This was my realm. This was my sport.

It's been three months since I last wrote on this blog, but certainly not for lack of want.  If I had the time to devote to writing my thoughts and experiences, I would, but instead medical school has consumed my life even more so than last year.  And I didn't think that would be possible.

What started inauspiciously enough soon turned into the most relentless semester I have ever had in any form of schooling, and to complicate that, countless out-of-school things have been seriously affecting me as well.  Unfortunately there hasn't been a ton of good in my life lately, but I can't despair too much since I'm still alive and my family is also alive and healthy, too (the latter being rather pertinent in the last couple of months).

Still, the combination of school and life has made my existence pretty exhausting and lonely.  And as one thing builds upon another, I find myself spiraling downward into getting busier and busier, getting more and more determined to dig myself out of the hole of a setback that I'm in.  With that determination, though, comes worry.  For the first time in my life I find myself unable to get the worries of school out of my head.

I went to a football game on Saturday, yet all I could think about was school.  When I hang out with others (which doesn't happen terribly often given my schedule), my mind rarely wanders away from school for very long at all.  It's been awful and not something I can see myself shaking until this semester is over.  I hate it, and I hate that med school doesn't allow me the time to deal with things, so I just have to keep going, which really sucks.  But this blog post isn't supposed to be a complain-fest of sad stories and worried parlance.

One of the few bright spots in the past few months, as foolish as it may sound, has been racing.  I've mentioned before that it's one of the only things I have allowed myself to enjoy in school, and as problems and concerns have mounted this season, and as I've whittled more and more things away from my life, F1 has remained.

Nowhere was this more evident than the epic trip we took to Austin last weekend for my birthday to go to the US Grand Prix.  The journey and our stay in the Lone Star State was incredible, and so many times it seemed that the stars aligned for us to make for an even better, more unbelievable weekend.

We got tons of free stuff; we met wonderful people from all over the world; we stood next to Niki Lauda, Damon Hill and Johnny Herbert; we were personally shown an actual helmet worn by Ayrton Senna the year we were born (1988); I met one of my Twitter followers for the first time after he had been working on a vintage racecar; we got interviewed by the track entertainment personnel and were broadcast on the big screens in front of 113,000 people; we got to invade the track and made friends with some members of the Lotus F1 team (who gave us some brilliant team hats); and so much more.  I couldn't believe it.

I also couldn't believe that for over two days, I almost never thought of med school.  Heck, when we were at the track, it never crossed my mind.  Only in passing after we left the track each day did it ever enter my mind, and it was wonderful.  I felt like a person again.  I felt like an actual human being who could have passions and had a hobby to which I could devote time.  For once people were asking ME questions, and I was the only one who could answer them.  This was my realm.  This was my sport.

Looking back, I'm amazed at the transformation in me as I got nearer to Formula 1 last weekend.  Even on the way back, in the middle of the night several hours into our 14-hour drive, I was feeling so tired.  I was around 110 miles into my first or second stint, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to go much longer before switching with my friend.  While he slept in the backseat, the only other person awake in the car started asking me about F1.  We talked about "Rush", we talked about Bernie and his legacy, we discussed the recent history of some of the sport's luminaries, and we speculated on the future of Grand Prix racing.  In no time at all, I had taken us over 220 miles and was feeling rather refreshed.  For the first time in recent memory I could speak about something with confidence and excellent recall, and there wasn't a question I couldn't answer.

Over the course of the weekend I ended up driving over 1,100 miles, and I was beyond exhausted.  But it was worth it.  For one weekend I felt alive again, so strikingly refreshed that I could breathe in the sport's nuances and feel them in my blood.  I was no longer lonely, for once being completely surrounded by people who shared a common love with me that every other day of the year draws confused looks and erroneous comparisons.  It was one of the most memorable birthdays I've ever had.

Fast-forward one week later, though, and the teams are celebrating tonight in Sao Paulo, Brazil, capping off a long season whose twists and turns reach back to a warm March day in Australia.  They bid adieu to V8 engines, another year of Red Bull/Sebastian Vettel domination, Ross Brawn at Mercedes, and one of my favorite drivers.  Mark Webber's surprisingly emotional end to his Formula 1 career went by far too quickly, although he tried to prolong it as best he could.  But that's a whole other blog post.

