I am prehistoric – and it matters not.
Thirty – [ˈTHərdē]
- the age at which human beings finally begin to accept death as a certainty
- the age at which athletes are referred to as “old and busted” or “washed up”
- the age at which existing racing drivers may begin planning their retirement for some unknown reason
- the intrinsic beginning of one’s prime performing years
- just another f*ckin’ numba
By now, despite the order of these posts not being perfectly harmonious, it is evident most of these preliminary posts are about specific challenges I face. While these posts do not directly correlate with perfectly chronological storytelling, the subjects are worth brief examination as some of these challenges appear outright disqualifying.
Are they though?
If you wandered into this digital hermitage one has to assume you are a racing fan. Since the Venn diagram of racing fans and Formula 1 fans is….essentially a circle, I will assume you know the word “Fangio” and the aura around it. Juan Manuel Fangio was a five-time champion of Formula 1. Any common racing fan can rattle this statistic off, but not another statistic more relevant to the topic of writing today. Interestingly enough the distinguished Juan Manuel managed to win all five of those titles between the age of forty and forty-six.
I believe I know what racing fans will immediately think when reading the various ramblings herein..
“Well, that was a different era!”
“I know where you are going with this. It was less physically demanding then.”
“Totally incomparable to any motorsport existing today since ______, ____, ____, not to mention _____!”
I have heard the many typical contentions more than I care to count, so instead of arguing them here it is probably more appropriate to give the reader the benefit of the doubt and mention that this interesting statistic is not entirely isolated to Juan Manuel Fangio’s title wins.
If someone steadfastly believes the above contentions, consider then the last of The Professor’s and Hill’s titles. What of Mansell’s first and only? Nigel Mansell won his Formula One championship at age thirty-nine. Alain Prost, like Fangio, was a five time champion; the last of those titles procured at the age of thirty-eight. As for the last of Graham Hill’s titles..
He won at age thirty-nine, eight months, and nineteen days…
Indeed, all those drivers earned their place in Formula One history whilst armed with years of experience within F1. Alain had 3 previous titles by the age he won his last!
Incontestably, the F1 cars wielded to capture those titles referenced above were still more dangerous and more difficult to drive than the present Formula. I advise it is high time to stop contending and instead start considering.
That last example above reminds me of someone else though. There is another champion everyone should have a closer look at – 1996 Formula One Champion, Damon Hill.
The reason Damon Hill is referenced in a post about age might be odd to some readers, given his age of thirty-six years at the time of his title win. Ostensibly that age seems in line with title-winning athletes of the time. While there assuredly exists a physiological difference between athletes in their mid-thirties versus their late thirties, is it really as large as we are led to believe?
Damon Hill’s relevance to this post is two-fold. Damon Hill represents an interesting mix between what most in racing now consider an advanced age, but also what many now consider a marked lack of experience. While it seems strange for an unennobled internet litterateur to use the phrase “lack of experience” to describe a Formula 1 champion, make no mistake – I find several things fascinating about Damon Hill and his career. You should too.
Damon Hill definitely had quite the racing pedigree being the son of Graham Hill, a triple crown winning driver who won multiple Formula One titles. His father passed early in Damon’s life though, so it is more than fair to insist he did not enjoy the support of the “right father,” certainly least not to the extent someone like, say, Max Verstappen has.
Some people I know are very quick to write Damon Hill off as a number 2 driver, or a lucky driver in a good car; I think this is utterly criminal. His career warrants respect and admiration, and a closer look shows why!
Damon Hill started his racing career on two wheels in 1981. While he had some one-off races in regional Formula Ford, he never actually competed in karting and did not even complete a full season of racing until 1985.
Think about that for a moment, esteemed passenger..
Hill was already twenty-five years of age by that time and was still sniffing around in Stage Two. He went on to become a test driver for Williams F1, wheeling nearly thirty thousand kilometres in that time – while they were a powerhouse, might I add, and nothing like the current iteration of Williams F1. He became a full time driver for the team in 1993 after a few GP starts with the Brabham team the year previous.
In the event none of this impresses you, allow yours truly to further summarize:
- Damon Hill skipped First Stage entirely, learning his racecraft on two wheels.
- Damon Hill drives a racecar for the first time at age twenty-five.
- Hill completely skipped over First, and Second Stage as described on this site.
- Hill completed thirty-seven races in Formula 3.
- Hill only completed a handful of Fourth Stage level races in a lower, regional series.
- His latter junior career consisted of a single Le mans outing and Regional Formula 3000 – the latter of which he could not complete a full season of until 1990. He completed only two races in 1988 and five races in 1989.
- Hill somehow landed a full-time F1 drive as a thirty-three year old rookie with a top team, after only trying a formula car for the first time eight or nine years earlier.
- Despite all of the above he beats the great Michael Schumacher to the Formula One championship in 1996.
- Hill almost did so twice, having been taken out by Michael in the 1994 Australian Grand Prix.
Alternatively, perhaps Damon Hill’s latter junior career is more suitably illustrated in…yet another triangle diagram, zoomed in and exquisitely edited for effect:
Some visitors to this digital hermitage will surely read all of this and wonder why the writer is bringing up ancient history.
What Damon Hill managed to accomplish in an F1 career which only spanned eight seasons should have made him a motorsport god among us. Instead, we have three hundred pound armchair athletes referring to this great man like this:
“He was a number-two caliber driver. I am not a fan.” – 400lbs armchair drivers
While it may never be replicated at the Formula One level, Damon Hill’s career does potentially show us the traditional thinking is more like a set of suggestions than hard rules.
That, and his career story is actually more relevant nowadays. Not less. More.
People are eating healthier and living longer in general. We see this across heavier stock allocation recommendations compared to previously preached portfolio theory in retirement planning – people need their nest-eggs to last longer now compared to when traditional portfolio recommendations were theorized. That is for the average bloke.
What does this mean for athletes?
It means your athletic prime and potential are extended, and lasts much longer than those of athletes that came before us. Definitely this portion of an athlete’s life lasts longer than when Damon Hill reached and championed Formula One. In other words, age is not so disqualifying as some might believe and many unremittingly assert, and certainly not to the level those already established within wider motorsport would have us plebeians accept.
Proof of this is present in more recent history with Fernando Alonso returning to Formula 1 past the age of forty with Alpine F1, and Alejandro Valverde Belmonte becoming first time World Champion of Cycling aged thirty-eight; if your motivation and commitment remain strong in modern times, age is mostly meaningless. Unless of course you are an irrelevant pundit..in which case the age of someone busy doing the damn thing will become a perplexing point of focus.
In my world, citing age as a reason someone cannot do something is…simply a very weak excuse in general. Especially so within this motorsport context. I do not get down like that, not my style at all.
Just think for a moment how weak you think it is when you speak to someone and they say something like, “I coulda been ___!” When you ask them what happened they say something predictably irritating.
“Oh, I was too old. I was a fossil by then.”
Oh. Best not to have even tried, then?
This is not that type of blog. Some people surely will arrive here and look for comfort in odd ways, maybe hoping I fail and write something that validates their unhappy circumstances. Around here, while I can never guarantee success, and hopefully you understand that is not what this journey is about, I get after it as though my success is inelectuble.
Getting after it is, after all, ageless.
Some simply will not get it. If you do, hit that subscribe button.
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