As we continue to digest and enjoy Lewis Hamilton’s brush with the anti-hoon lawman today in Australia, aka Hoongate, I started to wonder just how… oh, ingrained… this type of behavior is with Formula 1 drivers. [Or, if you want, with professional drivers, in general.]
I suspect our gut reaction is, “Of course.” These are guys (and gals) who speed for a living and drive on the edge as a matter of course.
So, of course, they are hoons. They’d better be.
But then I pause for a second. [Perhaps a sure sign I’m not a hoon, despite my best efforts.] Maybe they get all their hooning out on the track, in controlled environments. Maybe they don’t mind jumping into the old Honda Civic when the day is over.
And then I start to get more nuanced. Maybe F1 drivers aren’t hoons. After all, they are driving these delicate, fragile pieces of high-tech engineering. What’s hoony about that?
No, I think, it’s the rally drivers, right, who are the true hoons. At least, they are when they are “at the office.”
So, I’m torn. I’m not sure. And that’s when I like to call on the collective hoonage that is F1B for an answer:
Are F1 drivers hoons? If not, who in motorsport are the true hoons?
