F1 Fanatic

Can remember watching a few races in 1997, but my first full season was in 1998. I was 5 years old… xD

I started watching in 92-93. Was only 5 or 6 at the time, and being in Australia (before the calendar moved east in the 00s) was not many races I could watch without staying up to 10:30-11 – as the races were shown on delay after the Sunday night movie – so didn’t see much other than the Japanese and Aussie GPs in the early years.
My dad took me to Fri & Sat at Adelaide in ’93 and ’95 – watched the race from a friend’s place – impressions were the cars were friggin loud!

Slowly began watching more races as bed-times got later (particularly school holidays) to the point in 2002ish where I watched most races but didn’t follow any of the background. Went to the race in Melbourne a few times.

Continued on in a similar manner watching almost all races until 2008 when I became a fanatic, began watching more quali sessions, and reading websites in between races and being heavily involved in what was happening not just on race-day.
Since becoming a fanatic have only been to the ’11 & ’12 Melbourne races as prior to that was a poor student and couldn’t afford a ticket.

So would say 92-02 Casual fan, 02-08 – regular fan, 08- fanatic

No idea when I started watching ‘for real’, must’ve been sometime in the early to mid 00′s, the years when Raikkonen was driving for McLaren and having trouble with all the engines blowing up.

I do recall watching occasional races in the late 1990s (not because I wanted to but because my dad watched), I remember at least one race where Häkkinen won. It was confusing for me (I was something like 6 years old) because I could clearly see cars still in front of him and didn’t understand how could it be possible that he still won. I guess I was still quite unfamiliar with the concept of cars lapping other cars :D

Australia 1996 for me as well.

My father is watching it since 1984ish, but he idolized Ayrton, so when he died, Dad took a break for two years. He accidentaly caught up with a race in which Hill desperately tried to hunt down Villeneuve in the very first Albert Park issue, until he succeed in the dying stages of the race. I joined him, was fascinated by the setting of the battle and I only missed only bits of 1-2 races since then – one of them was crucially the first 27-some laps of the 1997 championship decider.

On the other hand, I remember being only some 1 or 2 years old in 1991 or 1992, getting up in the middle of the night to go to pee and to see my dad sitting in a chair in the dark in front of the TV as Senna’s McLaren rode the hillside of Suzuka. I remember pointing to the screen and saying ‘Senna’.

But that was that until a few years later.

I started watching the Montoya years <3

I got interested in late 2010 after seeing A) the episode of Top Gear UK in which Richard Hammond drove one of Alonso’s championship-winning cars, and B) the Ayrton Senna tribute in series 15 of TG(UK). I have to credit Jezza, Hamster, and Cpt Slow for sparking my interest in cars, despite the fact that i’m in my late 30′s (better late than never, eh?). Anyways, that sparked the tinder. I got Speed TV just so I could watch the 2011 season. The first race I watched in it’s entirety was a replay of the 2010 Abu Dhabi GP. I was awestruck just by the sheer beauty of the circuit, despite that fact that it’s not the most exciting track on the calendar. Since then, I haven’t missed a practice/quali/race.

I came in very late, Spa 2009 :)

I was at the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort in 1984, aged 4, and at the Nurburgring in 1985, though at the former I spent most of the time running up and down dunes, and at the latter stuffing Bratwürste into my ears to protect my ears against the loud noises. I saw something on TV of the final few races of 1991, and then started following every session from the first race of the 1992 season.

My interest waned a little when Hill and Mansell were no longer in F1, and Schumacher proceeded to dominate. In 2007 my interest was rekindled, and I started following F1 more and more closely, to the point that for 2010 I was following the pre-season testing live on Autosport, and shortly thereafter I discovered F1Fanatic.