Some girls like bikes, excitement and money. He has 3 of those.

RK is the ultimate example. you never ever see his girlfriend or parents anywhere near F1 track.
just Morelli - the manager - in the garage.

Spot on, OK, for those who have a complex, they will find fault in anything.

A normal race broadcast lasts, what?, 2.5 hours at most. The time that the cameras are focused on the 'stars parents' is what? one minute or maybe 5 (collectively) Remember, TV is now better than it ever was, just enjoy it FFS.

But, Rich, these had stunt drivers (actors) to do the things that were exciting....no?

Rich,

I don't feel they are there just to give moral support or to cling or to use the lives of offspring as a substitute for their own achievements. I think, in most cases, they come to the races because they enjoy it and, with a child as a driver, they have the opportunity to be trackside where the excitement is. Some others might genuinely want to be there in case of the worst, while others just like to feel they share something with their children, a bond started years earlier that has lasted as they grew and changed. There are families where the lines aren't so blurred and parents don't fade into the background, just as there are very independent types who maintain a bit of distance. It takes all sorts in life. I know I wouldn't feel guilty watching a loved one from the garage, and I hope I wouldn't feel unwanted.

Will you marry me? .... Kidding of course....

That's fair enough. I guess I'm just from the latter group.

Friends, are people who you can have a disagreement with and still remain friends.

Give me a powerful stunt car, a hair-raising stunt to pull off, the smell of gasoline and a gorgeous female co-star to snog - and you can keep the car, the stunt and the smell of the gasoline.

But, what about the 'fame of an Oscar'......Mmmmm, many gorgeous females to snog......

Nothing wrong with that. It's the folks getting insulting about the dads at trackside for no reason other than that they're sick of seeing them that bug me.

If you're entire career was based on a partnership and for the first 10 years your partner put every penny and waking hour into chasing the dream for the first 5-10 years wouldn't you want to pay them back with an easy life for the next 5-10 years and invite them to join you to enjoy the fruits of your labours?

To perform at your best as a racing driver you need to feel good, if that means having your father, girlfriend or friends around then that's great. For other drivers they like the opposite I seem to remember that Keke doesn't hang around too much because it puts Nico off his game. If it helps you perform better to keep your dad hanging out in the pits with you then I see no problem with having them there.

The media is a whole different thing, at current levels I don't mind it too much but occasionally these guys get over exposed when I'd be more interested looking at a drivers engineer's face rather then his brother.

My thoughts exactly, except, that there was an ulterior motive behind this.

I think that's a good point Fonzcam. John Button is also himself a racing driver, in case many had forgotten so he's bound to get a stiffy from the smell of petrol.

Why does everybody have to live the same way? Some drivers like to have their families with them at races, some don't. What's the big deal? People really need to get a life.

As an autosport.com writer, I ask you where is your passion?

An F1 race is an F1 race - anybody with a passing interest would love to be there.

Nicole's rehearsals are another thing altogether. The F1 drivers have 'rehearsals' every January at cold wet places like Silverstone. Do you seriously think she turns up to watch them?

Just to mention two cases when the presence of relatives would produce positive actions:

F1 drivers are daring people and doesn't need Daddy to o their stuff.
However they are exposed to dangers.

In Massa's case, Hungary was the only race where Papa and Mama Massa wasn't there, only Dudu.
When Felipe had the accident, there wasn't a grow up person to decide over medical procedures.
Even when Massa was out of the Intensive Treatment, Felipe complained that Dudu wasn't looking after his confort over small things like adjusting the pillow, medicine, bathroom, etc.

In Piquet's case, Big Nelson offered himself to be present in all races to oversee and give advice to improve his performance. But Nelsinho refused his help, bcs he was cocky and wanted to be independent, doing it his own way.
It is very obvious to me that if Piquet Sr. were present at Singapore, the crashgate would never have happened.
I though initially that Nelson Sr. was too busy with his business in Brazil and couldn't follow Nelsinho worldwide, but Nelsinho denied it in a radio interview.

As a parallel to what is being discussed here, Richey Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers never once invited his parents to see him play a gig, even when they had become big.

