Last weekend I attended the United States Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and with my sincere apologies to Lytton Strachey, "If this is Formula 1, I don't think much of it."

From what I could gather, some guy in a red car won the race, and some driver in a black car - whose engine he essentially detonated, perhaps THE high point of the F1 race to me - wave at us as he was driven off in a golf cart. And, other than the general lack of atmosphere, watching the race through the cables and wire of the safety fence (okay, I did have a great view of the safety patrol, medical crew, and the State Police folks who gathered in front of me to watch the race), and forgetting my sunblock - it wasn't too bad a weekend.

Once upon a time, I used to attend more than my share of Grand Prix races. It started when I was all of eight years old. I was already a seasoned veteran of a number of races Stateside. After a short chat with Alberto Ascari in the paddock after practice, then getting to sit in a Maserati 250F, and having the Maserati mechanics wave at me as they wheeled the cars away - I was not merely hooked, I was severely addicted.

From 1955 until 1960, I attended many of the Grand Prix events - non-championship as well as those in the championship - all over Europe. Returning Stateside in early 1961 - just in time to miss the events early in the season, I made the annual trek northward for decades to Watkins Glen and then into Canada as well for my up-close and personal fix for my addiction.

While my love of motor racing was (and is) in no way restricted to Formula 1 - which sadly seems to be the case for all too many these days - I always had a fondness for the series. Perhaps it was a tad bit of snobbery mixed in with equal amounts of true enthusiasm and love of the sport. Once upon a time, to have the "complete" record of just the events for the World Championship required a mighty effort and much sleuthing. It was a true effort requiring no end of poring through copies of various magazines and sorting out all the inconsistencies. To manage to find out the starting grids, entrants, reasons for retirements, and laps completed meant this was always a "work in progress." To be a Grand Prix fan, particularly an American one, required great endurance and a boundless sense of optimism.

I have never been much of one for souvenirs, autographs, and the like. I enjoyed being a will of the wisp in the paddock or in the various places where the mechanics worked on the cars. I was fascinated by all the work they did on the cars, the preparation needed to put one on the track for a driver to clout a substantial object with and leave the mechanics with hours upon hours of work while he frittered away his idle hours until the race with wine, women, and song.

Although I am sure that memory had dimmed a few aspects of the correct procedure for putting a Coventry Climax FPF into action, I still have a good idea of what they were, more or less. Amidst all the fiddling with the brake system - bleeding the lines, topping off the brake fluid, the mechanics would soon begin to turn their attention to the engine. They heated up the coolant in a basin using the same burner used for their tea or coffee, depending on the crew's nationality. They added the heated coolant to the system, usually forcing it through the system and kept touching the head and block of the engine to see that it was getting warm. After putting in 'soft' plugs and a light weight oil, they turned the engine over a few times and then cranked it up.

After letting it rev gently for a few minutes, the wheels being propped on jacks, they engaged the gearbox and checked out the clutch and transmission. If everything seemed okay, they then drained out the light oil, pulled the 'soft' plugs and poured in the racing oil and threaded in the 'hard' or racing plugs. With the rear wheels still up on the jacks, they cranked it up once again and once again checked to see if everything was working properly.

The mechanics always seemed to have a list of things to do and they never seemed to quite get done until the last minute because the team manager kept adding items to the list. It was here that I first experienced the true majesty of language, the art of expression, the infinite ways to express anger, sadness, joy, frustration, and exhilaration all with the same facial expression bar the slight lifting or lowering of the eyelids. Later, the "Great Ozzie Adjective" came into general use - but the same lifting and lowering of the eyelids remained.

I generally tried to find an out of the way place to observe. I was not so much a fan as an observer. To watch the mastery of the mechanics, the comic opera of the team manager and the driver as they voiced their lines while the mechanics labored away seemingly ignoring them, but attuned to every word, was wonderful entertainment. The world of the paddock in those days was an act of the grand show that composed a Grand Prix race. The other acts were in the pits, on the circuit, and about the course. The driver and the team manager put on a much better show in the pits than in the paddock because they had a bigger audience. It was a secret joy to have a mechanic wink at you as he dutifully hastened to make the adjustments demanded by the driver. Only you realized from long experience that the mechanic was only going through the motions… His wink made you a co-conspirator and it was often hard to resist snickering, but The Code required a stern look and a serious nod as you observed the goings on.

Joy was having a mechanic whom you had observed over a period of years and at many places say, "Well, laddie, good ta see ya!" and grin and then give you a small wave. Or there were even the rare moments when you suddenly sensed a presence next to your observation post and there he was! Perhaps the man you loved best at the time, Mr. Moss. Or Mr. Hawthorn. Or Mr. Gurney. Or Mr. Hill - as in the Santa Monica Hills.

