NASCAR Nation, oppressive F1 left in dust

I hate right turns. I really do. They are possibly the least appealing type of turn for a driver, and that’s saying something, considering we have lane changes (which I count in the same category).

There’s no challenge to them on most roads, so you become conditioned to making them automatically, without care for pedestrian or obstacle or bicyclist. They trick you with their simplicity, and then you get into a big city with crosswalks or something and people expect you not to run them over because “wah wah I have a wittle white walking symbol,” “don’t you know that’s an illegal turn you monster” and other noisy things that I try to drown out with one of my many “2 Live Crew” tapes. Seriously, give me a K-turn, J-turn, U-turn or any other kind of turn than a right turn would be amazing.

I’m a professional driver, too, so I am qualified to rank turns, just in case you were wondering. And do you know what I judge to be the best kind of turn in all of the world? If you’re smart, you guessed left, and you’d be right. I mean left.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the left turn is the absolute greatest turn ever invented by mankind. To make a left turn, you have to be aware. You have to judge oncoming traffic. You have to measure angles and speed and distance and make snap calculus equations on the fly, sometimes giving the other driver the finger if they beep their horn. I’m in awe of its applicability.

So, that’s why I don’t understand motorsports that have anything other than a left turn in them. That’s why I watch the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing, known as NASCAR to the uninitiated. A hint to you groveling masses: we diehards say the whole name every single time we refer to the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing. That’s such a poetic name; it’s official and elegant and descriptive. It makes me cringe when I hear the three-letter acronyms that other “sports” fans use to call their sports. The NFL? MLB? MLS? They should be spelled “UGH.”

You know who is even worse at this sport-naming thing than the upper-class sellers of spectacle here in the States that try to medicate us with violence and narrative to drown out how disparate and horrible our economic, social and environmental problems are? The British.

The British, being of unsound mind and body in general, have a motor sport of their own. The British, who have never risked life or law for anything other than an afternoon tea, have a motorsport that doesn’t descend from moonshine runners illegally transporting their product in the backwoods of the South. The British, I say! The British, who let’s all agree talk really funny compared with Americans, don’t have quite the wits to have a three-syllable acronym.

Instead, they call this competition of theirs F-1. As with any English-speaking country not named The United States of America (I’m looking at you, Canada), Great Britain is a lawless and desolate wasteland where crime is rampant, leather-clad gangs battle it out over gasoline, and you actually turn another direction than left in a dadgum road race. The horror! I might be confusing the country of Newton and Benny Hill with the plot of “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” but seriously, look at the last part of the sentence. They make right turns! In a race! What nutters!

I mean really, their cars can be kind of interesting in that they’re open-wheelers as opposed to stock cars, but America has that and we do it better, anyway. If Americans really want to see open-wheel cars, well, you can do that at the Indianapolis 500, one of the biggest, if not the biggest, single sporting event in the world. You know what keeps the order, though? You know why we don’t have gangs running around with spiked tired, attacking the weak and the helpless?

Yeah, that’s right, we still make the open-wheelers turn left. And, by doing so, we show our former overlords who is really right.