to pieces.
Because
you feel manly and proud of your car.
Because
wimps don't have open wheel cars.
Because
open wheel cars actually have an engine under the hood, unlike modern cars.
Because
nobody will confuse your car with a giant tennis shoe model.
You know, when I was young, cars were always breaking down. Probably this happened because cars, back then, actually used internal combustion engines, which means they
really used gasoline exploding inside the engine. I used to have an old Dodge Dart, 1971 vintage, with a loud six in line engine: you knew it had one because you never knew if it were going to start on any given day. I swear I spent more time bent under the hood, trying to fix something, than the time I spent driving that thing.
The car I have today
probably has an engine, but I'm not sure. It doesn't produce any noticeable sound and
I don't remember to have ever watched under the hood. AFAIK, it could be propelled by an alien spacecraft engine, I wouldn't know about it.
I remember vaguely actually watching a mass of sensors and injectors and wires and tubes back when I bought it, but only because the car seller showed to me what I
assume it was the car's engine.
Back when buying this car, at the dealer, I almost fainted thinking about the
possibility of the car ever breaking down: I wouldn't be able to distinguish the carburetor from the oil pump (I think it doesn't have a carburetor, nor a distributor, nor a mechanic gas pump, so this makes really hard to locate them).
To my good fortune, this engine has gone without a hitch for 100,000 miles. Do you want it to start? Simply turn the key. I don't know if the car uses oil or even gasoline, it seems to work by magic, unlike the old Dart, which only worked on alternate days, as long as you graduated the distributor every half hour.
And yet I vividly remember that old Dart, unlike the cars I've had in recent decades, all of which have the personality of a pension actuary. In the words of Dave Barry, "in fact, that might be the formal name of my current car: The Actuary."
Some of you know I'm the proud owner of a GTO. That's what Mr. Barry has to say about it when he found one and say "Nice Goat" to the owner:
''Thanks,'' said the GTO driver, and the light turned green, and he rumbled off, gasoline exploding audibly in his large internal-combustion engine, while I glided forward in my eerily silent Actuary, which I think runs on a computer hard drive powered by nuclear fusion. I knew the GTO guy would probably have to pull over within the next 150 yards for gas, oil, new pinions, etc., but I was jealous of him. I found myself humming ''Little GTO,'' the 1964 hit by Ronny and the Daytonas, in which Ronny describes the GTO in loving technical detail (''Three deuces and a four speed and a 389'') and the Daytonas, not quite in tune, sing: 'Turnin' it on! Blowin' it out! Turnin' it on! Blowin' it out!''
That was from the Golden Age of Car Songs, songs like the Beach Boys' ''409'' (''My four-speed, dual-quad, positraction 409!'') and of course Chuck Berry's ''Maybelline,'' in which Chuck's V-8 Ford (pronounced ''Foad'') chases down a Cadillac, and Chuck displays his grasp of automotive thermodynamics (''Rainwater blowin' all under my hood; I knew that was doin' my motor good'').
Nobody will ever write a song like that about my Actuary, or any other modern car. Modern cars are just not songworthy.
The other guys are all jealous of me
When I cruise in my Hyundai Elantra GT
And the girls always feel a romantic explosion
When they learn that my warranty covers corrosion
No, today's cars are just not exciting.
And
that's why we have open wheel cars. Any other arguments are as useless as modern, closed wheeled "race" cars, designed by computer, cars that you could use along a pair of Prada shoes: they have no soul.
The only way you could have a closed wheel race car is if you drive a Le Mans or ALMS prototype, and, let's face it,
only because their design hasn't changed noticeably in 50 years or so (and, to be frank, even them, protos, are weirdo's cars in some sense). Any other thing is not a race car.
