2. misc-audio
  3. 176036-141754

Does Formula 1 racing and high end audio go together for anyone else?

I don't think nearly as many in the US are into F1 racing, as a sport, as others around the world are. At least that's my understanding. I just turned onto it a couple of years ago but really enjoy it a lot. I turned onto it the season before the big rivalry came to a head last year between my man Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton. 

My big system is actually in my bedroom b/c I live in a high rise in an urban community and the other big reason is b/c acoustically it appears to be pretty good.

I'm obviously not a hard core purist, because I've got my seventy five inch big screen between my ML Summits. Anyway, I'm curious if F1 racing is a thing with anyone else and more interested in what others think about the way things are looking for Mercedes and more specifically Mr. Hamilton. 

I've been enjoying alternating between listening sessions and the practice sessions and the qualifying laps yesterday and would love to hear what others have to say about the distance b/w Verstappen and Hamilton leading p to the race today.

I find it kind of hard to feel sorry for Hamilton, personally, b/c he has a tendency to come off with such an air about him. At the same time, I do feel a little bit sorry for him b/c he appears to've lost his confidence on the track. I don't think he can blame his performance this weekend on the car. 

I'm also loving the competition Ferrari is showing Verstappen on the track right out of the starting gate this season.

I've found that audiophiles tend to have some similar traits in common as far as things we appreciate about life and I'm curious if anyone else around here enjoys F1 like I do? And especially thoughts about the rivalry b/w Verstappen and Hamilton and the season so far in general.

 

128x128tunefuldude
sofaman
24 posts
 

So many older F1 fans! I love it. 

Honestly, I'm not sure how it started. ABC's Wide World of sports carried the Monaco GP and I was hooked somehow by watching Jackie Stewart then Jean Pierre Beltoise winning the ''71 and 72 races. You have to be just a bit geeky to be interested in high fidelity gear, IMHO, and back then the mechanical engineering in Grand Prix racing was so very creative. Men with slide rules, drafting tables and a gut instinct about what could work meant you never knew what new 'invention' was going to turn up at the track. So yeah, Stewart, Revson, Lauda, Ickx, Peterson, Andretti, Hunt, Prost, etc., etc., were all names I poured over in Autoweek and Competition press plus the British publications. 

I managed to get to the '78 - '80 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen as well. Amazing memories of seeing my heroes in person. Such a great track. But yes, even if you avoided the infamous Bog, you could get awakened by drifting NY State Police tear gas clouds as they drifted from their intended targets. Ask me how I know!

The aural pleasures of the sport are not to be forgotten, and to relate it to this audio / motorsports audience, the years of the Glen allowed me to hear Ferrari flat 12, (I witnessed Gilles' famous pouring rain practice laps)  Alfa Romeo flat 12, Matra V12. 

A memorable motorsports event was attending the Monterey Historics in '91 when Juan Manuel Fangio was the honoree. The collections of Ralph Lauren, Alfa Romeo and Mercedes brought out their finest and let me tell you, hearing a rocket-fueled twin-supercharged straight 8, from the 1930s, is an eye watering experience. A Mercedes straight 8 desmodronic engine is quite the soprano as well. Somewhere else in the pits I found myself checking out a special pair of Ferrari 6 and 7 liter CanAm cars. When they both decided to fire up their engines, as I was standing in between the backs of both, made up for the fact I never got to hear John Bonham live. 

But Lime Rock is my home track, and I've really enjoyed the IMSA GTP years as well with any number of huge V8s, Jag V12s, BMW turbos, Porsche turbos of course, Ferrari 333SP (scream!) and best of all, the short lived Mazda RX-972P. 

I was for a time bored straight out of F1. Not because of team dominance, but more from the corporate-counsel style regulations that managed to engineer out creative engineering from the sport. But now that my dutch wife cares about how Max is doing, watching a race is more of something we do together. Go figure. 

stilljim
36 posts
 
@reubent 
Hey Tom. Never tried the little 500 but I have heard of it. Nor for that matter, the big 500, just qualifying. Too much traffic to get out and in on race day. F1 or Moto GP was bad enough, add another 100,000 spectators and well it's more than I want to deal with.

 

Jim S.

widmerpool
21 posts
 

There are similarities.

All too often, F1 is an unexciting parade of money and technology, with little actual racing.

All too often, high-end audio is an unexciting parade of money and technology, with little interest in actual music.

In over 50 years of watching road racing, the best racing I ever saw was a Pro Spec Miata event.

And, I'd rather listen to good music on an indifferent system than bad music on the best system money can buy.

reubent
7,035 posts
 

@stilljim  - You could be back home to Cincinnati from Anderson Speedway faster than you could get out of some of the parking lots at Indy. 

It's a great race. Seriously, a better spectacle and more interesting than nearly any type of motorsport I've ever witnessed. Not as racy as a great motoGP race, especially the smaller displacement support races where packs of 3/4/5 or more swap leads multiple times per lap, and the finish is often a drag race between the top 3/4/5 riders out of the last turn.

BTW, I love Formula 1. But I'm a technology geeks, so there's that....

bmaxdallas
1 posts
 

HUGE F1 fan here and have been for a LONG time. Also very much into sportscar series like LeMans, Daytona, etc.  Have been to the F1 race in Austin a couple of times and absolutely had a blast. A while back I was in Monaco the week AFTER the F1 race so MISSED it. I also have an obsession with air cooled Porsches...

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