Fan Commentary

Auto Racing, Bull Fighting and Mountain Climbing

by Grandstand Bob

"Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports. . . all others are games." – Ernest Hemingway

If you’re like me and thousands of other race fans, your heart sank when you saw Steve Park’s car slam the Pocono fence and flip over. I don’t want to see any driver get hurt, and that is especially true for Steve, who has had his share of horrific hits – one of which likely caused permanent damage to his career, if not his health.

I felt the same way watching Park, as I did watching Dale Earnhardt’s last Daytona crash and Geoff Bodine’s Daytona truck crash. I feared that I just saw someone die, and I felt guilty because I was watching and hoping for the kind of excitement caused by a wreck.

Race fans don’t want to see anyone get hurt, but we do want to see crashes. Crashes add excitement to racing. It sometimes seems that if there were no crashes, there would be no race highlights. Ironically, Steve Park’s car will probably get more TV airtime this week than any other week in the past year. And we will watch. Just like fender benders on the interstate seem to demand our attention, it seems like we can’t look away when a crash occurs on the track.

I sometimes wonder if that make us modern-day peers to the Romans who watched gladiators fight to death in the name of entertainment and survival? But then I remember, crashes are a byproduct of auto racing, rather than an objective. We don’t want to see drivers intentionally causing life-threatening wrecks.

On the other hand, we don’t want to see them tippy-toeing their way around the track, more worried about not wrecking than actually racing. We accept crashes as the inevitable result of hard racing. In fact, we even want to see a few wrecks.

Yes, I said it. We want to see wrecks. Not life-threatening wrecks, but wrecks that come from good, hard racing. Wrecks that cause cautions and allow our favorite drivers to close the gaps and produce more competitive racing. Wrecks that stir a little heated emotion and even a little controversy. Wrecks are good for auto racing.

So where do we draw the line? That’s the difficult question. If Steve Park had simply spun through the grass and came to rest against the fence, the wreck wouldn’t have been memorable, and we would have passed it off as one of those racing deals, at least once we knew he was OK. However, the wreck was dramatic and looked like it could have easily killed or seriously injured him. That bothers race fans.

Hemingway said mountain climbing, auto racing and bull fighting are the only sports, because there is an element that threatens a competitor’s life. I don’t know if I agree with him completely, but I will admit that these sports do command my attention a little more than most. Anyone who can maintain focus and overcome the odds, with death the possible consequence of a mistake, deserves my respect. But that's not the only reason I’m a race fan.

Grandstand Bob Profile and Past Columns

note: This opinions expressed in this column are those of writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of ARS Racing Outlet or its parent company, amI, Inc.