Day of Racing 2015

I'd just like to begin by saying how much I don't enjoy watching races with my dad and his friend, even though we've been watching them together for decades.  They blab on the entire time and I can't hear what's being said on the TV.  They'll DVR the thing so they can fast forward through the pre-race.  They'll start watching a race late because DVR lol.  I'd like to watch a damn race live and without idiots talking over the TV the entire time.  This mostly applies to Formula 1 races.

It begins, as always, with the Formula 1 Grand Prix of Monaco.  Formula 1 is always criticized for being "a bit of a parade", and the Monaco track is the easiest example of that.  It's the narrowest track on the F1 calendar, really only having two passing zones, but you have to force the issue in both places.  Typically, the winner comes from the front row and your chances drop off dramatically the further back you start.  Today was no exception.  It was a typical ho-hum all-Mercedes front row, and Lewis Hamilton controlled the entire race up until Max Verstappen crashed trying to overtake Romain Grosjean in turn one and brought out a safety car.  Mercedes has made questionable decisions regarding pit strategy all season, and for whatever reason they decided to bring Hamilton in.  He rejoined in third, and Rosberg went on to win his third Monaco Grand Prix in a row, joining a very elite club in the process.  Because NBC cares more about soccer than having a proper F1 production, the podium ceremony and interviews weren't aired live.  I dunno, but last I checked, soccer was one of the least popular sports in the US, right down there with baseball, hockey, bicycle racing, and golf.

From there, it was a quick jump to Subway to get our sandwiches (and cookies!) for lunch, and then my uncle and the beer arrived just in time for the Indy 500.  The Indy 500 has way too much pre-race shenanigans, but it finally got underway.  After some stupid lap 1, turn 1 stuff involving Takuma Sato unwisely trying to make it three wide, people settled down and got into a rhythm.  Unfortunately, my eternal pick to win, Tony Kanaan, crashed out in the later stages of the race.  For a while it looked like Will Power couldn't be caught.  But fortunately for everyone involved, good ol' Juan Pablo Montoya overhauled him with three laps to go and held the position to win.

It quickly became clear that my dad had no intention of watching the Coca-Cola 600 live.  When looking up details to remind myself of the start time, I realized that Fox Sports Go is available to anyone with a cable subscription, and I do happen to have an account on my parents' subscription.  I went through the annoyances of trying to figure out what I needed to do to actually log into the damn thing, then finally gave up and just used SRWare Iron, which I keep purposefully un-tweaked so it'll Just Work™.  Well, I had to disable blocking third-party cookies, but I got it working.  It worked up until just before the end of the pre-race show, when it promptly died.  Trying to log in again gave me a message that said I wasn't authorized.

Confused, I drove to my local Buffalo Wild Wings and watched the race there.  I missed about the first 50 laps in the process, but the race is long enough that it doesn't really matter.  I'm not incredibly invested in one team or another in NASCAR, but it was an enjoyable race.