You saw the faces of the men whose words you would read about the very event which you attending - DSJ (Denis Jenkinson or "Jenks" to those of us in the 'know'), Bernard Cahier, Henry N. Manney III, Dean Batchelor, and later Rob Walker and Pete Lyons. And many others of course, such as Gregor Grant, Peter Garnier, Rodney Walkerley, or Cyril Posthumus. It was often easy to slide into the area where The Scribe and The Driver - or some other such worthy - were trading words, each trying to find a way to obtain or deny - or often both - information from the other. The truly clever Scribes would make the obligatory exchanges with the Stars of The Show, but then ease around to the mechanics and find out the true nature of things.

The races were almost an afterthought. The best time to get around the circuits and watch the Daredevil Drivers at work was during practice. You could see who was really trying and who had the starting money in mind as they circulated. And at some places, such as the deadly Spa-Francorchamps circuit, during practice we would edge down to bare meters from the track's edge and revel in the sheer joy of being so close to it all and knowing how much your parents would disapprove.

From time to time, especially when I was still figuring all this out, I was "at" a race, but really all that involved at times as the cars went round and round and round. Naturally, crashes aroused our interest and we seemed to have that uncanny knack that children have of being able to almost sense them before they happened. Sometimes, a group of us - sometimes a minor United Nations gathering - would interrupt our play to observe the race and sagely swap paddock gossip and other tales that The Scribes would have dearly loved to have known. We simply Knew.

Then, somewhere along the line, the music lost its pull, there was something just not the same, but impossible to pinpoint. Just that vague, gnawing feeling that something was amiss, the rhythm just that small beat slightly out of synch, and it was uncertain if the atonality was you, or The Show.

All of this crossed my mind as I approached the grand facility that is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Believe it or not, this was my first race here, having managed to somehow miss the International Sweepstakes, as we once called the Indianapolis 500, and the newer Brickyard 400. However, I had been to the speedway many times over the years as a result of visits to relatives up in Kokomo.

As my fate as a Scribe was apparently being played out, I began to weigh my options. First of all, my original idea of visiting the paddock and the teams and then comparing and contrasting - see, once a professor, always a professor - what I saw with what I remembered. However, as the possibility of that idea rapidly dwindled when the FIA rejected my application for credentials, I recalled the Ranger Motto (Semper Gumby, Always Flexible) and turned my attention elsewhere.

However, I did manage to get on the grounds of the Speedway and looked forward to observing the first practice session. I was genuinely curious as to how I would react to seeing a current Formula 1 on the track in person since 1984, my last outing into the world of Grand Prix racing. That outing was the Dallas Grand Prix. It was held in July, which in Dallas is generally known to be a warm time of the year. The circuit was cobbled up on the grounds of the State Fairgrounds and adjacent to the Cotton Bowl. The circuit was lined with massive concrete barriers and topped with huge, tall fences. On Saturday, the track was clearly not up to the abuse it was taking. During the Can-Am race, a preliminary event on that day, the track was breaking up and chunks of the road surface were strewn every which a way, as they say in Dallas.

After hurried overnight fixes were made - on top of the hurried overnight fixes from Friday night - The Show went on. It was not warm. It was hot and it was miserable. This had the makings of a great endurance race and perhaps become the event where they all dropped out before the scheduled finish - which was getting 25-1 odds in my area, if I recall. Needless to say, they event ran its course and a Finn, of all people, won the race. Most forgot that Keke Rosberg had raced Atlantics in the United States and so was not exactly alien to the heat and humidity. Plus, more than a few of knew that ol' Keke was one tough sumbitch.

Well, with Watkins Glen on death's doorstep, and no real desire to see Detroit, I just never quite got the notion to go see another Grand Prix race in the United States. Somewhere along the line they became "Formula 1" races and the ostrich races in Phoenix outdrew the Formula 1 event and that was that. Duty literally called and there were other priorities in my life. I still kept an eye on "Formula 1," but the passion had clearly ebbed for the current offering.

The "Mystic Chords of Memory," however, began to get plucked with more and more frequency and my thoughts turned more and more to The Past. At least with Formula 1. I kept up with CART, NASCAR, and IMSA. Indeed, I found that I really enjoyed these series quite a bit and missed Formula 1 less and less. This was helped by the farces of the 1989 and 1990 Japanese Grands Prix - first the sight of Prost and Senna tangling in 1989 and then Senna being disqualified by Blowhard Blaestre, and then the chilling sight of Senna ramming Prost and both of them crashing sealed it for me. Bye-bye Love, Bye-bye Happiness….

