F1 Fanatic

Here in Adelaide, the European races start at about 9.30pm. I usually watch the OneHD pre-race show which is on at 8.30, mainly for James Allen’s interviews. I watch the race which usually finishes around 11-11.30, before quite often ending up on F1F til the early hours of the morning reading the comments and Keith’s analyses.

The Asian races are usually on at around 3-4pm. I have to agree Damon about how these races are usually not as enjoyable as there are so many distractions. Also I’m quite often out during the day on weekends so its a hassle when you miss the race or have to go out midway through.

For Canada and Brazil, I usually go to bed early on the Sunday night, about 9-10pm, and get up around 2am Monday morning to watch the race. They normally finish about 4.30-5am so its a dilemma as to whether to go back to bed or not in order to get up for school at 7am.

Its going to be a hassle in the next few years as Im about to start my second last year of school, with exams for Yr11 and 12 always falling around the time of the last race. This year I’m lucky as they fall the week after.

F1 is usually built into my Sunday ritual, which is get up, have breakfast, then read the Observer with lots of coffee for much of the morning. A couple of hours of something vaguely related to biology (which usually involves reading journal papers these days), then park myself on the sofa just in time to catch Jake, David and Eddie being drowned out by mischievous mechanics loudly firing up various engines in the pit lane.

Much better than the ITV days, where I used to switch on ten minutes before the start to avoid the devotionals from the Church of Jenson Button/Lewis Hamilton in the pre-race show. Though I did get more work done…

Fully agree with you there. And nice choice of newspaper!

Great thread! Glad im not the only one with a ritual. Im in the UK so lucky so have great coverage by the sounds of it. I watch everything live but I dont really have a ritual for early starts…Im just pleased I made it out of bed half the time.

The normal races I will make sure I have snacks ready and put on one of my Mclaren shirts (sweater if chilly!). The most important bit is my laptop set up. I HAVE to have live timing especially if a Mclaren is up there. I need to see how the sector times are going when TV isnt following them, especially in qualy. Behind the live timing I usually have Mclaren.com/F1 fanatic running. Phone will be on twitter and now I have a netbook I set that up on the driver tracker. Here is a pic of the setup http://twitpic.com/2inu5y

Apart from that just enjoy every second of every session and the redbutton forum of cousre!!

I’m usually quite obsessed with routines, but for some reason that isn’t really the case with F1. Sometimes I’m down for the start of th BBC coverage, sometimes I’m not… sometimes I watch the Forum, sometimes not… sometimes I have my lunch while I’m watching the race, sometimes I don’t

I get up at 9am (although I’m so excited for the race I always wake up early but I’m too lazy to actually get up) and play some music, read the papers and turn on my laptop in case it needs to do updates. Then at 11am I start to really get on edge and can’t settle but thankfully my mother serves sunday lunch early on an F1 weekend and that gives me something to do. I wolf the food down and get a cup of lemonade and my usual F1 chocolate in the lounge. I then log on to f1f and refresh the page a thousand times just waiting for the live blog to start. It’s possibly the most boring routine ever but it’s my ritual.

I also generally refuse to go out the night before as I like to watch it with a clear head and although I can tolerate Legard his shouting wouldn’t be the greatest thing on top of a hangover.

Living on the West Coast of the US I generally have to stay up very late or wake up very early for practice, qualifying, and the race. No ritual so to speak, but I do have a set up I use. I generally use my laptop to run the CIL console, and also have url shortener up in another window. I also have my desktop running with live timing, BBC feed, track map, and if necessary that country’s meteorological services weather radar. Other than that nothing much…

@ thestig84

Totally brilliant, I wish mine could be like that. But when you’re a 15 year-old in a non-F1 family of five, it’s really difficult and annoying…

As a Aussie, I’m subjected to many evening races. On these nights, the wife knows the Tv is mine. I usually follow practice on the live blog as we do not have tv coverage until qualifying which we now get live. I often spend the day prior to the race on the console driving the track, the web following the news ( f1 fanatic site of course ) and generally informing friends of progress. The Asian races I must say I wish we had more of as the are generally in the afternoon as opposed to Brazil and Canada in which I set my alarm in order to get up and watch the race. Thank god for the internet!!