Love of Formula One fuels a father-son connection
Trip to Canadian Grand Prix victory lap for Postmedia writer and his boy Callum
As we greeted the new millennium, I greeted my first and only son. Holding him aloft in the delivery room, I beamed with pride and awe at our future together, linked by biology and bonded by common interests. Oh, the places we would go!
In those unsure hands I held a blank canvas, one that I would paint a masterpiece upon, the brush strokes lovingly informed by my own experiences, failings and successes, dreams and aspirations.
Then reality set in. By the time of Callum’s sixth birthday, I harboured disturbing thoughts — kept only to myself of course — that we’d brought home the wrong baby on that bright spring day in April 2000. True, he bared a resemblance to us — thankfully more to his mother than his father — but it was his personality that gave me pause. We just didn’t seem to have a lot in common.
As the years went by, that unease only grew. He had no interest in watching college football with me. Any sports for that matter. ‘Boooooring,’ he’d drone when I’d beg him to watch the Masters, something my father and I shared.
The real clincher in this everwidening chasm between us was his absolute lack of interest in cars. Sure he played with them a little as a wee child, but no posters of Ferraris or Lambos ever graced his bedroom walls.
Instead, he was a boy of his time with a passion for technology. Specifically, computer and console gaming.
On his 15th birthday, once the candles were blown out and he’d retreated to his wired boy cave, I poured myself a wee dram and finally came to terms with the fact that my son and I, despite my best efforts, had no shared interests. We did have a love for one another, and as I drained the single malt, that realization filled me with a warm feeling. Some dads don’t even have that, I said to myself.
Then, just over a month later, it happened. It was Sunday morning, and as was my ritual during the Formula One season, I was watching the PVRed pre-race show, in this case from the narrow and historic streets of Monte Carlo. I don’t even really remember him coming into the room, but at one point I looked over and saw him lying on the couch — without a piece of technology in his hand.
“You feeling all right?” I said, not looking away from the flat screen. “Fine.”
“Internet down?” “Nope.”
He lasted for about an hour or so, finally rising after a few laps into the race. “Interesting,” he said, and disappeared.
Then two Sundays later, 15 minutes or so into the live feed of the Canadian Grand Prix, he appeared again and sat down. This time, he stayed for the checkered flag, taken by Lewis Hamilton. I never said a word, nor really looked his way, treating him as a hunter does a timid deer.
“Why do they call them Silver Arrows?” he asked at one point.
Knowing that any historical reference to the 1930s opened the door to an eye roll — or a halfdozen — I said simply, “It’s a nickname for Mercedes’ cars.”
Dinner that night began like any other Sunday night dinner at the dining room table. Then: “Dad, they’re called Silver Arrows because of the shining aluminumbodied Mercedes-Benz race cars of the ’30s.”
I almost sliced my hand instead of the roast. My wife and younger daughter were oblivious to the seismic shift that had just occurred in our household.
And so it began. From then onward, we watched every minute of every qualifying session and race for the remainder of the 2015 season, and have rarely missed any since.
It was all going so well, until Singapore last September.
“Hey, next year I’ll be away at university when this race is on. Maybe we can Skype it together.”
He was right, of course. I’d never even thought about it.
“You OK, dad?” he asked after I didn’t respond.
“Fine,” I lied through misty eyes. “I hope Ferrari can pull it together this weekend.”
“Not a chance,” he shot back. “Hamilton is unstoppable.”
But time, as any father knows, is not.
His prophecy of packing up and heading to university came true, and at summer’s end Callum will be taking up residence some 3,000 kilometres away. I’d been ruminating on this impending time as the 2018 season began, when a thought came to me: Wouldn’t it be great to cap my son’s high school graduation with a father-and-son trip to an F1 race?
That bucket-list trip came true the other weekend at the 2018 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal — as the guests of the Renault Sport F1 team, no less.
We arrived Wednesday night and watched trackside every practice session, qualifying and the Sunday race. We stood in the team garage with team radio headsets on as drivers Nico Hülkenberg and Carlos Sainz zipped in and out amid the beautiful ballet of the 20-odd mechanics and engineers. We had a behind-thescenes garage tour that allowed us to peek into the very private world of an F1 team.
In other words, it was a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience for this F1-mad father and son.
We missed the podium presentation as we had to catch a shuttle from the Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve for our flight home to Vancouver. Midway during the flight, I glanced over at Callum and wondered what he’d take away from the trip. Did he realize how fortunate he was to have had those experiences? On those nights of study that are just a few months away, will he find motivation by drawing on thoughts of the dedication, preparation and astonishing attention to detail he witnessed in the Renault garage?
Then my thoughts turned to a repeating narrative I’d come across throughout our time in Montreal, and so aptly coincidental to the theme of our trip. And that is the profound relationship between F1 and fathers and sons.
Before Sunday’s race, worldchampion Jacques Villeneuve did a tribute lap in the very Ferrari that his father Gilles piloted to victory in the first Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal four decades ago. Walking through the paddock, we spotted Williams driver Lance Stroll and his dad having a very close conversation before the race.
When Sainz backed into a wall during practice, we watched his mechanics work feverishly to fix the car and replace a gear box, learning only later that the fellow we were standing beside and were watching attentively was Carlos Sainz Sr.
And we stood in the Renault garage during the race and saw Hülkenberg ’s father nervously pacing, consulting lap times on his smartphone and clapping his hands when Nico pulled off a pass. I tried to imagine what it must be like for Nico’s dad, shipping magnate Klaus Dieter, to watch his son taking part in such a dangerous sport.
And it struck me how a race car driver’s craft is akin to when a kid leaves home. The pit crew’s job is to prepare the racer and keep him on track through the course of a race, not unlike the family, friends and teachers who guide our children toward independence. When when the racer is all alone in the car, there’s an ever-present voice in his ear providing positive feedback, advice and information to help him get the job done. Sort of like the real-world equivalent of text messages and old-fashioned phone calls.
There will be crashes, there will be defeats, but there will also be victories and glory.
Now I’ve just got to figure out how to use Skype.
Driving
From then onward, we watched every minute of every qualifying session and race for the remainder of (2015) ...