MELBOURNE DIARY
G
oing from on your couch to the actual F1 paddock is a
surreal experience. A place for the drivers, team personnel,
the ultra-rich, ultra-connected, and media blowhards – in
Mebourne - I was one of those blowhards. So with that in mind, I
thought I’d keep a diary of just what went down at the Australian
Grand Prix.
Thursday
Press conferences tend to be a bit hit and miss in F1 – usually,
they’re dull, meandering affairs where drivers try their darndest to
say nothing of consequence.
Thankfully, the first one of the season provided something
of an exception, mostly thanks to Fernando Alonso. He cuts a
fascinating figure nowadays, and his joke about “equal engines”
was particularly illuminating.
It’s almost like he’s gone through the five stages of grief and
finally reached acceptance, the whole situation seems comical to
him, which is both good for his own sanity and a bad sign for
his commitment to racing – at least with McLaren. Also Lewis
Hamilton’s response that they “not [be] Honda” was priceless.
Speaking of Hamilton, until you see it in person, you don’t get a
real sense for how ostentatious his chains are. Like it’s legitimately
distracting – you’re trying to gauge just how defeated Alonso is, but
your eye keeps getting drawn to the guy who looks like he wandered
off the set of a Migos music video.
That said I do feel somewhat bad for Lewis. The amount of
attention he gets from photographers can’t be easy to deal with. He
smiles. Forty cameras go off. He frowns. Forty cameras go off. He
raises an eyebrow. Forty cameras. He shifts in his seat to let out
a sneak fart. Sixty cameras. Maybe he knows what he’s doing
wearing all the jewellery after all.
Also credit where its due to Lance Stroll, he handled himself well
in his first ever press conference. I certainly wasn’t that composed at
18 – or now really, to be honest. Maybe if he can translate that calm
to the track he won’t be a Maldonado-clone after all.