Burned through about half the latest season of Netflix's hit Formula One doc, "Drive to Survive," and I am happy to say it's been as fun and soapy as ever.
Alpine drivers Estaban Ocono and Pierre Gasly, who don't like each other, keep wrecking one another. McLaren stinks up the joint and then doesn't. And of course Haas team principal Guenther Steiner, the most entertaining character in the series, drops a few more F-bombs as Haas continues to slide into the abyss.
Know what else was going on while I was watching?
NASCAR put on its best show in years.
The stock-car crowd was in Atlanta over the weekend, and it was hella crazy from green to checker. People were running three-wide and running into each other in interesting ways, and the finish was one we may never see again: Four wide at the line with Daniel Suarez winning almost literally by the width of a coat of paint.
Awesome stuff, especially after the annual four hours of parading at Daytona. And if you're wondering ("Not really," you're saying) how the Blob is going to tie that race and a series about F1 together, have no fear. The interwhatsis did that quite nicely.
It is, after all, the place where stupid lives rent-free, and so here came the NASCAR fans, posting video of the Atlanta finish and asking when has F1 ever seen anything like this? And here came all the snotty F1 fans, saying NASCAR's nothin' but taxicabs runnin' into each other, while F1 is a technical marvel.
"Great, go back to watching Max (Verstappen) winning every race and leading 96 percent of the laps," NASCAR Fan said, or words to that effect. "Oooh, how exciting!"
"You can't possibly compare NASCAR to F1," F1 Fan replied, or words to that effect. "That's just ridiculous"
Speaking of ridiculous, allow the Blob to break the tie.
See, I love what NASCAR gave us in Atlanta. It was stock car racing at its best, and what it should be all the time but too often isn't these days.
But I also love F1, even if Max does win every week. That's because a lot of the drama happens behind him, with Ferrari, Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren all brawling for podiums and constructor points.
In other words, they're two completely different forms of motorsport, with different mentalities and priorities at work. You really can't compare them, and not because one is better or more compelling than the other. One's primarily oval racing; the other is a road and street course circuit. One of course is a stock car series; the other is an incredibly sophisticated, deeply political open-wheel series.
The cars are different. The drivers are different. The pressures are different, and yet somehow alike when you factor in the goal -- winning, or at least getting closer to winning -- that creates those pressures.
It all boils down to the same thing: Fast guys trying to go faster than other fast guys. It's the common denominator that ties NASCAR to F1 to IndyCar to LeMans to Saturday nights on the local dirt or cracked asphalt.
They have nothing in common. And, of course, they have everything in common.
So why not appreciate each for what it is, not what it isn't?
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