Tonight I'm wondering what the next few months will be like for me, and it saddens me to know that something that was such a big part of what little life I had left is going to be absent for a third of a year.  I would be lying if I said that worries of the coming finals for med school aren't creeping into my head tonight as a result, but I'll live.  I always have.  The end of seasons always make me a little sad, but with everything else that has gone on this year, it's difficult not to take that loss a little harder.  Still, I can reflect on a brilliant season, and I can look forward to the changes that will hopefully shake up the sport for the better.  While I remain skeptical on some of them, others I think will only do good things for Formula 1.  Only time will tell.

So tonight I join hundreds of millions of F1 fans around the world to say goodbye to the 2013 season, hoping that my life next March will be accommodating enough to let it back into my everyday enjoyment.  But for two and a half more hours tonight it's still race day, and earlier this morning a Grand Prix was run in front of some of the most storied and passionate F1 fans in the world.  Life was good.  Let the offseason begin tomorrow.

Forty-five years on, why Jim Clark's death still matters to Formula 1

Forty-five years ago yesterday, the world of Formula 1 changed forever.  Shockwaves rang all around the globe.  The racing community entered a state of shocked mourning.  Jim Clark was dead.

His fatal injuries delivered amidst the dense forests of the Hockenheimring, no one saw the crash that took his life.  Yet as his crumpled F2 Lotus lay smoldering in the trees, some of the greatest drivers of the day began to reassess their participation in the sport.

“If Jim Clark could die at the hands of a race car, what are our chances?” they began to ask.  Formula 1 was inherently dangerous, of course, but for it to have taken the life of the greatest driver of all time, especially in such a nondescript, mysterious way in a junior series, something was wrong.

In that day, it was not an easy task to upset F1 drivers.  They knew how deadly their sport was.  All of them grew up watching and participating in local competitions, the informality of which lent itself to terrifying and often fatal accidents.  They were not so far removed from the board track days of commentators yelling ‘The fearless racers are coming into town tonight, risking life at every turn for your entertainment!’  They knew that from the beginning of the season until the end, at least one of their fellow drivers would not make it, and that was that.

But Clark’s death shook the drivers in such a way that had not been felt in ages.  Graham Hill, Jackie Stewart, Jack Brabham, John Surtees and Chris Amon---all friends and competitors of Clark---were deeply troubled by his loss.  Ask any driver today who raced with Clark in that time period, and they’ll tell you that crash resonates as strongly today as it did 45 years ago.

So why does this matter?  Nearly half a century has passed.  The old Hockenheim is gone, swallowed by the trees that took many lives over the years, and somewhere in the middle of it is a small, humble memorial set up for the two time World Champion Jim Clark.  So we lost an incredible driver.  That’s happened again since then, so why does this anniversary matter to Formula 1 today?

After Clark’s death, drivers like Jackie Stewart began to see the errors of their sport.  What is now runoff and gravel traps at modern circuits used to be fences and trees to the world of 1960s Grand Prix racing.  This was still four years removed from F1 making seat belts mandatory.  Drivers died just as often of fire from the metal fuel tanks on which they sat as they did from the actual crashes.

“We thought hay bales were enough to protect the crowds,” legendary motor sport journalist Chris Economaki told me years ago.  It was a nonchalant feeling that if you wanted to go watch a race, you were willing to sit in the path of a 180mph metal rocket full of a flammable cocktail of fluids.  After Jim Clark, and reinforced by the horror at Monza in 1961 (a crash of which Clark had been a part), this began to change.

Stewart’s now-famous march toward greater F1 safety started after a harrowing and terrifying crash at Spa-Francorchamps, but his resolve was further strengthened 45 years ago yesterday when his friend and on-track rival Clark was killed.  The feelings and ensuing changes were not unlike what modern racing went through when Ayrton Senna lost his life at Imola 19 years ago:  A World Drivers Champion killed in his car after setting the racing world on fire and breaking F1’s longstanding records.  People were shocked.  People demanded change, and they got it.  From Senna’s death, Formula 1 is a safer place, forced to reassess its mentality and thoroughness in driver care.

