The Joy is in the Journey

There’s a story my best friend enjoys telling about me. We were living together at the time in a nice 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment on the top floor of a nice building. We had both just started getting into motorsport via Formula 1 and I was all in.

I was playing F1 2021 for hours a day, reading about the principles at play when racing, practicing how to lift early into corners to save a little fuel.

It didn’t take long for me to start looking at cockpit seats and wheelbases and this and that and the other.

My research was a little more cursory than it was complete. I thought saving some space would be a good idea so I bought one of those collapsible seats. I didn’t know how much this sport would come to dominate my life so I bought a solid but lower end wheel and pedals.

The chair pissed me off. By my third pinched finger I was cussing up a storm. By the time I got everything together, saw how little space it would save even when folded up, and considered what I’d done to my bank account, I stripped it down, boxed it up and returned it the next day.

I’m not totally sure why my best friend likes that story so much but it may be the same reason my partner gets a laugh every time they remember me making pasta for them, being unhappy with a vaguely adequate result, and silently dumping it in the garbage before ordering pizza.

It’s all very me.

I went back to playing on my controller. F1 2021…and…2022…and…2023…and…2024. Assetto Corsa Competizione. Gran Turismo 7.

Some time passed and I found my eyes being drawn back to the wheel in the hands of my favorite motorsport YouTuber - Super GT. 

The Googling started. The research started. I read so many blogs and so many opinions on social media before narrowing it down to the seat, the wheel, the pedals. But by this time, I was in a 1 bedroom apartment with my partner and whatever space there may have been in my previous unit, there surely wasn’t in this one.

Then we moved and our second bedroom curled one beckoning finger toward me. Who was I to resist?

My seat was delivered a couple days ago. I put it together immediately and then proceeded to stand in the doorway and look at it. 

More than any deep, DEEP enjoyment I get from watching motorsport in all its forms, the last few days have made me feel like I did when I was a kid on Christmas Eve. I didn’t think it was possible.

Yet here it is and it isn’t going away. The joy is in the journey.

Thank you to F1. And Drive to Survive. And NASCAR. And IndyCar. And my pinched fingers. And my wounded bank account.

And you, for reading this far. I hope this sport gives you as much as it’s given me.