Contact/About

About Me

I’m Pat and I watch far too much racing. I read more articles and blog posts about it than is surely healthy. I’ve got a stack of books to read about it but never seem to find the time because I’m watching races. People say I should stop and get a hobby. This is my hobby.

I was born in 1980 – I’m giving the year because I don’t update this page often enough to keep my age current. I live in a moderately small town on the South coast of England, far enough West that we aren’t like that lot in Surrey but far enough East that we’re not cut off from civilisation like those Cornish. I have a healthy cynicism for practically everything. I prefer writing to talking but writing is quite hard sometimes – keeping a blog up to date is surprisingly difficult. I’m not looking to use this as a launchpad to become a journalist or to branch out into a big site with a lot of content. Quite honestly these days I prefer tweeting, it’s more fun.

F1

I’ve been watching motorsport since I was a kid in the 80s growing up watching the F1 battles between Senna, Prost and Mansell. There was a time when I drifted away as a casual fan but when I was 18 I got heavily into it again, more so than ever before and also started watching BTCC and WRC. Two years later I got my own access to Eurosport for a while and started watching sportscar, European touring cars and especially CART. It was a whole new world! As child in the 80s/90s in the UK you were basically taught that racing was “F1 or nothing, everything else is a sideshow” – how wrong they were.

US Open Wheel

For a long time I was firmly on the CART side of ‘The Split’. Despite only being able to watch races properly for a couple of years before having to resort to reading race reports, it was gut-wrenching when first Penske, then Ganassi and Green packed up and moved to IRL. Mid 2003 I was no longer able to watch the races having moved out of a cabled area and not having Sky, I tried to keep up with the news but the news was disappointing.

By 2006/7 I finally was able to watch live again using (the renamed) Champ Car’s online player – the series was nothing like it used to be, despite good racing at the front much of the field seemed padded with nobodies and last-chancers. The previous few years had seen some terrible mismanagement and greed from all parties. In the last 18 months of Champ Car I started to learn about the other side of the fence and became a fan of ‘new’ IRL too, the series it became after it included road courses. New IRL of the day seemed very different to old IRL and more in keeping with my tastes – top drivers in top teams racing on a rough balance of roads and ovals. For some of 2006 and all of 2007 I watched both series – despite problems, both featured great racing.

Now the current IndyCar Series is different again, the best it has been since those days of 2000/2001 and in fact better because the self-interest seems more controlled, the series is being reorganised and is on an upward path.

Touring Cars

I used to be a big BTCC fan but then Super Touring got stupid and forced out all the teams. I didn’t like the BTC cars and was glad when S2000 came in. I stopped watching for a while when Plato and Neal started playing bumper cars with little penalty (because TOCA knows a rivalry brings in ratings). The new cars drew me back, they still do it but I’ll keep watching for a bit. I watched the ETCC become the WTCC and then tail off again. WTCC doesn’t work for me unless it has 2 or 3 manufacturers up front. I hope both series get better.

Sportscars

I love Le Mans as much as I love Monaco, Spa and Indy. I’m a big fan of multi-class racing featuring prototypes and GTs. I struggle to remain interested in a race made up only of GT cars, I suspect I’d say the same of a field made up only of LMPs. The diversity makes it fun. I like endurance races but can’t always dedicate the time.

The one thing I don’t like is that some sportscar fans are as high-and-mighty about their branch of the sport as F1 fans used to be about theirs, 10-15 years ago. They like to look down on everyone else and mock then even if the racing they mock is just as good. F1 now is great but they still mock it as if it is as dull as it was in the early 2000s. I have little time for such people.

NASCAR

I don’t pay much attention to NASCAR. There’s so much of it there is no way anyone can keep up unless they do it as a job. It is a shame because there is some good racing among the commercials and hype and crap that goes with it, underneath all that it would be a good series to follow – but nobody can watch 36 x 3-hour races per year on top of however-many 2-hr Nationwide races. So I don’t bother.

Blog

It felt to me that fans used to be entrenched in ‘their’ series, maybe casually watching another race here and there. I set up this blog to help overcome this and show people that racing somewhere else is just as good if you take the time to learn the names and the funny rules.

However, this is becoming less true with time, I’ve noticed fans these days are far more diverse in their interests than ever before. In any case, this blog still exists as a bridge across the gap between different championships and different sets of fans and as a haven for those who want to talk about more than the latest F1 tit-for-tat political battles or regurgitated press releases. I’m so tired of hearing rumours and conjecture about driver X and team Y and minutiae of tech/sporting regs. I might have cared a few years ago, I don’t care any more. I just want to watch racing.

Contact

Here’s the deal on guest posts:

- If I know you and you have something to say, yes suggest it to me and I’ll probably say yes. Just ask! But if I don’t know you.. I probably won’t say yes.

- I’m not interested in taking content/editorial from an agency (unique or otherwise) or a syndicated feed.

- I’m not interested in posting something just so you can put your link in. If I start doing advertorials people will stop reading.

-  I don’t intend for the site to carry a lot of ads. From time to time I may accept a small sidebar ad for payment – I need to cover site fees (domain name etc) and the cost of attending races. Aside from that there are Google Ads. I would also consider a logo as a link to your site if I know who you are or if your site is already in my blogroll. I’m not willing to go beyond that at this time.

- I MAY consider something in return for something I value. I am not in PR though, so expect a review based entirely on my own opinion. I am not here to make you look good (or bad for that matter) – unless you actually are good! Usually anything I review, plug or promote is done off of my own back because I like the thing and I want people to see it.

If you want to do a link exchange, expect me to read your site for 2 weeks before deciding. The links on my sidebar are sites from people I enjoy reading.

Contact Details

Email: Ask me.

Twitter:  @toomuchracing

Facebook/G+: I’ll only add you if I know who you are, so tell me!

I’m thinking about making specific pages on FB/G+ for the blog, if I do I’ll update this page with links.