But F1 would not have been in such a position and arguably may not have had as much success were it not already shocked several times in the past by such losses.  Not to overlook or downplay the role that losing Gilles Villeneuve, Jochen Rindt, Ronnie Peterson or countless others had in the previous 30 years before Imola, but losing the Flying Scotsman was different at that time.

He was not just a World Champion, he was everywhere.  In 1965 alone he competed in 59 different events, ranging from the Tasman Series, to the Indianapolis 500, to Formula 1, to F2 and sports cars.  He won the Indy 500 once (and came close several other times were it not for mechanical issues).  He dabbled in NASCAR (something few remember, but he had relative success were it not for mechanical problems there, too).  He won more Tasman championships in Australia and New Zealand than F1 championships, all the while winning more Grands Prix and capturing more pole positions than any Grand Prix driver in history.  And he only finished second in one race in his entire 71-race F1 career.

His attention to even the minutest details made him a perfectionist both in and out of the car---and in racing that’s not always a bad thing.  But people criticized him, saying he could only win from pole position and that he couldn’t fight his way through the field.  His choice to race the Indy 500 instead of the Monaco Grand Prix drew ire from some.  But Clark was not interested in this.

He would fire back at the critics through carefully written newspaper columns, but he would leave it at that.  His gentle schoolboy-like demeanor would disappear when he stepped into a racecar and tightened his dark blue Bell Magnum helmet onto his head.  And that’s how many remember him.  The rather demure personality and finger biting Jim Clark disappeared in the race car, where he instead entered a state of zen, never driving out of anger or aggression.  He was on another level, both with his competition and his car handling.

But when Clark’s funeral was attended by racing legends from all over the globe, the sport collectively took a step back and wondered what could be done.  The result was a slow and steady march toward the safety of Grand Prix racing as we know it today.  It also forced the fans to grapple with the mortality of even the best drivers out there---something that the crowd, even today, tend to forget or set aside. 

One thing they don’t forget is the brilliance of a youngster named Jim Clark.  Ask any racing driver out there, and they will hold Clark in high regard.  Ask IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti, who has an enormous collection of Clark memorabilia filling rooms of his house, and he’s incredibly quick to tell you that his countryman was the greatest racing driver who ever lived.  Will we see another Jim Clark in our era?  Perhaps not.  There has never been anyone quite like him, and although he was only in the international racing spotlight for under a decade, tales of his skill and accomplishments are known worldwide and are still discussed in Formula 1 circles today.  His loss changed Grand Prix racing, but so did his driving and charisma while he was alive.  That’s why the anniversary matters.  That’s why he matters.

Romain's Renaissance

In his first lap of testing earlier this week Romain Grosjean’s car went spinning into the gravel in Barcelona, and the cynics of the F1 world let out a chuckle.  Could they expect anything less from the man branded the “First-lap nutcase” by Mark Webber last season?  But maybe that mentality will change in the media this season partially because of Grosjean’s admittance of using a psychologist last season.

Speaking to reporters at the test, the Frenchman revealed that he started seeing a sports psychologist last September in the midst of an F1 season marred by a string of incidents that eventually led to a one-race ban.

“It's not a secret that I started work with a psychologist in September last year and it went very well during the winter,” Grosjean said.  “I had a lot of discussion with Genii [the financial and investment firm that sponsors the Lotus Team] to try to help them understand and take the right decision. And when they called me to say, 'Okay we go again for one more year' I was more than happy.”

Grosjean’s openness about seeking help is a welcome change to professional sports in general, although the impact of his reveal may not change the face of racing.  Instead it’s a reminder of the human side of the sport that so many gloss over.

In F1 especially there is a mentality of placing blame quickly and accurately.  If an incident occurs, people want to know who the stewards will punish and how.  If cars careen off the track, whose fault is it?  Have they done it before?  If so, then punish them more!

That’s not to say this mentality is flawed, though.  In a sport where lives are frequently put in danger through dangerous or careless moves, drivers must be made to stay in line and race in a safe way.  But in Grosjean’s case, stewards’ decisions were not the tipping point, whether he admits this or not.

