The Durban heat was starting to take its toll: A1 Grand Prix (A1 GP) crew and drivers were wandering around the pit checking out opponents’ machinery with the sort of barely disguised homoerotic longing last seen in Ben-Hur; where once there would have been the clinging stench of horse shit, petrol fumes filled the air of this charioteering recreation of ancient Rome, and Spliff, my pet goldfish, was stalking a lost gaggle of strumpets dressed as air stewardesses while calling out loudly for a yacht, some white rhinos and a guillotine.
Spliff would never pass for Caligula, in the same way that Durban, despite the aspirations of its city fathers, will never be mistaken for Monaco and definitely not ancient Rome.
And the A1 GP seems a poorer cousin to the Formula One World Championships. Much poorer. Spun as the World Cup of motor sport, with teams representing countries rather than constructors, the A1 GP, currently into its second season, was started by Dubai’s Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum. Last year it reported losses of $212-million.
In comparison, Formula One, according to a Sports Business International report published in April last year, is a ”global industry generating over $4-billion per year”, with commercial rights alone generating $1-billion per year.
So no glamorous names and no offshore debauchery, yet a reported 115 000 people still braved gridlocked traffic slower than the pace of service delivery, sweltering heat and what can only be described as whiplash entertainment.
Why? Speed, it seems, remains the ultimate aphrodisiac, especially when cooked up with a healthy dose of misogyny. While F1 cars use 2,4-litre V8 engines, their A1 counterparts use 3,4-litre V8 engines, and the cliché of fast cars combined with the illusion of fast women is guaranteed to attract the testosterone heads from their unmade beds.
Herds of young ladies dressed in outfits that must make G-strings feel like embarrassed nuns’ habits tottered around being solicited by 12-year-old boys; middle-aged men leered at women in impossibly high heels wearing more sweat, and much less material, on their thighs; and aloof ice maidens melted long enough to expose their meticulous tans and best cockpit impersonations to drivers, the pit crews, or anybody with access to a crank shaft, really.
The event itself is rather soporific. Watching motor sport is like dozing off in a car where one doesn’t have a headrest and is constantly awakened by the natural neck-jerk of falling asleep. Only the whine of engines awakens one while the whiplash is horizontal as machines blur past.
The race was won by Germany’s Nico Hulkenberg, who’d completed the 49 laps in a time of 1:10:35.582.Hulkenberg had started in pole position after looking commanding throughout the practice and qualifying rounds. The victory takes Germany to 99 points, extending their lead over New Zealand to 30 points. Team France are third on 57 points while South Africa are 15th out of 22 teams with 13 points. And if sport really is a reflection of a greater national collective psyche, then perhaps the organisation of Team South Africa is rather telling.
South African driver Adrian Zaugg flew into Durban on the qualifying Friday morning, was taken from Durban International Airport by helicopter to Virginia Airport, instead of the track helipad as initially planned, and was then raced to the paddock in a bakkie, arriving 20 minutes before the drivers were about to start the qualifying rounds. A broken drive shaft in the first session and sidling up to the wall in the second saw him do just one lap at pace and eventually take ninth position on the grid.
More was to follow on race day. Zaugg was forced off the track in the first bend of the feature race, and when he brought his car back to the pits, must have been bemused to find the mechanics — in anticipation of an orgiastic night in Durban — already changed into civvies!
A mechanical and sartorial change later Zaugg was back on track, eventually placing 17th after completing 11 laps, to the opiate-addled/sunstroked cheers of locals. Whoever said South African sports lovers were a demanding bunch must have been suckling on an exhaust pipe.
While the city of Durban may have been unsuccessful in recreating the thundering ambience of ancient Rome, some of the elements of the A1 GP being hosted in Durban would have been closer to Mussolini’s Italy.
People living in apartments along the track were limited to the number of visitors they could have over for the weekend and a (dom)pass system was in place for residents.
The city leaders have always gone on about the filter-down economic benefits of the myriad ”high-profile international” public/private events they bring to the city, but many in the informal sector who work along the beachfront were scrounging around for a decent meal.
With the beaches in an almost 2km stretch from the Mini-town all the way up to Suncoast Casino (which could still be accessed thanks to signs for alternative routes helpfully put up by the municipality) fenced off, many car guards must have spent a very hungry past month.
Scaffolding on Battery Beach, where the VIPs were gorging with Dionysian voraciousness on freebies above the paddock, went up almost a month prior to the race, and the old ladies who usually work as car guards in that area would have had to find alternative car parks in what is a notoriously territorial occupation. The stands are expected to be cleared in three weeks’ time.
For Spliff, the pet goldfish, the weekend finished with two burning questions still unanswered: erm, no, nothing to do with the brake horsepower of these machines or the positive and negative G-forces during the race. Rather, if, in common Formula One parlance, the practice of successfully completing a ménage a trois in Brazil with a black and a white honey is called a zebra, is there an A1 equivalent? Then what would be the Big Five in Durban?