Formula None

We’ve all heard stories of drivers who have the ability to drive from Santander to San Remegio in less than four hours without the benefit of a freeway or expressway. We’ve seen drivers showcase their skills as they weave in and out of their lanes just to get to the very front.   But why is there no Filipino driver in Formula One, the pinnacle of motorsports? 

One may say that the price of two hundred fifty thousand dollars to get an FIA Super Licence might be a good reason. And even if Tito Boy and Tita Inday will work double shifts pulling time and a half overtime pay in some hospital abroad, they’ll probably still find it tough to come up with the fee. But setting that reason aside and if you were to base it totally on the driver’s ability, I’ve decided to list my Top Ten Reasons why a Pinoy can never be a Formula One driver:

1. Mixed Signals. When a Formula One driver sees a yellow flag or light (a caution sign in racing), he slows down. When a Pinoy sees a yellow light, he thinks it’s a sign for him to speed up in order to beat the red light.

2. Accident. When a Formula One driver arrives at the scene of an accident on the track, he drops his speed a little and carefully negotiates around the incident. When a Pinoy arrives at the scene of an accident, he slows down drastically, holds up traffic as he takes time to survey the scenario, ask the marshal what happened and drive away spending a good fifteen minutes speculating what may have caused the accident.

3. Helmet. A Formula One driver is required to wear an FIA approved SAH-2010 rating helmet when piloting a Formula One Car. A Pinoy driver will make do with a construction hard hat that he will most probably wear backwards too.

4. Call Time. Formula One races are usually scheduled to start at 2:00 p.m. The Pinoy driver will probably arrive around 3:00 p.m. and apologize saying he got caught in some imaginary traffic.

5. Horn. A Formula One car is equipped with similar electronic and electrical gadgets found in a road car except for a car horn. I can only guess the amount of frustration a Pinoy driver would have as he frantically searches for and pointlessly keeps thumping the twenty-five thousand dollar steering wheel hoping to find the car horn so that he can keep blaring it to intimidate the driver in front of him to let him pass.

6. Communication. All Formula One cars are equipped with car to pit radios that allows the driver to communicate with his pit crew to discuss race strategies or update each other with the condition of their cars. The driver plugs in a headset into the car radio jack and to talk to his pit crew, he just needs to press a button on the steering wheel. The Pinoy driver, however, would opt to go back to the early days of racing and have one hand on the steering wheel while he is other hand, instead of being on the gear shifter like the good old days, would be busy sending a text message to his pit crew. All the while keeping one eye on the road ahead and the other eye on the screen of his phone to ‘mk sur dat wat hs txtng cud b undrstd by hs crw.’

7. Boundaries. A Formula One circuit has white solid line markings around the track to designate the legal boundaries of the track. Formula One drivers are not allowed to fully cross the white line to gain an advantage or a position over another driver. Pinoy drivers would cross the white line, cut straight through a chicane, climb a sidewalk if there was one, and probably even go against the flow of traffic just to be ahead of the pack.

8. Seatbelts. All Formula One drivers are strapped securely in their seats via a 5-point harness to prevent their bodies from banging around the cockpit when they encounter up to 5G’s of force when driving around a racing circuit. A Pinoy driver would probably have his engineers strap the harness loosely onto the seat allowing him just enough slack to slip his body underneath it in case a marshal would check if he is actually putting on his seatbelt.

9. Aerodynamics. Formula One teams spend millions of dollars plotting designs, creating models and conducting wind tunnel tests to get the most fluid running car that is able to turn corners at the quickest possible time. Every single part is designed to play a role in the car’s aerodynamics, even the rearview mirror. So a Pinoy driver hanging a religious artefact over the mirror or mounting it on the nose cone will not help with the car’s aerodynamic balance.

10. Red Light. In Formula One, all the drivers wait for the five red lights to switch off to signal the start of racing. Guess who’d probably get caught jumping the start and zooming off into the distance even before the red light switches off earning himself a drive-through penalty?

Until the FIA amends a few of its well-established racing and safety regulations to fit the Pinoy style of driving, we will have to be content with cheering drivers from other countries.