Three textures, three terms, three cheers
Gathering thoughts from a different field – motorsport
I've had a day out today in an unusual place for me to be – a race track. Our nephew Will is a driver with Porsche, and today we went to cheer him on in Round 3 of the Porsche Carrera Cup GB.
Being at the track got me thinking about how important it is for writers to be dunked into a different environment now and again. To experience sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures that might not be a part of our everyday. In my case, today this equalled big crowds, zooming cars, the smell of candy-floss crossed with fried onions, pick’n’mix, and a whole lot of car-related textures. It’s also an opportunity to come out of my bubble and collect new (to me) terms for my vocabulary/toolbox of words.
Three textures from today
A few I snapped from in and around the track:
Three terms I’ve learnt
Motorsport seems to be filled with words that sound great to say (just think of ‘chicane’). Here are three terms I’ve learnt through watching Will over the years:
Splitter – it’s a bit on a car bumper that helps keep the car on the tarmac and helps it go faster or (thanks to a better definition by the punnily named website Occam’s Racer, it “separates airflow above and below the car, reducing drag and lift by decreasing the amount of air going underneath the car“.
Pointsy – coined by racer Tom Ingram and used by commentators to describe when a driver is adopting a strategy of ‘steady wins the championship rather than the race’. To win a race, you have to take risks and hope others make some mistakes. But it is possible to win the overall championship without winning many races, but instead accumulating points for solid top-ten placements consistently throughout the season.
Scrutineering – this word, meaning to scrutinise, always makes me smile for being both clever and straightforward and for how it looks on this really massive sign:
And of course not forgetting …
Three cheers for Will!
Will was awesome as always and won podium places for both races, including P1 for race 1. It’s always so humbling to watch how profesh he is, not just on the track but when speaking to the media, and how he always reminds everyone watching that a win is a whole-team achievement. He’s at: instagram.com/willmartinracing and the team is instagram.com/edenmotorsport