The Color of Nostalgia
Growing up, I didn’t know much about motorsports.
Well, I knew about NASCAR, and I knew that the kids who liked NASCAR also liked tractors and wore WWE t-shirts. I knew about drag races because my mom’s friend in California had a glossy poster of a drag car, spouting fire from its exhaust (maybe it was just a calendar?). What I knew about Formula 1, I learned from the odd 10pm race rerun.
My plastic model of Speed Racer’s car, Mach 5, featured in countless imaginary chase scenes. I loved Hot Wheels, especially the cars that looked like fighter jets. I was okay at Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing and I preferred Burnout to Need for Speed. I liked the Lego sets with pullback motors – “Nitro Pulverizer” and “Hot Scorcher” (thanks Google). I saw Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift in theaters and became infatuated with the concept of “drifting”. Still, I’d have never said I was into cars or racing.
I can’t say I was ever very competitive or particularly intense, either.
My experience with sports was limited. I didn’t like to see other people lose. The day I got my driver’s license, I was too anxious to drive home. I got a motorcycle license and thought I might eventually race (delusional) but the bike never became more than a fun hobby for Minnesota summers. I just didn’t see myself as someone who could ever get that fired up about something.
But that really started to change in May 2021 when my best friend told me about F1. We started watching a Netflix show - Drive to Survive. It became an iconic time in my life. It was a dry summer. We drank a lot of espresso. I met my wife, eagerly sharing everything I knew about F1 on our first date. Thank God she liked me.
When it came to F1, I lived vicariously through the pageantry, the personalities, the wealth, and the intense action of hour and half long races condensed into a slick series of overtakes and pitstops interspersed with narrative commentary and crew radio. I was hooked on the premise: high tech, high stakes, high performance.
Shortly thereafter, I witnessed Hamilton’s epic race at Silverstone, at the edge of my seat, watching in awe as he battled his way to a first-place finish. I remember thinking “I need to get a job with the Mercedes F1 team, whatever it takes.” Surely, this was the stuff of legend - man and machine on the limit. Life-changing ideas began to percolate.
As always, my best friend (and roommate, in those days) dove in headfirst. He got the F1 PlayStation game and set to work mastering every track. He progressed to Assetto Corsa, then to Gran Turismo 7. A racing rig was purchased and subsequently returned when it proved too large for our living room to accommodate. We consumed copious amounts of F1-related content. My interest in project management and performance improvement was catalyzed by hour-long interviews with Toto Wolff and driver vlogs.
At the time, my understanding of motorsport was limited to screens and headphones, informed solely by podcasts and F1’s splendorous and exotic storytelling. I had no practical experience of the sport.
Then we went to Road America to see an IMSA race.
The experience bordered on transcendent. With giddy anticipation – the kind I remember experiencing as a child, catching the first glimpse of Disneyland through palm trees – I crested one more hill among the emerald green wave function that is Wisconsin in August, and heard the roar of engines.
Captured between a million, slow waving trees and the curving vault of clear, blue sky, the sunlight turned the color of nostalgia. I was transported to the summers of years gone by – my best friend at my side. Green was more than green. It was the sensation of a deep breath that made it all the way to the belly. Sun-warm breeze moved like a smile across my cheeks. The air was clear, holding the almighty thunder of a hundred pistons firing, chasing wildly, one after another. Oh yeah – it was a good weekend to go racing.
There was a lot going on. It turned out that racing was at least a three-part production, combining the best aspects of a car show, county fair, and competitive sports. We toured the track on foot while qualifying was underway, stopping for beer or French fries as needed, ducking into the ice bath cool of an air-conditioned merch store to contemplate purchasing t-shirts for teams we knew little about and prints of 1960’s era magazine covers. We ogled at the traveling circus tractor trailers where mechanics worked diligently on half-assembled cars, imagining lives for ourselves as part of those teams.
Race day was rainy. Sticking it out through heavy downpours felt like a credibility-multiplier for the fan in me and when the race drew to a close, my excitement for the winner was not diminished by limited familiarity with the drivers. Heading home, I was elated. My friend and I recounted the highlights and half-jokingly planned our quickest paths to becoming racers or team principals. My horizons felt big and my eyes have been open a bit wider ever since.
