Every sport has an archetype it hopes its athletes fit. Most have a few. In football, quarterbacks are supposed to be poised, smooth everymen. In baseball, relief pitchers are supposed to be nuts—iconoclastic weirdos who act like they’re on amphetamines on the mound. In hockey, defensemen are supposed to be sacrificial and dutiful to a point that might have earned them multiple Medals of Honor in a different line of work.
Formula One has just one archetype: Its drivers are supposed to be gallant, dashing, and brave. They’re supposed to be gentlemen without being gentle. They’re supposed to be both vigorous and suave. There are variants on this theme, but this is the idea. This is what we want from our international open-wheel stars—a Tony Stark-type backstory, but played by George Clooney.
The thing that makes F1 so annoying right now is that for the most part, it lacks this kind of character. With one exception, its drivers range from gamer boys to aging frat stars. This is what the new F1 fan wants, but it’s bad for F1 the same way it’s been bad for the NBA to turn into a league run by reddit. Even if it plays with one demographic, it’s disappointing for the rest, and it’s likely to age poorly as cultural norms continue to shift. It’s hard to bring gallantry back after replacing it with people you can’t take seriously.
The one exception to the tragic trend? Sir Lewis Hamilton.
I don’t know if he’s “back.” I don’t know if Mercedes is “back.” But it was fun to see Hamilton win yesterday at Silverstone. George Russell winning would have been fun. Lando Norris winning would have been exciting. Lewis Hamilton winning was special. It meant something. It was the most redeemable F1 moment in a long, long time.
The rest of F1:
- Speaking of Norris, I was disappointed he didn’t do more to try to hold off Verstappen late. I know Verstappen was going to find his way past eventually, but it seemed like once Norris knew that, he didn’t try to delay the inevitable. This turned out fine from a points perspective, but had Verstappen caught Hamilton, the extra seven points in the standings would have been on Norris’s hands. And besides that, it’s the kind of thing we talked about yesterday before the race: It just didn’t seem very competitive of Norris. It wasn’t dashing or gallant or brave.
- Sergio Pérez is a human being deserving of compassion, but his struggles are getting funny. Even with Ferrari turning in a really bad day, three teams are close enough to Red Bull that it’s believable they could catch the twice-reigning champs. Meanwhile, Pérez is stuck in his zipper in the port-a-potty.
Was Chicago a Good Shitshow or a Bad One?
NASCAR’s street course race was a shitshow, although the clear issue they ran into when the rain came wasn’t actually the thing that became the problem. The slippery surface should have been fine, and the visibility should have made for a disaster. Instead, Chase Briscoe slipped and took out Shane van Gisbergen, and the powers that be decided the red flag was necessary. A weird way to reach the expected result.
In the big picture, things are good. NASCAR’s making a lot of progress on dealing with weather, and if the series and Chicago do agree to hold the event a third time, surely it can’t rain again. In the small picture, this was a shitshow!
I lean towards it having been a shitshow in a bad way. Some NASCAR shitshows are great. Sometimes, things become so messy and dumb that the chaos becomes the point, and there’s even a semblance of competitive integrity restored. We love NASCAR for this. This might be the best kind of NASCAR. There has never literally been a footrace to the finish line like at the end of Talladega Nights (and even that got Ricky Bobby and Jean Girard disqualified), but that captured the spirit of how these races sometimes end—a shockingly respectable way to handle an absolute mess of a competition.
Yesterday wasn’t that. It was messy and dumb, and in a high quantity, but it wasn’t messy and dumb in the right direction. There wasn’t actually that much chaos. It was mostly a really long red flag. What chaos there was took out too many main characters and kind of illegitimized the race. Good on Alex Bowman for winning—that was still impressive, and it’s so easy to be happy for the guy—but the race itself wasn’t what we want out of the dumb kind of motorsports.
Other NASCAR:
- Bubba Wallace teed off on Bowman during the cool-down lap, and Bowman’s response was great. Should Wallace be penalized? For consistency and safety’s sake, maybe. But it’s not Bowman’s job to litigate that. It also isn’t anti-competitive to admit when you messed up. This is part of what makes Bowman such a sympathetic character. He is who he is. He’s transparent. Whether he’s cut out for the #48 car or not, it’s great to have him in it. Like the little red-headed kid on a youth basketball team who gets torn up on defense but every now and then hits a monster three.
- Christopher Bell or Tyler Reddick winning would have been electric and would have changed the good shitshow vs. bad shitshow debate. A dramatic chasing down of the leader by a small man who is extremely good at driving racecars? Sport! (I loved Bell pushing NASCAR to drive through the rain, by the way. He’s starting to get into Kyle Larson territory where his personality is mostly being a really, really good driver.)
- On the news side, Hailie Deegan and AM Racing are going different ways immediately. Deegan’s only 23, but the Xfinity Series was not going well for her this year. Big name, long road back.
The Hybrid Engine Worked
Pato O’Ward beat Álex Palou in what turned into a duel yesterday at Mid-Ohio, but more importantly for IndyCar—a series which gets itself bumped out of the limelight for everything from NASCAR rain showers to the Tennessee Titans remodeling their stadium—the hybrid engine worked. It wasn’t a disaster.
There wasn’t a lot of concern going into the race, but even that says something good about IndyCar handling this competently. It would have been very easy for this mid-season switch to a very different technology to go terribly. It didn’t! Our guys pulled it off. They didn’t shoot themselves in the foot. Proud of them.