*  *  *

It was relatively cool for Bahrain standards, but the steamy race at the Sakhir circuit in late April of last year looked to be a defining one for Romain Grosjean.  Starting P7, the Frenchman made a brilliant start and began a slow and steady march through the field.

By the fourth lap he had disposed of Mark Webber in the champion Red Bull RB8.  Three laps later he was by Lewis Hamilton.  He needed to keep this up.

Using tyre strategy to his advantage, Grosjean ran P2 in the late stages of the race before his teammate, on better tyres, got by him.  Still, he stayed with the frontrunners in the closing laps and secured the first podium of his short career.

He was ecstatic, becoming the first Frenchman to stand on an F1 podium in 14 years, and he beamed with the promise of a long season ahead after such incredible early returns.  He followed that up with a fourth place finish, then a P2, sprinkling a “Fastest Lap” honor in there as well.  Another second place finish and podium ensued.  Good things were in store for Romain Grosjean.

*  *  *

“We had good results (last season),” Grosjean said at the Lotus car launch a while back.  “Quicker than I was expecting, but maybe I wanted a little too much.”

If there’s anything of which F1 drivers could be accused, it’s certainly not lack of want.  Any driver lacking passion to win would not have made it to Formula 1, and Grosjean is no exception (especially since this is his second go-around in the sport after a disastrous campaign alongside Fernando Alonso at Renault).  So yes, maybe Grosjean was a little overambitious in some of his moves and decisions, but I think his issue is a deeper one.

The picture that the media painted of Grosjean was not a pretty one.  Far from being hateful, everyone began to associate him with crashes.  Internet memes celebrated his failures.  Drivers laughed when being asked about starting a race near him.  If he and Maldonado were in the same sector, look out!

Whether Romain has acknowledged these characterizations of him, I have no idea.  One can be sure that it weighed on him every time he found himself in a tricky situation.  Every decision must now be reconsidered.  ‘If I mess this up, will I be giving everyone more fodder?  I have to stay clean.’

*  *  *

On the second day of September, the 2012 Belgian Grand Prix began at the might Spa-Francorchamps.  Romain Grosjean started P9 on the run to La Source hairpin, but few remember his starting position.  Even fewer remember the clutch slip by Pastor Maldonado that caused the field to splay, or the launch that Grosjean got to position himself on the inside line at the first corner.

In the blink of an eye, it happened.  Hairpins like La Source lend themselves to crashes on race starts, but this one was different.  Grosjean found Hamilton to his inside, and in a split second the two had touched wheels.  Everyone remembers the crash that ensued, seeing Grosjean punt Perez before becoming airborne.  Everyone remembers the scary onboard image from the cockpit of Alonso’s Ferrari, and everyone remembers the runoff littered with carbon fiber and steaming cars.

Grosjean would earn a one race ban for his involvement in the incident, and a short time later he sought the help of a sports psychologist.  His approach to racing and his handling of the pressure that came with his incidents needed rethinking.  Romain Grosjean knew that his career could be significantly shortened, but not because of his driving, but because of the space between his ears.

*  *  *

Regardless of how accurate the depictions of Grosjean’s accident-causing nature have been, his courage to seek help both in the interest of his career and for the safety of those around him is unprecedented in modern Grand Prix racing.  It is a situation in stark contrast with the cutthroat nature of F1 where a driver’s underachieving inevitably means his career will be over as soon as his contract allows.

For Romain to take a step back and try to better his career underlies the notion that drivers are human and are incredibly susceptible to issues of self-confidence and doubt.

As media and fans, we are quick to praise the drivers that find themselves in such beautiful flow in a racecar---a phenomenon that is centered in the mind.  But we are equally as quick to pin everything on the driver when he has a string of bad finishes, accidents or incidents.  We remove the mental aspect of the sport in these situations and just assume that there was a dumb decision, a momentary lapse of judgment.  Put two or three of those incidents near each other on the calendar and people label the driver as a “problem.”

This is the spiral that Grosjean entered.  The ban forced him to rethink his role in the team and his approach to the races.  Even so there were still incidents in the next Grands Prix:  He ran into Webber in the very next race at Suzuka, he was part of a first lap incident in Abu Dhabi, and he hit the HRT of Pedro de la Rosa in Brazil.  The end-of-season break was extremely welcomed by Romain if not only for the fact of getting the bad taste out of his mouth.  He would have work to do in the offseason, though.

