I’m very interested in hearing how many of you watched the Formula 1 race in Vegas this weekend, an event that sounds like it was a bit of a shitshow but which at least looked cool on TV. My boyfriend and I switched it on when we got home on Saturday night and watched about an hour of the pre-show, which was the Sky TV feed on ESPN, and which was…an existential crisis on live TV. As you know if you’ve ever watched Formula 1, or Drive to Survive, or both, pre-race they allow reporters to just wander the racetrack area and interview whoever they can grab on the fly — it’s very disorganized and lively but usually people are willing to chat. The portion of this that we saw on ESPN was CHAOTIC; the reporter couldn’t get anyone to talk to him for a while and started, like, muttering his personal existential crisis about this into a live mic. At one point, he managed to get Shaq and Shaq — who had just posed for pics with the Red Bull team — merely boomed “LEWIS HAMILTON” into the mic and vanished. (I think Shaq had been drinking since like 4pm.) (Notably, Lewis Hamilton does NOT drive for Red Bull.) Shaun White gave a VERY friendly and thoughtful interview, while an unnoticed Nina Dobrev chatted with someone else in the background. Kylie Minogue was a sweetie. (I suspect Shaun AND Kylie are very familiar with the faces of folks on Sky TV.) The interviewer cornered racer Lando Norris and asked how he was feeling about the race; Lando said TERRIBLE then zipped off. (He later ended up crashing and going to the hospital — he’s fine – so his vibe was correct.)
The rest of the pre-show reminded me so much of watching Drive to Survive combined with the interstitials going into ads during the Golden Globes: Mostly un-chyroned celebs randomly spotted in the background, leading to me yelling “IS THAT LUPITA????” (it was), “RIHANNA!” (who did get a chyron), and “IS THAT BECKS?” (also yes). Much like those pre-ad b-roll shots of celebs chatting during the Globes, this was messy and fun — kind of like the race itself, honestly, although the outcome was, in the end, boringly predictable. Did you watch? Because I also DESPERATELY need to discuss Jared Leto’s Spoken Word Poetry “Viva Las Vegas” that kicked the whole thing off. I was like…am I….hallucinating?!?!
Let’s see what everyone wore. It looked fun!