Richey of course disappeared many years ago and I believe only this year or last was finally declared 'presumed dead' (of suicide).

Who do we think are the more balanced people, F1 drivers who love their families so much they like to have them around during the incredibly exciting sport events they take part in, or the guy who had so many issues his parents never once got to revel in the stardom and adulation in which the audience held his son, and eventually (presumably) commits suicide by jumping into an estuary?

i've skipped from the first page of the thread to this one, but i'm assuming it kicked off because of rubens's strong resemblance to his dad?

the barrichellos were hilarious in the pit garage and every TV director's dream, so of course they're going to be on screen all the time ... if i was in that position i'd be happy for my folks to attend every race, although i'd encourage them to watch the race itself from a box or decent seats purely for comfort and privacy. they'd still have paddock access if they wanted to get trackside, of course.

Not quite, but that was VERY interesting!

They even have the same male pattern baldness!

Ouch! Their foreheads gave it away IMO.

If my son was an F1 driver I'd want free tickets to the Paddock Club! Next.

Not me. Attending live events is purgatory for something unspeakably evil that I must have done in a previous life - traffic jams, battling to find parking, too many people, not enough toilets, overpriced food and drinks, merciless searing sun, earshattering noise, drunken yobbos all around and queues everywhere. And that's just at the event itself. Then there's the traveling, sorting out visas and passports and tickets, queueing and waiting at the airport, surly terrorist-phobic staff who treat you like a criminal while rummaging through the underwear in your suitcase, sitting for hours in a cramped seat in between two obese people with BO while the kid in the row in front of you vomits over everything as you try to digest the over-processed concoction of MSG, tartrazine and preservatives that passes for food on airliners. Not to mention the overpriced hotel when you get there, living out of a suitcase and eating too-rich restaurant meals, being in a country where you don't know the language, whether the tap water is safe to drink or not, and where the special on the local cuisine menu has what looks suspiciously like eyeballs floating in it. And then, when the race is over and you retire to the hotel to try and get rid of the screaming migraine from drinking warm cokes in scorching sun all day, you get kept awake all night because you got the same hotel as the package tour lager louts, who patrol the hotel corridors at three am, shirtless, three sheets to the wind, banging on the walls and bawling out Swing Low Sweet Chariot or "Here we go, here we go, here we go" because "our Jens" managed to finish sixth. Honestly, who needs it?

I've been to GP, both in the stands and in the pits, and I far prefer watching them on telly. The sofa is more comfortable than any grandstand seat, I'm out of the sun, the toilet is close by, clean and unoccupied, the food and drinks are supermarket prices, I'm not paying anything for entrance, I don't have to spend the afternoon with earplugs in, and I'm seeing more of the action than any spectator. It's not even close which of the two I prefer.

You'd have to pay me to attend a major sporting event. If I won the lottery, becoming a F1 groupie and traveling to all the races wouldn't make my list of things to do at all. And I'm not just taking a stance here. I've been offered GP trips and have turned them down. I see no appeal in it whatsoever.

You, Sir, are an *****

Blimey. And people question your passion!

That's about as good a description of attending a major overseas sporting event as I've ever seen, except it's written from a viewpoint diametrically opposed to most of the rest of the forum's readers.

You should have a go at writing stuff for a living. Oh...

Sorry, that is incorrect. Posters are posting what they feel the situation is.

I cut out the rest of your quote, for the sake of space.

May I ask what exactly you write for autosport.com, the obituaries?

I've never read something so joyless from anyone involved in motorsport journalism! I can't believe it.

Please don't tell me you cover anything higher than Ginetta race reports - and even then I would guess you'd probably not like having to queue up in traffic for maybe 20 minutes to get into a BTCC race weekend and then having to put up with a three minute walk from the farmers field cum carpark adjacent to the circuit.

Nothing. My title is out of date. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy F1. I just don't enjoy traveling or seeing live events of any stripe, F1 or otherwise.



I'm not involved in motorsport journalism. Although I think you'd be surprised if you knew how many motorsports journalists view the paddock as work, not as some sort of Utopia which puts them into instant euphoria. They might get a thrill the first time they see a driver in the flesh. It wears off pretty quickly. And then it's work, just like any other job.

