Something I have found soothing of late is watching the pre-season testing from years gone by. This last week I have been watching the 2021 pre-season testing. It’s about as much of the 2021 season as I want to watch at this point, and it’s long enough ago that it feels kind of unknown, you know?

First up, why is watching pre-season testing soothing for me? Well, I’m mostly listening to it while I… I’m slightly embarrassed about this. I do a lot of colouring in. That’s another soothing thing. So I’m doubling up on the soothing things. But I still haven’t answered my own question.

I like listening to the testing chat; it’s unhurried, it’s somewhat meandering, there’s random gossipy bits. It also has wee learning moments, listening to either Martin Brundle, Jolyon Palmer or Karun Chandhok describing how the cars are being driven. I don’t speak racing car, so wee bits like this are helpful to me.

I can pause it and come back later without disrupting any story beats. It isn’t taxing on me energetically. Well, unless it is and I need nap, but it’s something I could usually watch on low days. (I have CFS which really limits my energy. It’s really stupid. I’ve tried not having it, but that didn’t work.)

So, what are my thoughts on this visit to the archive?

The 2021 season began with some driver changes. Checo Perez, Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz and Seb Vettel were switching to new teams. Fernando Alonso un-retired himself and came back with Alpine. Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazapin debuted with Haas. Yuki Tsunoda debuted with Alpha Tauri.

One thing that stood out in all of this chat—and the testing is done in two 4-hour sessions per day over three days, so there’s a lot of time for chat—was the discussion around the difficulties of switching teams, and what the drivers have been doing to mitigate these challenges. I’m not going to summarise it here for you, but it all sounded way less inflammatory to what it does now with Lewis Hamilton.

Granted, the commentators have a different aim during testing; they aren’t trying to grab your attention with a (often bad) headline but instead to fill the endless commentary void of cars going around in circles. They’re also more, shall we say, balanced? It feels less flippant. To me, at least.

With a few former F1 drivers in their midst, the rogue journos of Will Buxton and Lawrence Barretto are more quickly brought back to reality if they go off on one. But, having said that, there’s also plenty of time to play devil’s advocate without the argument being cut down to fill a time slot.

I started watching some IndyCar highlights, and Buxton was doing the same thing in these pre-season testing sessions from four years ago as he was during the Detroit race and Indy 500. I try not to dislike the guy, because he’s coming from a place of more enthusiasm than knowledge (coughs politely at oneself).

I can’t really put my finger on what it is that bugs me about his commentary. Maybe it’s his way of asking long winded questions. Maybe it’s that he overuses the words “interesting” and “fascinating.” Maybe I just don’t think he’s a good commentator. There. Ok. Moving on.

My thoughts upon emerging from the archive

As I emerged bleary-eyed blinking confusedly into the daylight of the present day, I realised the main reason why I was in the archive in the first place. Yes, it’s a not-unpleasant (for me) place to be. But I do also enjoy keeping up with the goings on of the present day.

It was escapism. Not of the late stage capitalistic nightmare in which we are existing; F1 doesn’t acknowledge this at any point in time. But of the sad state of F1 gossip. A glance over the headlines is just depressing. It’s all low effort slop.

I would like to change this is any way I can. Alas, I don’t have access to the F1 paddock for juicy free-range gossip and have to settle for pre-canned.

But here’s some alternative gossip headlines I can write from afar:

• No one other than Lewis Hamilton knows what he is thinking!

• Max Verstappen deliberately drove into someone and he’s perilously close to a race ban as a result—he brought this on himself!

• Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris look more likely to eat a bucket of shit than start a spat with each other!

Ok, I’m gonna go rustle up some energy to write something else now.