Oh, I managed to catch the odd Formula 1 race here and there, but the passion had ebbed to a bare pilot light flickering in the recesses of my mind. Then came the flood of Formula 1 books. Data which I had labored to dig up and could discuss in endless, boring detail was easily available at your local Borders. Suddenly it seemed as if just about every other element of international racing disappeared and Formula 1 was it. This was followed by the homogenization of Formula 1. The races were all conducted to the same music. All the peculiarities that national pride or arrogance had stamped on an event were gone - Toto Roche, where were you went we needed you? Out went the privateers, finally just outright shut out after years of trying to eliminate them by forcing them to become constructors and tying incentives to performance of the team versus the others in a scheme which meant that someone would always be left without even the hind tit. Charles Darwin, meet Formula 1.

In 2000, Tony George culminated a delicate ballet with Bernie Ecclestone and the "SAP United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis" - whew! - was run on a road course built within the confines of the Speedway. I was tempted, but not that tempted. Then in 2001, while the race was being run, I was otherwise occupied, being at Ground Zero on the day of qualifying. I did manage to take a break and catch the race in my office between meetings. That is when I decided that I would try to attend the race the next year. I figured, what the hell, if I hadn't taken a command I would probably been killed when the plane slammed into the Pentagon just to the south of my old office - which was destroyed in the impact.

So, discussions were begun, plans made, and the usual number of standby to standby messages. I even began to prepare for the event by making flash cards of the cars, the drivers and their helmets, and team principals and others powers that be. I actually did research on Formula 1 as it is, since I wanted to be fair and I wanted to admit to being wrong if necessary.

When I saw the first current Formula 1 car on a track that I had witnessed in 18 years, I think it was a Minardi and I didn't have the foggiest idea as to who the driver was, so much for research. Indeed, I was completely confused and bewildered as to who was who since the drivers' helmets are not exactly easy to see and distinguish for us who are not exactly slaves to the sport. That each team car is in essence identical to the other did not help at all.

When I saw the car, there was no burst of "WOW!" or even a sense of grandeur or being in the presence of something Special. I was surprised at how totally unimpressed I was as other cars soon joined the few on the track at the start of the session. During the sessions I caught parts of at various places on the track, I found that it was difficult to see exactly where Michael Schumacher was three seconds faster than Alex Yoong. That was even when I figured out which one was Yoong and which one was Schumacher. And the cars sounded so, well, funny, with the traction control kicking in on the corners.

I was underwhelmed with Formula 1. And surprised at that fact. However, events would soon take a turn and make the weekend a bright one in spite of being exiled from the "Formula 1 Paddock" and the Media Center, both of which I did manage to see, but from behind either a barrier or at a - great - distance.

Essentially two items turned the tide: Historic Grand Prix and Burt Levy. And both for the same reasons - these were folks having fun at Indy and not caring who knew it. I ended up spending a great bit of time at the Historic Grand Prix paddock and loved every moment of it. Here were cars I could relate to, cars I had actually seen race in many cases. Cars that had, well, personalities. Thanks to Dave Kane, I was given access to anyone who had the time to talk to me.

For me, the perfect moment of the whole weekend came on Friday. The Historic Grand Prix cars were to do several "parade" laps, being led by one of the course cars around the track at a rather sedate rate. Relatively speaking, of course, for these wonderful machines. I had a hunch which led me to take up a spot in the Southwest Vista so that I could observe the Formula 1 pit area. When the pack came around the first time and bellowed down the straightaway, you could see people in the pits literally stop working. Prior to the second lap, many left the pits and jumped the wall and began lining the fence to see the cars as they went past. This happened each lap. It would be fair to say most of those left in the pits - the team mechanics and support services technicians - were on the fence watching Grand Prix cars snarl by, the wonderful sounds of a BRM V-12 mixing in with a Ferrari V-12 and two Boxer 12s, and the familiar sound of the DFV…..

Dan Marvin, the guest driver for Dave Olson's Parnelli VPJ4, had a problem and peeled off to park in the pits, afraid that the Powers That Be would frown upon his doing so. Dan parked the Parnelli by the Toyota pits and eventually managed to get headed, on foot, towards the HGP area to let the team know what happened. In the meanwhile, the Parnelli was like a magnet, many taking a moment on their way back to the work awaiting them to look at the car, so alien in the presence of the modern cars.

Nest time I will go into more profile about this wonderful organization, Historic Grand Prix, and tell you more about my time spent with them on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, I had a nice chat with the North American - and a leading contender for the World title as well - Champion of Ride Mooching, Burt Levy. Burt - not known as BS Levy without good reason, especially since those are his initials - has a new book he is peddling and not only did I actually pay for my copy, I gave him a down payment for the next one to ensure that he continues to write books in the most daunting genre known to modern man or woman - racing…