I used to work for the national broadcaster, and on the nation's most popular soapie to boot. People were gobsmacked when they heard what I did, and sat with stars in their eyes saying "So you mean you work with [insert name of celebrity here]?" Yes, I did. And trust me, they can't walk on water. They're just very ordinary and unremarkable people. So no, going to work with them every day does not fill one with euphoria. It's a job like any other.

Since many of the Dads get flown in private jets, transferred in chauffeur cars, get fed by team chefs, stand in the garage not sit in terraces, and sit in the motorhome when they're not, I can see why their experience and enthusiasm for the sport differs to Rich's.

I also want to relay another story I got from a race marshall who says that it is a 'paddock fact' that John Button borrowed money from a loan shark to fund Jensen's career and that as a result of a default had both his legs badly broken. If true, and I'm certainly not putting it 'out there' as truth, I think that might go some way to explaining his enthusiasm and support, and why he might think being there is a reasonable reward for the difficulties he went through earlier in the career.

Agree with every word, then you try and go out for a feed and the restaurants are JAMMED ..... bleh.

Yeah, they get treated very well. But even with that, the constant being away from home is a hassle. I have to fly down to Cape Town on business occasionally. I stay in very nice hotels, meet very nice people and generally work productively when I'm down there. But being away from home gets to me, and that's for only two or maybe three trips a year in the same country. Flying to foreign countries 10 or 12 times a year would drive me absolutely scatty.

I can't believe that people here are so enamoured by the supposed glamour and excitement of traveling that they actually get furious with someone for not liking it. In return, I can only wish upon them a job in which regular airline travel is necessary. I know many people who do it and they all hate it. So I'm not as freakish as some might think. When you do something for a living, you approach it with a slightly different viewpoint than an obsessed fanboy. Even the mechanics nod off in between pitstops. It's just not the euphoric occupation that many seem to think it is.

If you have seen an F1 car in the flesh and witnessed all the audible and visual hurricane of one approaching you, hammering through a corner and leaving you gasping as it blasts into the distance - they you would surely find what can be provided by a TV screen as completely and utterly incomparable by its lacking in any sense of this experience??????

I just cannot grasp how anyone with a love of the sport wouldn't want to tolerate a bit of inconvenience to witness an F1 car on entry to the swimming pool section at Monaco from 15 feet away!!!

I think for some there can be too much of a good thing.

Never won the Lottery, but, having been in the position of having trips to GPs offered to me, I grabbed them with both hands (like I would a blond wife), and it is true, unless one is actually involved, it does get tiresome.

Rinehart - been there, done that, thirty years and more ago. Emo Fittipaldi used to come past me so close on the inside of Crowthorne Corner that I could see his eyeballs like boiled eggs through his visor. When Chris Amon's Matra passed underneath us as we crossed the old Dunlop bridge, we had to hang onto the bridge supports because it felt like the sound wave alone was going to knock us off our feet. And that was in the days when pit access meant pit access. Like sitting in the actual cars and talking to the actual drivers.

But there comes a time when you don't need to keep on doing it over and over. You get past the stage when seeing Jackie Stewart in the flesh is the greatest thrill of your life.

I worked in concert venues and clubs for a few years in the "Britpop era". Lots of people used to find it surprising when I told them that the last thing Mr or Miss Pop Star wants at 3 in the afternoon is a gaggle of fans at the door - they'd mostly rather have a nice shower, a good meal, some peace and quiet and then do the gig thing later on. The people around them however were working from 8 in the morning until 2 the following morning, doing a 5 hour bus trip and starting all over again. Rock'n'roll and motor racing are very similar in that respect.

They're also quite similar in that there are lots of different characters - and some of them used to bring family along, too. Many didn't, and of those who did some of the family were happy to stand quietly at the back where others wanted to be stage right, ready to leap on their cousin/uncle/brother/whoever at the moment the show finished, sometimes on the stage.

Sounds familiar, does it not?

Great read Rich, I was half expecting you to work Watney's Red Barrel in there somewhere!

Heh, I kid you not, I was going to work it in somewhere, but didn't think anybody would get the reference.

