Weekends are when a large percentage of people relax from the work week; often with a few beverages….sometimes a few too many resulting in the dreaded hangover.

As the late great Frank Sinatra said “I feel bad for people who don’t drink. When they wake up that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day”

I have to be honest, I’ve had more than my fair share of hangovers and the older I get the worse they can be and longer they can last.

Racing is an awful lot like drinking. The off season seems to drag on forever and then suddenly we overload ourselves with as much racing as we can consume as quick as possible-binge racing.

Candidly, by the end of my competitive racing season I’m always ready to be done.  The race season is a grind and with over 40 events across 5 provinces between karting and the NASCAR Pinty’s Series seeing the final checkered flag in September is a very welcome sight. Once my competition season was done I was able to simply be a race fan for a few weeks before “drying out” from racing over the winter.

The offseason in racing is very badly needed but again can also feel VERY long.  By the time the new year rolls around I’m starting to get very eager to have anything to do with racing again.  Give me something!

I was fortunate to begin my racing season in January with 4 races over 10 days in Florida.  It was great to shake off some rust and get to feel race track life again.

Shortly after I got returned from Florida Indycar was testing at Thermal in California-it wasn’t broadcast so I scoured the internet for any video posted by a team, features by reporters like the great Marshall Pruett and was largely glued to my screen watching Indycar timing and scoring and supplementing with stories on Twitter.

F1 started getting back on our screens again as teams began releasing their 2023 car liveries….I actually don’t pay any attention to this as teams rarely release their actual cars and even if they do-you can’t tell anything by how they look in a studio….we need to see them on track!  Although it was good to read some of the stories accompanying the car releases.

F1’s one and only test session of the year came just after the livery releases were complete. I watched an awful lot of testing from Bahrain. It’s very easy to put a lot of stock in the results from testing but it’s also very important to keep in mind that teams are also trying a lot of different components, setups and in the case of the Bahrain test they were even trying out new tire compounds.  Indycar testing helped scratch the itch but F1’s testing was fully broadcast with commentary.  After F1’s 3 day test I was starting to feel a bit better.

The best part of how things shook down after the Bahrain test: F1 and Indycar kicked their seasons off in less than a week!  This was the first time that I can remember F1 and Indy getting started on the same weekend.  Let the binge racing begin!

F1’s broadcasts begin on Friday if you subscribe to F1TV, without you have to wait until Saturday’s qualifying sessions. Indycar is a bit harder to find but for sake of argument let’s say you can catch qualifying on Saturday as well.

By the end of the weekend I was able to watch all 3 F1 practices, qualifying and then the race with Indycar qualifying and the race stacked on top.  I was also in Vegas which allowed me to catch the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race live on Friday night. Binge racing at its finest.  When I watch I will have main feed on my TV and then timing & scoring on my iPad or will pick a driver’s in-car camera to let me watch a specific battle. All in all I probably I probably watched 14-16 hours of racing over 3 days. And then it was over.

Now what do I do?

Last weekend I kept looking for racing to watch and it wasn’t there so I went to one of my go-to racing hangover cures: cleaned my house. 5 loads of laundry, some reorganizing and multiple trips to the recycle bin….kept me busy but I’d have rather been watching racing.

I can hear some of you saying that NASCAR was in Phoenix….yes, I know this and Phoenix is one of my favourite ovals but I’m on a bit of a boycott of the professional levels of NASCAR and wasn’t going to go out of my way to see the very predicable format of race runs one way for 95%, there’s a late race caution which turns into multiple late race cautions, the fastest car gets shuffled back and someone who wasn’t really in contention manages to win after a 2 tire pit stop and yet another Green/White/Checker finish.  I hate GWC finishes and although I’m likely in the minority would rather go back to finishing under yellow. We can fight about this later.

But now that the weekend is over my hangover feels like it is in the rearview mirror especially knowing that F1 is back this weekend in Saudi Arabia. I’m looking forward to see if the changes implemented to increase vision for the drivers will actually be noticeable (Saudi’s track is a street circuit with many high speed blind corners). Indycar has a 4 week gap from Race 1 to Race 2, that hangover is going to drag on.

CL