*  *  *

Tom Kristensen is a racing legend.  His eight victories in Le Mans and his stellar track record in endurance racing and DTM will attest to this.  How could a maligned, laughing stock of a racer compare to this, much less beat him head-to-head on an international stage?

This was the situation facing Romain Grosjean in Bangkok, Thailand last December.  After a dream finish of second in the Nations Cup of the Race of Champions, Grosjean had improbably worked his way through the Champion of Champions bracket and found himself in the final against Kristensen---a man who has been there before.

The story would be too fantastic to write if the Frenchman won, but what a better way to usher in the new season than by beating one of the best?

Two races and two victories later, though, and Romain Grosjean was the 2012 Champion of Champions.  He had won the honor that has evaded Kristensen to this day, and the media began to see a changed driver.  He was smiling more; he was excited for the future again.  He was thrilled to hoist the trophy that few believed he would ever win.

One day later he received news that he would be driving for the Lotus F1 Team in 2013.

*  *  *

“He’s a different guy now,” Lotus chairman Gerard Lopez said.  “He knows what he has to do.  He doesn’t have that pressure, stress. … We essentially have told him he's got a long-term future with us so now he can literally take it race by race, practice by practice."

And it’s that freedom from pressure that should propel Grosjean to bigger and better things.  Having been a champion in every series in which he’s run, the Frenchman is well aware of what it will take to find success in Formula 1.  He also knows that the key to that success lies not in the engineering of a carbon fiber and titanium, four-wheeled rocket.  It lies within his mind.

On Friday Grosjean ran a successful program for Lotus in testing at Barcelona, and at the end of the day he sat at the top of the timesheets.  Granted, times don’t mean much in testing, but tell that to Romain Grosjean’s confidence.

My interview with American GP3 driver Conor Daly: Barcelona, Force India and Hares!

American Conor Daly has been working his way up the racing ladder steadily for the past few years, but many more Americans took notice when the 20 year-old won the second of two GP3 races in Barcelona earlier this season.  Following that with a straight-line test for the Force India F1 team before heading to Monaco, Daly’s first full year in GP3 has proved to be a busy one, but I caught up with Conor for a candid interview about this whirlwind of a year shortly before the Monaco round of the GP3 championship.

Daly, the son of former CART and Formula 1 racer Derek Daly, is a former World Karting Association champion and multiple winner in Skip Barber and Formula Ford.  Originally entering the Road to Indy, which aims to aid racers in ascending to the IndyCar series, Daly won the Star Mazda Championship in record-setting fashion in 2010 (nine poles and seven wins) before moving on to Indy Lights the following year with Sam Schmidt Motorsports.  After capturing victory in Long Beach, Daly competed in GP3 with Carlin Motorsports (splitting his season between Europe and the United States).

But throughout all of these accomplishments, Daly has perhaps garnered the most attention in just four races in GP3.  Currently fifth in the championship standings with 23 points, Daly won the Barcelona sprint race on the opening weekend of the GP3 season, but it wasn’t easy.

What many people didn’t realize was that Daly had already been offered a spot testing the Force India before the opening weekend of the GP3 season---something he called “a nice little incentive” for those first two races.  However, that didn’t make things simpler for him in the feature race.

After a great qualifying, Daly dropped several spots at the start, from which he was never able to recover.

“I saw the pole sitter, [António Félix] da Costa jump and I released the brake just slightly which made me pull in the clutch paddle so when the lights actually went out I was slipping the clutch way too much,” Daly said.  As a result the car stayed relatively stationary before creeping away slowly.  Despite the disastrous start, the clutch had only been slipping for a total of 2.4 seconds.  “It was definitely my fault, and it was sad because I was in a good position to try and win but unfortunately I wasn't able to do so,” he lamented.

Over the course of the race a difficult battle with Marussia Manor Racing’s Tio Ellinas developed until a late safety car bunched the field together.  In the ensuing sprint to the end, Daly’s main focus was finishing the race in one piece and setting himself up for the sprint race, which would invert the top eight finishers from the feature.  He would go on to finish P6, which meant he would start P3 on the inverted grid for the sprint finale.

