SOMETHING is wrong with a sport where you attend a live event, only to watch it on television. In 2005, I reported the Melbourne Grand Prix, and parts of it were barely more exciting than the North Dakota Knitting Championships.
To peer out of the pressroom was to see blurry automobiles appear, roar, leave. A minute or so later, they did an encore.
If it wasn't for TV, drivers could have stopped for a fist fight and a smoke somewhere else on the track, and I'd never know.
My colleagues, some who wish their wives smelled of petrol not Poison, said: "Don't fuss, enjoy the experience."
For them, going home with a crick in the neck and bruised ear drums is like some ancient tribal ritual.
Moving cars have never moved me, and racing's vocabulary has never grabbed me. For me, throttle is what I want to do to phone-talkers in cinemas, and bonnet is what Kelly McGinnis wore prettily in Witness.
Anyway, speed terrifies me, and if a car snakes over 80kmh, I start hyperventilating worse than when Alex Ferguson sees the colour blue.
Undoubtedly, F1 cars have a graceful, growling beauty, though the way men fuss over these chariots makes me wonder what Freud might have made of all this.
Unquestionably, F1 drivers, who make rapid decisions while precisely manoeuvring these missiles at 300kmh, sometimes through an opaque curtain of spray like at Monza, have my complete respect.
But not my affection.
Nascar driver Kyle Busch, explaining his art to a US magazine, said: "The key to driving is your ass. You have to feel what your car is doing, and that feel is in your rear end. Very poetically put, but we do not see a driver's rear end, or his any end, for his body is packed into a car, his head encased in a helmet.
The best sport ensures an emotional connection between watcher and athlete, but the invisibility of the driver interferes with this. I cannot see his shoes tapping on pedals faster than a pianist nor his perfect synchronisation of hands and feet.
I want to see desperation, vomiting, sweat, anxiety, even impassiveness, and the athletes' ability to summon skill in the midst of suffering. But nothing is visible here and effort is revealed to us only in a clinical fashion: weight lost per race, 3 to 4kg.
We cannot hear these men, no triumphant roar, no frustrated bellow, except for two seconds of radio communication, so scratchy it appears to arrive from Mars. Are these men real? I am not reassured even when they exit their cars, for they sit at press conferences like a gathering of cardboard cut-outs.
For all the gathering of models, this is a sport absent of distinctive styles. Football clubs play the game in different ways, basketball teams have their own tactical style, and tennis stars are easily told apart (Roger Federer creates, Rafael Nadal runs).
But drivers these days (unlike the unique Nigel Mansell and Michael Schumacher) offer a sameness.
There is no obvious personality to their driving, barring a defiant Lewis Hamilton, who often resembles an irate
Calcutta taxi driver who is late for lunch.
But the problem isn't just the drivers, it's the cars, it's the arcane rules that are harder to understand than Sanskrit, it's the tracks. After all, sometimes there's more overtaking to be found at a funeral procession. Just listen to the experts.
In March, Renault's Flavio Briatore said: "The races are too long and predictable. Things would be much more interesting when the fastest driver would start from the back at the grid. They would be able to overtake and the spectacle would benefit."
Recently Hamilton said: "In Valencia, there was no overtaking at all, so it can be a bit dull. I definitely support the move to try to make Formula One more exciting."
For all its sleek muscle, I can't identify with the F1 car. And that's a problem.
Part of the exceptional quality of Federer, Tiger, Ronaldinho is that they take the same racquets, clubs, balls we use, and then play a completely different sport with them. A Wilson is a dull stick in my hands, but a wand in Federer's.
But with F1 cars there is always this separation, what equipment they use we can barely comprehend. The only similarity between the F1 Toyota and my old burping Camry was that both rode very low, the latter unintentionally.
The essential contest in sport is also man versus man, and F1 fails here. The heart of this contest seems more wires
than will. A machine, not a man, determines not who will win but, worse, who can win.
For all his dexterous skill, an F1 driver often cannot make up the gap between cars that engineers create. It makes for predictability: in the 31 races in 2007-08, 29 have been won by Ferrari and McLaren-Mercedes (Sebastian Vettel in Monza was a dazzling exception).
The car also interferes with a basic function of competition: The ability to identify the best in the world. In tennis Nadal rules, in the pool it is Michael Phelps. Greatness is clear, it can be appreciated, understood and measured against.
But the best driver is harder to find.
You can't win an F1 title unless you are gifted, but you can't win a title without a gifted car. Fernando Alonso was driver of the year in 2005-06, but is now seventh in the title race. Has he declined, or his car?
But for all that, there are parts of Formula One I enjoy. The frenetic start. The no-violence fans. Hamilton in the rain. A prowling Ferrari. So am I going to the Singapore Grand Prix? Of course.
And if someone gives me a limousine, ear plugs, a widescreen television, free champagne and a seat next to Naomi
Campbell if she shows up, I could even learn to love this sport.
This article was first published in The Straits Times on Sept 20, 2008.