What a shame some of us grow up not to know our parents and yet we have people ashamed or feel having parents is not good for a drivers image! Pathetic people :down:Hope your kids feel you are an inconvinence who should not be seen or heard

I think the lesson from Rich's comments are, if you think you love something - don't go getting a job in it. Work is work. We like stuff that is not our work. Work sucks, no matter how it looks from the other side... Better to be a loaded fan and spend loads to be treated like God.

Yeah. I enjoy my work and always have. But it's not the type of thing that I'm going to get tremendously excited about every day, or do voluntarily in my spare time as well.

I'm an avid PC gamer and I once got a part-time gig as a game reviewer for a local site. It sounds like heaven - getting all the latest games for free and being paid to play and review them. And, for a month, it was. Then, six months later, the LAST thing I wanted to do when I got home was fire up the PC and start gaming. Thankfully, I gave up the job shortly thereafter and, over time, became an avid gamer once again.

My very first job ever was in what was then the best-stocked record shop in the country, perhaps even in the southern hemisphere. What better job could there be for a music-mad teen than to work in a place which had the entire catalogue of mainstream rock, blues, soul, R&B, jazz and what was then New Wave at your fingertips? And it was fantabulous - for a month. After six months there, I didn't want to listen to music at all. Ever. If I went out to eat, I'd try to find a restaurant that didn't play music in the background.

I've had this discussion before, where people say to me "As a F1 fan, I bet that if a team offered you a job - any job, even making tea or scrubbing the floors - you'd give your left nut to have it." And my very honest and considered answer is "I bet you I wouldn't!" I love F1, but not enough to delude myself that a job in it is the Holy Grail of eternal happiness. That's not to say that it would be miserable either. But things are always a lot more fun when you don't have to get up in the morning and do them.

Because they look like Hamilton's girlfriend.

I could with a lot less John Button or Barrichello's dad, thank you, and Tony Hamilton looks like he had Lewis when he was 9.

At 18, I was offered a job with a F1 team as interpreter and mechanic's aid for the 1984 season in the US and Canada (3 races back then), partly because of family connections, and that fact that I worked cheap (free) and could speak three languages.

after three races, I turned down an offer to move to Europe and decided that a career in F1 was not for me. It was not as glamorous as I thought it would be, more like working for a circus than anything, and the sport attracts a-holes and con men like flies to poop.

I'm the guy who handed the guy a bucket of ice water to dump on Mansell when he collapsed in front of our pit wall trying to push his Lotus in.

I don't care at all about drivers daddies in the pitlane. However, I would prefer the TV cameras showing hot grid chicks instead of those old crocks.

Well, I suppose quite a few people would dunk Nige with a bucket of ice water for free, and enjoy it too. Although admittedly it's not as appealing merely handing the bucket over to the lucky winner. As one action movie actor always described himself "I was the guy behind the guy with the gun."

i accept rich's point about work killing passion: i used to write for a *ahem* men's magazine and even pr0n gets a bit meh when you're dealing with it full-time (it never affected my appetite for the real thing, of course!). the most obvious comparison is with working in a brewery or chocolate factory ... you really can have too much of a good thing.

that said, F1 dads aren't working: they're watching their sons perform at the highest levels. i reckon my dad would quite enjoy attending the austrailan and asian GPs paddock style: choppered in, champagne lunch, good seats and a family member to cheer on. i'm just as sure he wouldn't be interested in going to europe, north america or the middle east.

He sounds like a sensible bloke. If my son made it big in F1, I'd maybe attend one GP a year. But then I'd make a proper trip of it, stay for 3 weeks or a month in the country and do a full tour, see the sights and experience the culture. The GP would just be one aspect of the trip.

That way, over two decades, I'd have attended every GP and holidayed in twenty different countries, without feeling that I was living out of a suitcase and constantly on the road. One trip per year I could handle. It's when you arrive home and your own pets treat you like a stranger that would get to me. Maybe it's because I'm getting on a bit, but home is the place where I most want to be now. Hotels, even five star ones with all the luxurious fittings and a la carte meals you can handle, are a very poor substitute.