More jump starts saw penalties befall those in front of him, and the sprint race quickly became a one-man show with Daly pulling away.  He later revealed that in the final few laps he had to keep himself from thinking too much about what would happen if he won.  Instead he made himself concentrate more.

“The car was so good that I was able to focus on hitting my marks and just finishing out the race,” he said.  “I had to manage the tires towards the end and was able to finish with a good gap behind me so I was quite happy.”

 One of the best moments of the weekend for American fans was seeing Daly holding the American flag as he celebrated in parc ferme after the race.  Where did the flag come from, though?

 “I made sure to have my Dad bring the American flag from home because I knew I would get to use it at some point this year, I just didn't honestly think it would be this soon!  I was so thrilled to hear the American national anthem.   It was a very emotional moment and I can't really describe the feeling I had.  I was relieved because I knew that I was starting to prove myself in Europe.  I was extremely happy but it’s just the beginning and I can't wait to get to the next race in Monaco!”

For the rest of the weekend the young American was approached by numerous luminaries of the GP3, GP2 and F1 worlds.  At one point he was even congratulated by Ferrari F1 team principal Stefano Domenicali---the importance of which was not lost on the Indiana native.

“It is always nice to know people are watching,” Daly smiled.  “I don't want to get too caught up in it, though, because it’s a long season and I just want to focus on keeping the good finishes coming and scoring points to be there for the championship at the end.”

I have to ask, then, are any future deals coming out of some of those important conversations?

Daly laughed.  “Not that I know of at the moment!”

Fast forward to the Force India test a few days later. This was Conor’s first taste of a Formula 1 car.  Obviously he had grown up hearing about the machines, but the jump between GP3 and F1 technology had to be a great one.

 “They are indeed massively different cars.  The F1 car was absolutely incredible.  I was pretty much living every childhood dream I ever had!  There are just so many different settings on the steering wheel and it is a far more technically advanced race car than anything else in the world,” he explained.

But the coolest thing, if he had to choose something?

“Ultimately, though, the coolest thing had to be the sound under hard acceleration; just absolutely beautiful.”

Since the test was a straight-line test---one of the few types of testing that has been allowed by the FIA over the past few years---Daly had plenty of opportunities to accelerate and decelerate, sometimes being told to accelerate as hard as he possibly could (which he described as being “the best part” of the session).  There was a brief moment, however, when he got to test out the handling as well.

Somewhere around 150 mph a hare ran out onto the Cotswold Airport runway where Daly was testing (located in Gloucestershire, England).  Although it wasn’t as much of a near-miss as some would like to think, Daly said he ‘did have to make his way around [the hare] as it sprinted away.’

Surprisingly, having worked with the Lotus GP3 team and now Vijay Mallya’s F1 team, Daly says that the two squads are extremely different, but only because the Lotus GP3 team is really ART GP.

“It's funny because everyone thinks because we have the same name that we are heavily affiliated with the Lotus F1 team but really we aren't,” he explained.  “Lotus GP is really ART GP which has been one of the best teams in the world competing in junior formula car racing.  Fortunately, though, the [ART GP] team has aligned themselves with the Lotus F1 team which gives us the cool color scheme and a great historic name.”

 Even so, Daly says with a chuckle that he is yet to meet anyone from the Lotus F1 team.

From there Conor was going to be heading to Monaco---somewhere he had never raced but had always dreamed about experiencing.

“I have been looking forward to this race since it was announced on our schedule.  I love street courses,” he said.  “I have raced on many street courses in America, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every single one.  Now I get to race on what is arguably the best street course in the world!”

Citing the 27 cars that will be taking part in the race, Daly noted that he may need a little luck when it comes to avoiding the inevitable traffic jams, but through simulator work and studying the track, he felt very comfortable leading up to the race.  He even mentioned that he was most looking forward to “pushing the limit in qualifying and using every inch of the track to try and get the pole.”

So, with one victory in the first two races, Daly would head to the French Riviera to the legendary and dangerous streets of Monte Carlo, where few could have predicted the outcomes of that weekend’s races.  We’ll catch up with Conor and get his thoughts on Monaco and the following round of the GP3 championship (Valencia, Spain) next time.