Australia


The open wheel racing season gets underway tonight with the first practice session for the FIA Formula One Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. I probably won't stay up to watch practice tonight, it's already Friday down under, but I'll be glued to the Speed Channel tomorrow night for qualifying. Formula One is the ultimate proving ground for Motor Sport, it's the best of the best of the best. While it does have a small but devoted fan base in America, it's in Europe, Asia and South America that grand prix racing is the king of sports. Even with the crazy time differences, this weekends race will be watched by over a billion people, dwarfing the audience for our own Super Bowl. Once the series makes it's way to it's European base, television viewership will climb to around 2 billion.

All of which pretty much puts NASCAR to shame and anything that does that is okay in my book. Go Ferrari!

3 comments:

Jacq | March 13, 2008 at 11:00 PM

Damn, that thing looks like it could go REAL, REAL FAST!!!!!!!!

I'm a retired speed demon. Don't be showing me this stuff!!!! heh

Kelly | March 13, 2008 at 11:06 PM

They are damn quick, so quick that they can hit 190 mph in just about 10 seconds and then got to 10 mph in about 3 seconds. F1 cars are the most advanced autos in the world and the teams that race in F1 have budgets in the range of $500 million a year. You should check them out, it's pretty cool to see them in action. They have this real high pitched sound that is just wild and when you are at the track, the sound of the gears downshifting is like cannon fire.

Unknown | March 15, 2008 at 12:55 AM

I knew there had to be another girl out there somewhere in the USA who loved F1...just a shame you're with the wrong team ;-)

Isn't great to have it back though, the 4 month off season is always so damn long!